It isn't just with a big bank, we had a broker tell us that we could essentially take double the mortgage we were seeking 2 years ago. Sure, we have good credit, blah blah blah, but I'm not sure we could have floated a variable mortgage paying approximately double in monthly payments. (or whatever it worked out to be).

Rates haven't gone up, sure, but that's all in hindsight. (I should note that I'm not in Toronto or Vancouver where you'd need the extra mortgage cap just to get into the market)