About Derrick Johnston

I spent twelve years telling athletes their problem wasn’t effort.

It never was. The athlete who trains hardest and finishes fifth isn’t lazy. They’re running mechanics that waste half of what they put in. Fix the form and the same effort produces a different result. That’s the whole job of a coach: find the leak, close it, get out of the way.

I say the same thing now to homeowners, and it lands the same way, with relief. Because most people carrying too much debt on a good income have been told, implicitly or explicitly, that they have a discipline problem. They don’t. They have a structure problem. There is a difference, and it matters enormously, because one of those you can fix in six weeks.

What I actually do differently

Most mortgage conversations start and end with a rate. Mine starts with your whole balance sheet and your next fifteen years, because the mortgage is only the visible part of the machine. I want to know about the line of credit, the truck payment, the rental you’re not sure is making money, when you want to stop working, and what happens if one income disappears for a year.

Then I build two or three structures with the real numbers on them: payment, penalty, closing costs, cash flow, and total interest over the horizon. Then I tell you which one I’d choose and why. Sometimes the answer is “do nothing, your current mortgage is excellent, call me in eighteen months.” I’d rather say that and keep the relationship than place a mortgage that doesn’t need placing.

Who I work with

My clients are mostly dual-income households in their forties and fifties in London and across Southwestern Ontario. They earn well. They own a home. And they feel a persistent, low-grade squeeze they can’t explain, usually because $60,000 to $150,000 of consumer debt is quietly eating the surplus that should be funding retirement.

I also work regularly with self-employed business owners, rental property owners who want a tax-efficient structure, and homeowners over 55 planning how to turn equity into income.

What I specialize in

All six strategies are laid out side by side here, with the tax advantages of each. The individual guides:

• Debt consolidation mortgages: the core of my practice
• Mortgage restructuring and refinancing for cash flow and retirement readiness
• Rental cash damming and interest-deductibility structures
• All-in-one and readvanceable mortgages, including Manulife One
• Reverse mortgages for homeowners 55+
• Self-employed and business owner financing
• First-time buyer programs in Ontario

Beyond client files

I mentor a small group of newer mortgage agents at BRX and run a coaching program for brokers building their own practices. Teaching keeps you honest. You can’t hand-wave a strategy to someone who has to go execute it on Monday.

The regulatory part, stated clearly

I am licensed as a Mortgage Agent Level 2 under the Ontario Mortgage Brokerages, Lenders and Administrators Act, 2006, working under BRX Mortgage Inc., FSRA brokerage licence #13463. Level 2 means I can arrange mortgages with any lender type, including alternative and private lenders. Every Ontario licence is publicly searchable on the FSRA registry, check mine, and check anyone else’s before you hand over your financial information.

I am not an accountant, a lawyer, or a licensed financial planner. Where a strategy touches tax, cash damming especially. I work alongside your accountant rather than around them.