After a (Very) Brief Pause in January 2024, Canadians Have Resumed Borrowing
New data from Statistics Canada reveals that Canadians resumed borrowing money in March 2024, despite decades high interest rates.
In January 2024, Canadians took a brief borrowing hiatus, and even managed to pay back $5 billion dollars worth of debt during that month. February borrowing was mostly flat.
A reduction in household debt is a very rare occurrence in Canada — generally speaking, debt owed by Canadian households has been rising non-stop for decades.
And not surprisingly, January’s household austerity didn’t last very long.
Total Credit Liabilities of Households Now Just Shy of $3 Trillion Dollars
According to the data release, the total debt outstanding for Canadian households is now just a hair shy of $3 trillion, sitting at $2.945 trillion.
This is up $97 billion from the year prior.
Canadians Borrowed Another $9.3 Billion Dollars in March 2024
Compared to February 2024, Canadian borrowing was up a total of $9.3 billion in March to reach the $2.945 trillion figure.
Most of the debt increase came in the form of mortgage and home equity line of credit debt, at $6.5 billion.
It’s All Mortgage Debt, Are You Surprised?
The lion’s share of the debt outstanding is in real estate secured lending, which represents $2.3 trillion of the $2.9 trillion outstanding.
Mortgage debt itself is up 4.2% on an annualized basis, revealing that Canadians are still borrowing money for real-estate, undeterred by decades high interest rates. (even accounting for inflation and population growth)
The second and third largest debts were personal loans at $124 billion and credit cards at $100 billion.
They’re Buying Lots of New Cars, Too
The buying is not limited to real-estate either, we recently wrote an article revealing that new car sales are up in a big way:
