Younger Canadian families swallow the national trend and reduce their general mortgage debts. Mount numbers from Statistics Canada, but the decline may not be all good news.
After a top value in the third quarter of 2022, the average mortgage credit among families in which the main income earner is 35 years or younger have decreased by around $ 15,500. This emerges from a report on Tuesday of Toronto-Dominion Bank, citing data from Statistics Canada.
Even the seasonal variation is made, when comparing the first quarter of 2023, there was a decline of 8.5 percent (or about 10,400 US lessons) with the first quarter of 2025, said Maria Solovieva, TD economist and author of the report.
All other age groups have recorded a steady increase in the mortgage debt of households since the second quarter of 2020, as the data from Statistics Canada show.
It is likely that many younger households cannot access the real estate market due to affordability problems, said Solovieva.
After the real estate prices reached its peak in March 2022 after the Bank of Canada increased the interest rates under lower interest rates during the Covid 19 pandemic, interest rates began to increase and the turnover of homes began to give way. Solovieva said that younger Canadians have reduced their debt obligations in view of the rising loan costs.
According to Statistics Canadas 2024 Canadian social survey by Statistics Canada, around 35 percent of young adults will probably rent compared to less than a quarter of older age groups.
There can also be other reasons for the decline in mortgage credit in young people. It is possible that some younger Canadians buy cheaper houses or own their houses directly, especially if they have received financial gifts from their parents, said Solovieva.
Since the total value of real estate assets for younger Canadians has grown since the third quarter of 2022, this suggests that more people in this age group receive financial aid to buy houses than those who may buy cheaper houses, said Solovieva.
In the meantime, older Canadians accept more debts, although there is no sign that they accept more investment properties or renovation work to take this into account, she said.
In fact, Statistics Canada recently reported that households aged 55 to 64 increased their mortgage credit by more than eight percent from the first quarter of 2024 to the same period in 2025, while those and older people increased their mortgage.
Older Canadians are expected to pass on 1 trillion US dollar to their heirs in the next few years, as the latest data from the Canadian auditors from Chartered Professional Canada cause. Many asset advisors have reported that these asset transfer arrives in the form of early inheritance. In most cases to buy adult children their first houses.
In a report by the Bank of Canada 2024, more than 20 percent of the first -time buyers of their own homes was also given gifts to make their down payments. Younger first buyers of home buyers received more gifts when buying their houses.
This could exacerbate an existing trend, said Solovieva. The data show that young households with the lowest incomes have seen their ratio of 244 percent income from pandemic to 446 percent in the first quarter of 2025.
“A lot of assets are built by real estate, (so) someone who is not on the market is left out,” said Solovieva and found that existing homeowners have largely benefited from increasing real estate values over time. “Basically, it continues as long as we still have this dynamic of unknown.”
Solovieva does not expect this trend to take to take mortgage money completely in the near future, but expects it to decrease with a falling level of immigration, which could cool down the growth of real estate prices.
The latest report by the Canadian Real Estate Association showed that the national average sales price had dropped by 1.3 percent compared to the previous year to reach $ 691,643 in June.
• e -Mail: slouis@postmedia.com