Canadians ended 2015 with a record-high debt burden, as low interest rates and still-soaring regional housing markets fuelled the fastest year of household debt growth since 2011.
Canadians ended 2015 with a record-high debt burden, as low interest rates and still-soaring regional housing markets fuelled the fastest year of household debt growth since 2011.
Statistics Canada reported Friday that the ratio of household credit-market debt to disposable income, the key measure of the debt load, rose to 165.4 per cent in the final quarter of the year, eclipsing the upwardly revised previous record of 164.5 per cent in the third quarter. That means that at the end of the year, households held more than $1.65 in debt for every dollar of annual disposable income.
For all of 2015, household debt rose 4.9 per cent, the fastest pace in four years, to a record $1.92-trillion. That included a 6.3-per-cent surge in mortgage debt, also the fastest since 2011, reflecting low borrowing costs and surging real estate prices in key regions, especially in Toronto and Vancouver. Disposable income, meanwhile, grew by a more modest 3 per cent.
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