Advice on breaking mortgage fee with RBC

[Sheldon Peart]

I am looking for a bit of advice regarding selling a property and the breakage fees associated.

We are looking to sell one of our properties that has a mortgage with RBC and we recently called to see what the cost is when we sell. We were very surprised at the cost $8100 for a 300K property, with about 25% equity in. The reason i found this surprising is because we are looking to pay off our primary mortgage and the fee was only $1600 with approximately the same out standing balance. The difference between these two is substantial. We are now contemplating if we should just keep it rented until term (basically 3 years to go)

My question is: Is there a way to avoid this breakage fee in the future? Is there some type of mortgage clause we want to have when we purchase future properties? Would the only way to avoid this be to keep the property until mortgage term is up? It seems odd to me that would be the case. Maybe there are lenders that offer a much more reasonable breakage fee, if so, please let me know who they are.

Thanks for any advice/insight into this issue.

Sheldon