How MortgageSkip makes money
A free tool that helps you think about a financial decision should tell you where its money comes from. Ours is straightforward.
MortgageSkip is free for homeowners.
If you choose to speak with one of our partner mortgage brokers, and you later complete a mortgage through that broker, MortgageSkip may receive a referral payment or a share of the revenue that broker earns from the lender.
You are never required to use one of our partners. You can take the information from MortgageSkip to your own broker, to your lender, or simply use it to understand your own mortgage better. Our goal is to make the math clear before any conversation begins.
What that does and doesn’t change
It doesn’t change what you pay. Broker compensation comes from the lender when a mortgage funds, not from you, and our share comes out of the broker’s side.
It doesn’t change the numbers. The calculator runs entirely in your browser, on the figures you enter, and it has no idea whether you intend to talk to anyone. It will tell you breaking your mortgage is a bad idea just as readily as the reverse — and a result that says “not right now” is a perfectly good outcome.
What it does mean is that we have an interest in you eventually speaking to a broker. We’d rather say that plainly than let you work it out. It’s also why the broker introduction is a separate, unticked choice you make yourself, never a condition of using the calculator or of getting rate alerts.
Why not just charge for it
We could, and it would be a cleaner story. But a paywall in front of a calculator means the people most worried about money are the least likely to run the numbers, which is precisely backwards. Referral revenue lets the tool stay free for everyone who only wants the answer.
If this changes
If we ever add another way of making money — a paid tier, advertising, selling data — this page changes first, and we will say so rather than let you discover it. We do not sell personal information, and we have no plans to.
The formal version of this disclosure lives on our disclaimer page. Questions are welcome at info@mortgageskip.ca.