Brokers: Rein in CMHC

Many brokers and industry pundits alike believe the CMHC has strayed too far from its roots and one player believes the Crown Corporation should never have entered the securitized mortgage market.

Many brokers and industry pundits alike believe the CMHC has strayed too far from its roots and one player believes the Crown Corporation should never have entered the securitized mortgage market.

“Securitized mortgage product, in my opinion, is commercial trade and CMHC has/had/should never have been in this market,” mortgage broker Tom Adamson wrote on MortgageBrokerNews.ca. “I am not slamming the securitized marketplace; there are many great institutions that got their start and still today provide excellent products to this industry.

“CMHC should not, never should have been, and does not belong in this commercial part of trade that this industry has grown to become.”

Originally established to give a helping hand to Canadians who otherwise would not be able to afford a home, CMHC has, more recently, made moves to help stimulate the economy; moves that are oft-debated among industry professionals. Many of whom believe the Crown corporation has outgrown its initial intention.

“CMHC was not established as a profit centre with a billion a year. It was created to help with home ownership. Originally if one was fortunate to have a CMHC insured loan your mortgage rate was discounted off the market rate,” one anonymous commenter wrote on MortgageBrokerNews.ca. “The crown corporation morphed into an insurance business with little regard paid to risk and its consequences.”

And it’s an opinion that was shared by the late Jim Flaherty.

“Regrettably, CMHC became something rather more grand, I think, than it was intended to be,” Flaherty told reporters in December. “We’ll see over time what that role should be.”

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CMHC to get back to its roots