Household credit soars
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Simon Avery, The Globe and Mail
October 06, 2009
Household credit is defying gravity in Canada, expanding by more than 7 percent year-over-year, a new analysis says.
"On an inflation adjusted basis, credit is rising at the fastest rate seen in any economic recession in the post-war era," Benjamin Tal, senior economist with CIBC World Markets, wrote in report published Tuesday.
The main driver is low interest rates. Even as Canadians added $44 billion to their total debt in the first half of the year, interest payments fell by $3 billion. In fact, interest payments as a share of disposable income now stand at 7.7 percent, the lowest rate since 2006 and significantly below the more than 10 percent during the 1991 recession, Tal said.
"This in a nut shell is the reason for the strong rebound in real estate activities in the Canadian mortgage market."
The bad news is that mortgage arrears are rising. The figure has reached 0.42 percent, up from a record low of 0.24 percent in mid 2007. CIBC expects the rate to continue to climb over the next six to 12 months.
Canadians have been tapping into personal lines of credit with greater frequency, increasing the overall size of this kind of debt by 20 percent. At the same time, the number of these loans in arrears is also rising, Tal said.
Growth in credit card use is soft and will likely continue to be so for the next six months, as this type of debt is both highly cyclical and a barometer of consumer sentiment. Bad credit card debt is at 1.2 percent, 30-percent above the level seen in early 2008, he said.
On the whole, overall household debt increased by 3.4 percent while personal disposable income declined by 0.2 percent, resulting in a higher debt-to-income ratio. Household debt is now 140 percent of income, up from 131 percent a year earlier. This figure is moving in the opposite direction than in the United States, where the ratio has fallen for the last two quarter, Tal said.
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