Burlington's mortgage work is mostly refinancing, and refinancing has its own ceiling
Burlington's owner base is long-tenured — Roseland, Tyandaga and the Aldershot bungalow streets turn over slowly — so a large share of local mortgage activity is not a purchase at all. It is a renewal, a refinance, or an equity draw against a home bought years ago. That changes which rules bind. A refinance is capped at 80% of the home's appraised value, and it cannot be default-insured: mortgage insurance is not available on a refinance at any loan-to-value, so the 80% line is hard. On a home appraised at $1,050,887 — Burlington's July 2026 average selling price — that puts the total mortgage ceiling at about $840,710, and whatever is already owing comes off the top before you see a dollar. A stand-alone HELOC is tighter still at 65% of value, though a readvanceable combination of mortgage plus HELOC can reach the same 80% overall. Both are tested at the stress-test rate, which means the qualifying question on a Burlington refinance is rarely "is there equity" and almost always "do the debt-service ratios still work at the greater of your contract rate plus two points or 5.25%". The upside is that the arithmetic runs in your favour more often here than the ratios suggest, because consolidating high-interest balances into a mortgage payment usually lowers total monthly obligations — which is the number the ratios actually measure. We model the appraised-value ceiling, the payout of what exists, and the post-consolidation ratios before anything is ordered.