Housing and mortgage markets are stable

House prices may be rising across the the country, but have no fear; the demand for mortgage products continues to grow.

Read: Canada’s houses too expensive

During Home Capital Group’s inaugural Investor Day yesterday, the company’s senior management outlined how businesses can maintain sustainable growth and profitability in tough markets, and revealed they haven’t seen a major drop in the demand for mortgage products.

Also, through risk management, proprietary lending criteria and operational efficiencies, residential mortgage financing companies will be able to boost their performance.

“Approximately 20% of the Canadian marketplace is underserved by larger financial institutions,” says Pino Decina, senior vice president of residential mortgage lending at Home Capital. As a result, a large segment of the Canadian population still requires residential mortgage financing and help. Home Capital, in particular, has focused on this market over the past 25 years.

Read: Canadians need help with debt

Gerald Soloway provided an outlook on the Canadian housing and mortgage market: “The Canadian housing market will generally remain resilient to global economic uncertainty, with a balanced supply and demand across most of the country.”

He adds “Canada is in a very enviable position, with lower unemployment rates, continuing strong real estate fundamentals and Canadian consumers who continue to service their debts.”

Martin Reid says, “The Canadian real estate market will remain stable despite current economic uncertainty and we will see solid growth across all business lines.”

Kerry Reinke, Home Capital’s chief risk officer, suggests companies looking to grow in 2012 should practice careful lending and align their risk-taking philosophies with their core strategies. More importantly, they should focus on lower-risk borrowers, and manage risk by adopting conservative financial risk profiles and proactive assessments of all risk exposures.

Read: Housing crash? So what

Home Capital Group is a subsidiary of Home Trust Company, a trust company offering deposit, residential and non-residential mortgage lending, securitization of insured residential first mortgage products and consumer lending.