Prime minus 0.25%. Pretty garbage.

MCAP sent the renewal offer on one of my Alberta rentals. Two options. Prime minus 0.25% on a five-year variable, which works out to 4.2% today. Or 4.94% locked for five years.

For years my move was to sign whatever the lender put in front of me. This one I read on my phone at camp, then typed one line back to a mortgage broker. Prime minus 0.25% seems pretty garbage. Think I could get better?

The reply came back in two minutes. No, those aren't good rates. Yes, we can do better.

Keep that reply in mind, because it's the whole story here. I asked one question. Doing nothing would have decided the next five years for me.

I carry a few mortgages. My own place plus three rentals, all in Alberta. Something's always coming due. And I'm not a financial advisor, so this is what I did with one renewal, not what you should do with yours.

Prime is 4.45% and hasn't moved since October 2025. The Bank of Canada held its rate at 2.25% on July 15, the sixth hold in a row, and the next decision comes September 2. So the variable is 4.2% right now, and where it goes after that is anyone's guess.

The MCAP payment on that rental is $1,054.04, once a month. I watch it land in Monarch. I'm keeping the balance to myself. The payment tells you enough.

My deadline was August 31. If I'd let it pass, the term rolls over on its own. Nobody phones. Nothing bounces. I'd just quietly pay the letter's number for five years and never find out what else was on the table.

A renewal letter looks like a bill. Same envelope, same logo, same tone. It isn't one. It's an offer, the lender picked the opening number, and most people sign it as-is. The whole product is built on that.

I was on day shift. I sent the same short email to two brokers from my phone, one after the other. One was away, and the auto-reply pointed me at a colleague. The other answered, and we booked a call for 6 AM the next morning, before my 6:30 meeting, because that was the only quiet hour I had. I warned them I might get pulled away by a radio call.

Total cost of finding out whether 4.94% was a good number: one email and one early alarm.

The spread on my offer is 0.74%. Variable is cheaper today and stays cheaper as long as prime behaves. Fixed costs more and never moves. Whether prime behaves is the entire question, and six holds in a row says even the people with the models are waiting to find out.

Two things make the call different on rotation pay. My income swings. Overtime, a $3/hr night premium, camp allowance on top. Some months are fat, some are normal. When your income already moves around, you think harder about letting your mortgage payment move around too.

And this one's a rental, so the rent covers that payment, not my paycheque. If the rate climbs a few times, the question is whether the rent still clears the payment with room to spare, or whether the place quietly becomes something I subsidize every month.

So I skipped the forecasting and asked two questions instead. Is the gap worth paying for certainty? And if prime went against me, could this property absorb it without me feeling it? I sat with those for most of a rotation.

I renewed. Variable, prime minus 0.25%, the exact number I'd called garbage. I passed on the 4.94% fixed.

The broker who said we can do better couldn't. Not on this one. Rentals price higher than the mortgage on your own house, and prime minus 0.25% turned out to be the market for mine.

That left the spread. The Bank of Canada moves in 0.25% steps, so prime has to climb three times before my variable costs more than the fixed I turned down. I don't see three hikes coming.

Signing the number I'd trashed doesn't bother me, because the point was never that the opening offer is always beatable. Sometimes it is the market. But now I know that, and knowing is the difference between choosing a rate and getting handed one.

Almost everything in my life runs on autopilot, on purpose. Bus at 5:30. Deposits on payday. Same rotation, twenty-eight days, repeat. Automatic is how I dug out of debt years ago, and most days it's the best thing I've got. A renewal letter is the one place automatic works for the other side of the table.

One more thing, because none of this looked like much from the outside. My July payment came out at $1,054.04. Same as June's. The new term hadn't kicked in yet, so nothing in the account looked any different. Most money decisions land like that. Quiet.

The letter didn't pick for me this time. I'd take that trade on every renewal I've got.

Next week: what 4,500 calories a day actually looks like when half of them come off a camp cafeteria tray.

Forward this to one person whose mortgage renews this year.

— Kiegan