Must come down…. Spinnin’ Wheel, got to go ’round. – Blood, Sweat & Tears. Love that song. Always think it’s the band Chicago.

Well all the excitement seem to start a little over a week ago when the Australian  central bank decided to raise it’s prime rate by a quarter point.

Can we say jittery markets in Canada? No sooner do I get what I have to call the lowest rate for the season and submit a deal I’ve been sitting on for months, then the following week do the rates jump. It’s like a game of cat and mouse. Well I have one really happy client at 3.74 (yes, I’m still having problems typing 3 as the first digit) and a couple of investors who just missed the rate drop literally by days.

So as far as I can tell, no real pressure in the market to jump the rates by 35 Bps or more and just today I received an email from a lender indicating that they are already starting to drop their rates again. I’m guessing over the next month… just like the previous 3 years… we will start to the rates drop slightly again as the slower Christmas season approaches. Come January, we’ll likely be back at 3.74 or maybe even 3.64 the lowest I saw it earlier this year.

Rest assured come February the rates will go up again like clock work in anticipation of an upswing in purchases. Call it an early thaw in the market but it seems we Canadians can’t hold off from buying real estate for much longer than 2 months (Dec/Jan). By the time March hits, the snow is starting to melt and the deferred maintenance project rear their ugly heads.

Speaking of ugly heads, got an email from one lender “touting” how they kept their rates down as long as they could, which naturally attracts more deals than anyone lender can handle and now they’re back to 4 day turn arounds. I’d argue they never left the 4 day mark, but that’s just my perspective. You know them. Heck, I even dedicated an entire blog post to them, thanks to their overly complex lending matrix. I just got the impression that they were saying “hey, look at us. we did our very best for you brokers.” Ya, except that his has to be the ONLY time I’ve ever seen them NOT lead the market change.

In other somewhat mysteriously unrelated news, variable rates keep coming down. Funding for this segment of the market is obviously continuing to rebound. Curious how it seems independent of the fixed market. Who knows, maybe by January we’ll be back to prime minus 50 bps and all those people renewing will begin to breathe again.

Absolutely bonkers couple of weeks. I finally sat down with my new admin (I’m sure she’ll post a comment shortly after I post this missive) and a new broker that I’m trying to get up to speed to share the load. I keep looking at the active files and the time I have and figure I’ll just have to give up sleep for a week or so. I’ll be fine… really. (Says he who’s eyes are now tired and red, having problems focusing on this page, trying to think of that one critical item he thinks he’s forgotten to do…)

I must say having an assistant has been a Godsend this week. I can focus on clients requests and have the administration side of things be taken care of at the same time.

I knew eventually I would get to this point. The first thing my coach told me was I needed to find an assistant.For those following along at home, yes this is part of the mortgage marketing package I’ve spoken about previously. It’s almost like they knew my world was about to explode.

Well let’s hope with my “new” team that I will be able to close 3/4′s of the deals that are currently active in my queue. We’re still working on coordinating electronic documents between us. Unfortunately I’m the bottleneck… Hm. Maybe I can get faxes to go to two different email addresses simultaneously. I’ll have to check into that idea… or use that Gmail account I set up about a year ago and give everyone access.

If I could just get a Google Wave account… would that even work? Each wave could be a client. Client could have “sub” waves if there is such a thing for buying rental properties. Sounds cool.

For now I’ll just smile & wave.