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Mortgage shoppers and the bond market spent the week reminiscing about rock-bottom rates.

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That, as Trump’s Iran “skirmish” — a word that now apparently means “war with no end date” — sent oil prices moonbound.

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Toss in worries about pass-through to core inflation and mounting rate hike speculation, and suddenly Canada’s fixed-rate-leading five-year yield is at a 27-month high.

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Big banks, which held out as long as they could, finally had to lift fixed rates to offset soaring funding costs.

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All told, dozens of lenders across the country boosted fixed rates by roughly 10 to 15 basis points this week.

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The gap between fixed and variable is now growing. But that alone is no reason to float.

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If you flash back to February 2022, the fixed–variable spread ballooned to 140-plus basis points, and mortgage hopefuls were flocking into variables.

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A month later began the biggest rate-hike cycle in decades: 475 basis points, delivered in instalments for maximum emotional damage.

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In any case, as this is being written, fixed offers near or below four per cent still survive at online mortgage brokers — for insured mortgages, that is. (Add 25-plus basis points for uninsured.)

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Sample vendors with those rates include True North Mortgage, Butler Mortgage and Ratebuzz.

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About all I can say on today’s best fixed deals is, lock in pronto. It’s hard to brag about the rate you almost got.

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Robert McLister is a mortgage strategist, interest rate analyst and editor of MortgageLogic.news. You can follow him on X at @RobMcLister.

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For the best national insured and uninsured mortgage rates, updated daily, please visit our mortgage rate page here.

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