TANKING CMHC RULES?

Think Tank: Time to leash the CMHC
John Greenwood 
FPPOSTED, January 31, 2011

The federal government should limit tax payer exposure to potential problems in the housing market by winding back the role of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. in the provision of mortgage insurance, according to a new report by the CD Howe Institute.

The CMHC has a pervasive presence in the domestic mortgage market, potentially resulting in “unmanageably large risks in financial markets” that are ultimately borne by the Canadian public, says the report.

Under current rules, people who borrow more than 80% of the value of the home they want to buy must also take out insurance, and the CMHC is by far the most dominant player in that market.

According to the report by Finn Poschmann, vice president of research at the CD Howe Institute, the CMHC now backstops mortgages equivalent to more than 30% of Canada’s gross domestic product.

As a result, Canadians are exposed to “large, ill-defined risks,” says the report, which argues that Ottawa should crank back the CMHCs presence in mortgage insurance and allow more room for private sector insurers.

Originally conceived as a mechanism for executing public policy, the CHMC has expanded dramatically, especially in the wake of the financial crisis as the government encouraged banks to boost lending by allowing them to securitize more home loans.

But critics worry that the unintended consequence was that mortgages became too easy to get, pushing up real estate prices across much of the country to unsustainable levels.

The CD Howe report comes on the heels repeated warnings from the Bank of Canada that Canadians have become over leveraged and need to start paying down debt.

One of the main concerns about the CMHC is the lack of disclosure about the quality of its mortgages and details of the types of loans it insures. For instance, when the government announced earlier this month that home equity lines of credit, or HELOCs, would no longer qualify for CMHC insurance, many analysts expressed surprised that such loans were ever allowed to be part of the CMHC program in the first place.