Mortgage credit quality continues to improve : CMHC

Most Canadian mortgages are held by those with very good or excellent credit scores, a trend that has been moving higher since the third quarter of 2015.

CMHC says that in Toronto and Vancouver, the share of those with a mortgage whose credit score if poor or fair is now in single digits.

Edmonton and Calgary have the highest share of mortgage borrowers with lower credit scores and are the only two of the six largest metros to have a below-national-average share of very good or excellent scores.

Nationwide in the first quarter of 2017, almost 81% of borrowers with a mortgage had a good or excellent credit score, a rise of 1 percentage point from a year earlier. Just 10.2% of all mortgage borrowers had a poor or fair credit score, down 1 percentage point from two years earlier.

Those with a mortgage tend to have a higher credit score than those without with the share of those with poor or fair credit scores making up 15.2% of consumers, 5 percentage points higher than those with a mortgage.

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