Bridge financing for Sault Ste. Marie closings

When your Sault Ste. Marie purchase closes before your sale settles, bridge financing covers the down-payment gap so you do not lose the home you want. It is secured by the equity in your departing property, payments are interest-only for the days the bridge is outstanding, and there is no prepayment penalty — your sale proceeds pay it out. Terms run 30 to 180 days, sized to your actual closing dates, and it usually funds the same day as your purchase.

The reason it exists is timing, not affordability. In a market where sellers rarely accept a purchase conditional on the buyer selling first, a mover who cannot close before their sale settles is choosing between losing the home and accepting a worse price on a rushed sale. A bridge removes that choice for a cost measured in hundreds, not thousands — which the next two sections show precisely.

These are two different numbers, and conflating them is why bridge financing looks more expensive than it is.

The ceiling is set by the equity in the home you are selling. Lenders cap the bridge at 80% of the departing home's value less what you still owe on it. On a Sault Ste. Marie home at the $345,000 average carrying a mortgage of $172,500, that is $276,000 less $172,500 — a maximum of $103,500.

What you actually borrow is the gap on the purchase side, and it is usually far smaller. Work it through on a like-for-like move:

So on this file the lender would advance up to $103,500 and you would draw $51,750 — because interest is charged on what you draw, not on what you were approved for. Change any input and the answer moves: a larger deposit shrinks the bridge, a more expensive purchase grows it, and a bigger mortgage on the departing home lowers the ceiling. Run your own figures with the bridge loan calculator.

Bridge financing is quoted as a rate but paid as a total, because the loan exists for weeks. Pricing runs Prime + 1.00% to Prime + 4.00% — 6.95% to 9.95% against today's 5.95% prime — plus a lender admin fee of $200 to $500 and roughly $300 of additional legal cost for registering and discharging it.

On the $51,750 this move needs, at 6.95%:

A 45-day bridge on this file therefore costs roughly $943 to $1,243 all in. That is the number worth carrying around, and it is the reason we quote bridges as totals: expressed as a monthly rate the same loan reads as $300 a month, which is arithmetically true and practically misleading, because you are never paying it for a month at a time.

If you drew the full $103,500 ceiling for the same 45 days the interest would be about $887 — which is precisely why the amount you draw is worth getting right rather than simply accepting the approval.

Almost every lender needs your sale to be firm, because the bridge is repaid from those proceeds. Firm means every condition has been removed — financing, inspection, status certificate — not merely that an offer has been accepted. An accepted conditional offer is not a firm sale, and this is the single most common misunderstanding on these files.

If your sale is not firm yet, it is not a dead end. Some lenders will bridge a conditional sale on an open bridge: a shorter term at a higher rate, closer to the Prime + 4.00% end of the range, sometimes with a larger fee. It is genuinely more expensive and it is occasionally the difference between completing a purchase and losing it, so the comparison is worth doing rather than assuming.

The regulatory point worth knowing: bridge financing is exempt from the federal stress test, because it is short-term financing repaid from identified sale proceeds rather than from income. Your new purchase mortgage is the loan that gets stress-tested. That exemption is why a bridge can be arranged quickly and why it does not reduce what you qualify for on the purchase itself.

The choreography is the part that worries people, and it is more orderly than it sounds. A typical Sault Ste. Marie closing day runs like this:

1. Morning — your sale closes. The buyer's lawyer transfers funds; your existing mortgage is paid out and the balance lands in your lawyer's trust account.
2. Midday — the bridge funds if there is a gap. Where the sale and the purchase close on the same day and the same lawyer acts on both, funds often flow straight through and the bridge is small or unnecessary. Where the purchase closes first, or on an earlier date, the bridge covers the interval.
3. Afternoon — your purchase closes. The down payment is assembled from the sale proceeds, the bridge where one is needed, and your new mortgage advance. Keys are released.
4. On the sale settling — the bridge is repaid from the proceeds, with interest for the actual days outstanding and no prepayment penalty.

Using the same lawyer for both transactions is what makes this smooth, because one office controls the trust ledger on both sides and can move funds without waiting on another firm. We coordinate the dates with the lawyer and both lenders before you commit to closing dates, so the sequence is agreed in advance rather than assembled on the morning.

If you already have a home equity line on the departing property with room in it, drawing on that is a real alternative and is often cheaper. On the $51,750 needed here for 45 days: a HELOC at 6.45% costs about $412 in interest with no admin fee, against roughly $443 plus $200-$500 of admin on a dedicated bridge — a difference of about $231.

Three things decide it rather than the rate alone. The line has to already exist — setting one up takes weeks and costs more than the bridge would have. The room has to be there, and a HELOC is capped at 65% of value stand-alone, which a mover with a substantial mortgage may already have exhausted. And a HELOC does not repay itself: a bridge is structured so the sale proceeds discharge it automatically at closing, whereas a HELOC draw sits there until you direct the money at it, which on a busy moving week is a real risk of paying line-of-credit interest for months by accident.

We price both before recommending either. If the HELOC is cheaper and the room exists, that is the advice. See bridge financing vs HELOC for the full comparison.

It is uncommon and it does happen, so it is worth saying plainly rather than leaving you to discover it. If the sale that repays your bridge is delayed — the buyer's lender is slow, a document is missing — most lenders extend the bridge for a fee rather than calling the loan, provided the sale remains firm and has simply been rescheduled. Interest continues to accrue for the extra days at the same rate, which on this file is roughly $10 a day.

The situation that is genuinely serious is different: a firm sale that collapses, which is rare because firm means the buyer's conditions are gone and their deposit is at risk. If it happened, the bridge would need to be repaid from another source — a new sale, a refinance of the departing home, or longer-term financing — and we would be arranging that with you rather than leaving you to it.

What we do about it up front: size the term with a buffer past your expected sale date where the lender allows, because an extension fee costs more than a few extra days of interest priced in from the start. And we tell you this before you commit, not after.