Mortgage Agent The Glebe

The short answer

A mortgage agent The Glebe buyers can reach directly is me, Nick Bachusky. I arrange purchases, renewals, and refinances for homes from the Bank Street corridor to Lansdowne. I am a Mortgage Agent Level 1 with Referral Mortgages Inc., FSRA brokerage licence #13316 with Referral Mortgages Inc., serving central Ottawa. I shop many lenders to fit your file, then handle the paperwork through closing.

On the ground here

The Glebe, the streets we work across

The Glebe sits about two to three kilometres south of downtown Ottawa, and Bank Street runs right through the middle of it. That corridor is the heartbeat of the neighbourhood, lined with independent shops, cafes, and more than sixty restaurants. To the east and south the Rideau Canal wraps the area, with Dow's Lake at the northwest edge and the world's largest skating rink in winter. It is a neighbourhood people buy into and stay in for decades.

Why Glebe listings move so fast

The Glebe is compact and clearly bounded, hemmed by the Queensway, the canal, and Bronson Avenue. Those tight borders mean homes rarely come up and the ones that do move fast, so you want financing already sorted before a listing appears. The housing stock is part of the appeal and part of the puzzle: century Victorian and Edwardian brick east and west of Bank Street, Arts and Crafts four-squares from the 1920s, and Noffke-designed homes near Central Park. Real character, and also older wiring, older plumbing, and lenders who ask about it.

The streets and pockets I cover

We serve the whole area a Glebe buyer thinks of as home, including the Glebe Annex west of Bronson, Dow's Lake, and Old Ottawa South across the canal near Carleton University. Newer Lansdowne Park condos at TD Place are part of the picture too. I am licensed in Ontario, so I cover Ottawa and area, not Quebec or Gatineau. You can reach Nick Bachusky by phone or WhatsApp at 613-294-4475, or apply online, from anywhere in the Glebe. The office is close by at 1320 Carling Avenue, Suite 205, just north of the neighbourhood.

Financing a Glebe home

Financing a Glebe home: century homes, high-value homes, and Lansdowne condos

The Glebe is century brick, high price tags, and a growing wall of condos near Lansdowne Park. Each raises a different financing question, and I handle all three by shopping multiple institutional lenders to fit the property in front of you.

Buying a century or heritage home in the Glebe

Much of the Glebe is Victorian and Edwardian brick built before 1920. These homes come with quirks a lender cares about: knob-and-tube wiring, a 60-amp panel, galvanized or lead supply pipes, or a buried oil tank. Standard underwriters often will not fund a home with these systems until they are upgraded. There is a clean path for this. If a Glebe home needs updates, I can look at Purchase Plus Improvements, an insured, institutional product that bundles the purchase price and planned renovation cost into one insured mortgage, appraised on the finished "as-improved" value. CMHC can insure up to 95 percent of that value on an owner-occupied home of one or two units.

What I do here is match the file to the right lender. Some institutions are comfortable with the Glebe's older homes and their appraisal questions, and I shop the ones that are. If a specific home is too far gone, I will tell you plainly. Some of those situations fall outside what a Mortgage Agent Level 1 can arrange, and it is better to know that early.

Buying a high-value or move-up home

The average Glebe home now sits well past a million dollars, so the down payment rules matter more here than in most of Ottawa. As of 2026, Canada raised the insured-mortgage price cap to 1.5 million dollars, effective December 15, 2024, a real change from the old one million dollar cutoff.

As a dated 2026 example, a home priced under 1.5 million can qualify for a high-ratio mortgage, meaning less than 20 percent down. The minimum is tiered: 5 percent on the first 500,000 dollars, then 10 percent on the portion above that up to the cap. A home at 1.5 million or more is not eligible for default insurance, so it needs a flat 20 percent down. Those tiers move the monthly payment a long way, so it is worth running a Glebe price through the Ottawa mortgage payment calculator before you set a budget. For these larger files, I shop multiple institutional lenders and compare them on total cost, not just the headline rate.

Buying near Lansdowne: condos and new-build closings

Southeast of the Glebe, Lansdowne Park is adding new residential towers, and condos are the entry point for many buyers. New-build and pre-construction closings work on a longer timeline than a resale purchase. For a Lansdowne condo, the offering is a long rate-hold pre-approval that carries you toward a closing date months away, plus the condo due-diligence knowledge to read a status certificate and reserve fund. I keep the mortgage side lined up while you focus on the unit. You can dig into the details on the Ottawa condo mortgage page.

A century home leans on Purchase Plus Improvements and lender appetite, a high-value home on the 1.5 million dollar cap and the tiered down payment, and a Lansdowne condo on a long rate-hold. If you want to renovate rather than buy, there is a refinance route on the Ottawa mortgage refinance page. The starting point for a purchase is the Ottawa purchase mortgage page, or a free chat with Nick about your specific address. Message me on WhatsApp at 613-294-4475.