Your urgent mortgage questions answered by an award-winning Toronto mortgage agent

• Listen to it on iTunes.

In today's episode, I talk to a mortgage specialist who loves to educate borrowers on how to shop for the best financing for their income and their needs.

Ross Taylor of Ross Taylor Mortgages is a two-time national award winner, specializing in difficult mortgages and first-time home buyers. You can find his financial literacy articles at his website (AskRoss.ca).

Here are the top five mistakes he sees home buyers make:

1) They don't pre-qualify themselves for a mortgage with a lender before shopping.

2) They overpay for a house in a hot market, not anticipating that a pre-approved mortgage may not be issued if the house is appraised at a lower value.

3) They underestimate their one-time closing costs -- such as land transfer taxes, PST on high-ratio insurance premiums, adjustments for property taxes and condo fees, utility hookups and moving costs. This CMHC brochure will help you keep track of them all.

4) They underestimate the cost of living in their own home. Mortgage payments, property taxes and condo fees are the obvious ones. But then there is also heating, hydro, water, cable, internet and home insurance.

5) They sign up for a five-year fixed-rate mortgage with a major bank. This means they may be setting themselves up for very large prepayment penalties if they have to break the mortgage before the term is up. This can wreak havoc on your finances. It's vital to understand your lender's mortgage prepayment penalty before you sign up.

In this episode, I ask Ross Taylor about a number of issues he's written about at his site:

-- How to find money for your mortgage renewal when interest rates have soared. Should you consider cashing in your savings, such as RRSP or RESP assets? Should you think about selling your property in order to downsize to something smaller you can buy or to find a lower-priced property you can rent?

Here's an article by Rob Carrick of the Globe and Mail on a Vancouver couple who engineered a sale of their four-bedroom home. Then, with the proceeds from the sale and a cash top-up, they bought a new three-bedroom townhouse in which they could live mortgage-free.

-- What are alternative mortgage lenders?

-- What are high-ratio mortgages?

-- What are common myths about co-signing for a mortgage?

-- Should you convert your variable-rate loan to a fixed-rate loan when you can't afford the higher payments? Here is the article Ross wrote about this dilemma.