Home Buyers Guide

Chapter 1: The 10 Steps to Buying Your First Home:

9: Pre Completion Requirements

People often say that buying a house is really stressful (and it certainly can be). The biggest stress point is just
before closing the purchase, caused by delays in getting the mortgage cheque issued.

The banks ‘mortgage completion’ departments have a checklist of documents which need to be in place before they issue the cheque - if any item is outstanding they won’t issue the money.

Allow yourself plenty of time to arrange the outstanding requirements. These include:

• Apply for mortgage protection (life) insurance:

This insurance usually takes about a week or ten days to set up, but it can take a lot longer if you have a
medical condition or family medical history etc. so make sure to apply for it at least 4 - 6 weeks before you
need to close. You will have to give the original life policy to your mortgage advisor & sign a form which the
lender will provide to ‘assign the policy’. Assigning the policy means that if you died the life insurance cheque
will go to the mortgage lender to pay off your outstanding balance (and any excess is then paid to your
estate).

• House (& contents) insurance.

Your mortgage letter of offer will outline how much the house has to be insured for. You will need your
insurance company to issue a ‘letter of indemnity’, naming your mortgage lender, which you should give to
your broker. Some lenders will require the original document & may not accept a fax or scanned copy of it.

• Special Conditions:

You should also make sure that any other loan conditions, as outlined on your letter of offer, are taken care of
now

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