The head of Canada’s national housing agency is asking banks and mortgage companies to stop offering higher-risk mortgages to over-leveraged first-time buyers, because they represent a threat to the economy.
In a letter to officials in the federal government and representatives of Canada’s banking and credit union industry, Evan Siddall, the CEO of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, asked lenders to be more strict about how much money they are willing to lend to fund home purchases, and more diligent about who they are lending to.
The letter was first reported on by financial news channel BNNBloomberg before Siddall released the letter publicly on social media.
“I am asking you to continue to support CMHC’s mortgage insurance activity in preserving a healthy mortgage sector in Canada,” Siddall wrote to the banks, credit unions and other mortgage lenders that make up his customer base.
While the CMHC does not directly loan out money to buy homes, it has a massive influence on Canada’s housing market because it insures a big chunk of the loans that lenders give out.
By law, borrowers with down payments of less than 20 per cent must purchase mortgage insurance to cover potential losses if they default on their loans. Premiums that borrowers must pay for that insurance can add thousands of dollars to the cost of the loan.
The goal was to make it harder to get an insured loan, in the hopes that borrowers already stretched thin would not be able to get one and thus not be able to get in even further over their heads by buying a house they may not be able to afford. But things didn’t quite work out that way.
Evan Siddall is CEO of Canada’s national housing agency, and he warned members of the mortgage industry in a letter this week that he thinks there are too many risky loans out there. (Galit Rodan/Bloomberg )
CMHC is the dominant mortgage insurer, but they do compete with private companies Genworth and Canada Guaranty for business. It’s impossible to downplay CMHC’s outsized impact on the market, however — as of the end of 2019, the crown corporation was on the hook for $429 billion worth of Canadian real estate, by insuring the mortgages on it.
The insurers often move in unison, so in the past any change at CMHC was quickly matched by the other two. But that didn’t happen this time, which means the CMHC’s moves had little impact beyond moving borrowers from CMHC to a competitor. Anyone who was locked out by the CMHC’s higher standards simply got insurance elsewhere where the standards were lower.
In his letter, Siddall pleaded with lenders to work with CMHC to make sure lending standards don’t become even more lax.
“There is no doubt that we have willingly chosen to forego some profitable business that our competitors would find appealing,” Siddall said.
“While we would prefer that our competitors followed our lead for the good of our economy, they nevertheless remain free to offer insurance to those for whom we would not.”
By not tightening lending standards, Siddall warned that the entire economy could be put at risk.
The Switzerland-based Bank of International Settlements, an industry group for central banks around the world, warns that as a rule of thumb, when households have debt loads above 80 per cent of their gross income, it’s bad for the economy.
Canada’s ratio on that front has blown past 100 per cent and is approaching 115 per cent, Siddall warns.
“Too much debt not only increases risk, it therefore slows economic growth.”
CMHC expects house prices to fall
COVID-19 has walloped every facet of the Canadian economy, but broadly speaking, house prices have yet to fall in any meaningful way. Compared to last year, average prices were flat in March and April, before ticking higher, in May and into June.
But that is unlikely to continue forever, Siddall warns.
He suggests a big reason that prices are staying high is because massive government spending programs like CERB and CEWS have allowed people to keep their heads above water for now.
But those are set to expire in the coming months, as will the hundreds of thousands of mortgage interest deferrals that banks have doled out.
Once those programs end, bankruptcies and defaults may follow, and that is when prices may decline as new buyers are unable or unwilling to pay ever-higher prices, and sellers behind on their mortgages could become desperate to sell.
“The economic cost of COVID-19 has been postponed by effective government intervention,” he said. “It has not been avoided.”
House prices could fall by about 18 per cent and the impact of COVID-19 will be felt into 2022, the CMHC said recently.
Siddall said that under the current rules, there are loopholes that could allow people to buy houses with negative equity.
Although rare, mortgages for 95 per cent of the home’s value are allowed, and that loan would come with a four per cent capitalized insurance fee. Even a tiny fall in the housing market for someone with that loan would be onerous to withstand, as the homeowner would owe far more on their home than it is worth in reality.
‘Dark economic underbelly’
“In the midst of an economic calamity,” Siddall said, “we risk exposing too many people to foreclosure. These are individual tragedies that also create conditions for exacerbating feedback loops and house price crashes.”
Without naming names, Siddall accuses some in the industry of handing out too many risky loans while ignoring the long-term cost of doing so.
“Please put our country’s long-term outlook ahead of short-term profitablility,” he said.
“There is a dark economic underbelly to this business that I want to expose.”
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
