Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. saw its third-quarter profit drop compared with a year ago as the housing market showed signs of cooling off.
The country’s largest mortgage insurer says it earned $387-million for the three months ending on Sept. 30, down from $467 million in the same period a year earlier.
Revenue totalled $1.05 billion in the third quarter, compared with $1.26 billion last year.
CMHC offers mortgage default insurance for homebuyers as well as loans for multi-unit residential projects and portfolios of loans secured by residential properties.
It says it anticipates tighter mortgage rules, rising interest rates and a slowing economy to reduce demand for housing and continue to impact its earnings over the near term.
The agency says for the first three quarters of 2018, the average CMHC-insured homebuyer bought a home for nearly $276,000 with down payment of 7.7 per cent.
Nearly all CMHC-insured homebuyers chose a 25-year amortization period. Thirty-one per cent opted for a variable-rate mortgage over a fixed-rate loan.