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December 24th, 2019 Mortgage Industry Update

The Bank of Canada announced on December 4th that it’s overnight lending rate will remain at 1.75%. The prime rate remains 3.95%. The common prediction currently stands that the Bank of Canada will likely keep rates consistent into early 2020, with the next major move likely being a rate decrease.

Additionally this week:
– Statistics Canada: Canadians paid a new record amount of interest on debts (across all loan types) in Q3 2019 – over $104 Billion. Up 2.24% from the previous quarter, and 11.02% higher than 2018. Over the past year Caanadians have spent $405.32 billion on interest payments.

– CREA: National November sales are going strong with transactions up 11.3% year-over-year. Benchmark prices in the 19 markets CREA tracks rose 2.6% year-over-year to an aggregate of $638,300.

– CREA: National housing supply is the at lowest levels seen in 12 years; currently only 4.2 months of inventory on the market as of November. This is the lowest level recorded since the summer of 2007 and far below the long-term average of 5.3 months.

– Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has formally issued a Ministerial Mandate letter to Minister of Finance Bill Morneau advising him to “reevaluate” the borrower stress test that was implemented almost 2 years ago. It has been the subject of a lot of criticism in the recent past.

– Bank of Canada: Canada’s residential mortgage borrowers took out $38.46 billion in new funds in September, down 10.21% from a month before. However this works out to a massive 41.58% increase, compared to the same month last year.

– TransUnion Canada: 5.54% of consumers were 90 or more days past due on at least one non-mortgage credit product in the third quarter, compared with 5.25% in the same period in 2018. Increase is the largest since 2012 and comes after several years of declining delinquency rates.

 
Stay tuned for the next update!

For any questions and concerns please do not hesitate to call Harpreet Singh The Mortgage King at (416) 795-1919.