Article content

Canada’s national housing agency says it’s now insuring a record low 50 per cent of new residential mortgages, and it doesn’t intend to let it drop any further.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or CMHC goes from insuring 90% of new mortgages to only 50% — and that's as low as it plans to go Back to video





Efforts to create a private mortgage bond market in Canada won’t work under current conditions because there’s weak demand to buy the securities even with state guarantees, said the head of the country’s national housing agency.

Canada Mortgage & Housing Corporation, which backs more than $422 billion of mortgage bonds that are packaged and sold to investors, is looking for ways to limit taxpayer exposure to the housing market. While the Ottawa-based agency has pulled back on mortgage insurance, the residential mortgage-backed security market is less likely to attract the private sector, said CMHC Chief Executive Officer Evan Siddall.

Continue reading.

[/np_storybar]

Canada Mortgage & Housing Corp. Chief Executive Officer Evan Siddall said that after years of cutting its share to reduce taxpayer risk to the $1.2 trillion mortgage market, the agency plans to hold firm. CMHC’s stake of the new mortgage-insurance business has dropped from about 90 per cent during the 2008 financial crisis, and a pre-crisis low of 57 per cent.