Top Toronto executive talks the common mistakes many brokers are making
Canada’s 2026 mortgage market has been a challenging one for brokers and borrowers alike. Renewals are surging at higher rates than homeowners originally took out, purchase volume is down, and affordability is continuing to bite across the country.
Against that backdrop, the onus is on brokers to provide tailored, top-notch advice to clients that offers the optimal solution for their specific circumstances – and plenty are falling short in that duty, according to a top Toronto-based broker.
Elan Weintraub (pictured top), co-founder and director at Mortgage Outlet, told Canadian Mortgage Professional that brokers who simply take the order instead of stepping back to understand what the client actually needs aren’t providing the best possible service.
The problem: brokers don’t dig into their own expertise enough, he said, to deliver a solution beyond what their client thinks is possible. “Someone is asking you for X. Ninety percent of brokers answer X,” he said. “But the solution is actually Y.”
That’s a gap Weintraub said is costing Canadian borrowers in a market where precision and competence are increasingly demanded from brokers.
The right question to ask
As an example, Weintraub offered the scenario of a client who calls asking for a broker’s lowest rate, mentioning that they’ve been offered a specific rate by a bank on renewal. That might become a rate negotiation for most brokers when it shouldn’t necessarily be.
“They mention they have $80,000 of credit card debt at 20%. So why are we talking about a renewal? You need to refinance, consolidate, simplify,” he said. “But a lot of brokers are going to take the order. The clients don’t know the right questions to ask.
“When I go to my doctor, they don’t just say, ‘You’re fine, this meeting is over.’ They prompt you, they understand, they get the full picture.”
Weintraub is moving to address the missteps often made by agents and brokers through a series of free Friday afternoon (1:00 p.m. each Friday) sessions aimed at helping brokers better solve the “Rubik’s cube” of challenges facing their clients.
Agents and brokers bring scenarios – inability to get an approval, client loss, or other challenges – to talk through at those sessions and ultimately find a solution.
Some agents and brokers say they’re not getting enough support from their brokerages, or that the training on offer isn’t sufficient.
But agents and brokers have a responsibility to take the initiative, according to Weintraub, and address their knowledge or experience gaps themselves.
Too many complain about poor brokerage support, he said, without asking how many training sessions they actually attended.
Consultative brokering also means recognizing when the client would be better served by staying put, rather than being pushed through a transaction.
“Someone comes to me and is up for renewal at a bank, they’re unemployed, in the middle of a divorce,” Weintraub said. “I tell them: renew that mortgage.”
Solving the Rubik's cube
Many agents entered the industry during the pandemic-era purchase boom, when high volume and low rates made the job appear straightforward. But that cohort is now navigating a far more demanding environment involving non-standard income, complex refinances, and difficult appraisals, often without the foundational skills to handle it well.
The brokers who thrive in that environment, Weintraub said, are the ones who treat every file as a problem to be solved rather than a transaction to be processed. That mindset is what ultimately determines the quality of advice a client receives.
“I love that someone came to four other brokers and they couldn’t get it done, and I got it done,” he said, “because there are a lot of ways to solve the problem. I could never be a banker – that means I only have one solution. The best brokers are the ones who are always looking for the solutions their client didn’t know to ask for.”
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