The Globe and Mail reports in its Thursday edition mortgage broker Bruce Joseph likes to push 10-year terms for his clients, but not to protect them against rising interest rates. The Globe's Rob Carrick says Mr. Joseph's concern is renewal risk, where your lender declines to automatically renew your mortgage when the term expires, is virtually non-existent today. Customers who pay on time are not bothered with questions about whether their job situation or income has changed. Mr. Joseph's higher level of vigilance fits in with a theme of increasing uncertainty in the housing market. Mr. Joseph's concern is not that people will have to renew mortgages on homes that have fallen in value. Rather, it is that someone will have to requalify after having been hit with a drop in household income or a job loss. Draft regulations issued last year by the regulators at the federal Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions did raise the idea of lenders requalifying borrowers at renewal. The measure was left out of the final rules, but lenders can use it if they want. "They always have the right to do that," said Rick Lunny, a consultant who previously served as a top mortgage executive at TD Bank.