Insured and Uninsured Residential Mortgage Data

Insured and Uninsured Residential Mortgages Data are in the Dashboard

The Residential Mortgage Industry Data Dashboard has insured and uninsured residential mortgage statistics for your analysis ranging from 2015 to 2021. While the dashboard shows 2020 and 2021 data, you can download an Excel table that ranges from 2015 to 2021. Read the first page to learn more about the data.

Updates will be available every 3 months.

Use the new Dashboard for your analysis

Last month we shared the features of the newly launched dashboard. This article will look at little closer at one of the indicators: insured versus uninsured mortgages.

If you have less than 20% of a down payment, you need mortgage insurance

Mortgage loan insurance is required when your down payment is less than 20% of the purchase price. It allows for a mortgage for up to 95% of the purchase price of a home. It also benefits the buyer by ensuring a reasonable interest rate.

These are regulations that lenders follow:

• If the home costs $500,000 or less, a minimum down payment of 5% is needed.
• If the home costs more than $500,000, a minimum of 5% down on the first $500,000 and 10% on the remainder is needed.
• If the home costs $1,000,000 or more, mortgage loan insurance is not available.

The lender pays an insurance premium on mortgage loan insurance. It is there in the event a borrower stops making payments and defaults on their mortgage loan. This cost can be passed on to the buyer.

Findings from the 2021 Residential Mortgage Industry Report indicate uninsured mortgage growth outpaced insurance mortgage growth

Chartered banks issued   493,000 mortgages (with a total value of $167.7 billion) in the second quarter of 2021 and 75% were uninsured.

Uninsured new mortgage credit indicated a 20% growth in volume and a 53% growth in value in comparison to the previous year. This took over an increasing share of the residential mortgage market. The most noteworthy increase was in the issuance of uninsured mortgages for purchases of property. It more than doubled the number of loans originated in the same quarter in 2020.

What we discovered is that uninsured mortgage growth continued to outpace insurance mortgage growth.

This long-standing trend resulted from various changes, including adjustments to regulatory changes (uninsurable $1 million and over). It also resulted from rapidly increasing home prices, wavering economic conditions and recent changes to portfolio insurance . 

Both high ratio insured (-6.7%) and conventional insured (-14.7%) have dropped in the first half of 2021 compared to the same period in 2020.

As of the first quarter of 2021, only 35% of outstanding residential mortgages extended by chartered banks were insured. This share was over 60% in 2012. The share of insured mortgage debt held by non-bank lenders also decreased, from 41% in the first quarter of 2020 to 39% in the same period of 2021.

The loan amount is generally higher for uninsured mortgages than for the insured mortgages.

As of the second quarter of 2021:

• 75% of insured mortgages were under $500,000.
• 28.9% uninured mortgages were between $500,001 and $1,000,000 compared to 14.6% of insured mortgages.

Soaring property prices pushed the loan-to-value ratio distribution upwards for newly originated uninsured mortgages. This didn’t affect insured mortgages in the same way. In 2020-21, chartered banks issued insured mortgages with higher equity stakes than in previous years.

Related links

• Other housing-related data
• Housing Research newsletter
• Housing Market Outlook
• Housing Market Assessment
• Residential Mortgage Industry Report