Reuters

A key mea­sure of house­hold debt in Canada declined slightly in the fourth quar­ter of 2011 from a record high in the third, Sta­tis­tics Canada said on Thurs­day, revers­ing a trend that has alarmed pol­icy mak­ers in Ottawa.

House­hold credit mar­ket debt, which includes mort­gages, con­sumer credit and loans, fell to 150.6% of income from 151.9% in the third quarter.

Cana­di­ans con­tin­ued to increase their debt load in the period to $1.60-trillion from $1.58-trillion in the pre­vi­ous quar­ter, but their per­sonal dis­pos­able income grew at a faster pace, Statscan said.

Many con­sumers have taken advan­tage of extra­or­di­nar­ily low inter­est rates to take out mort­gages at a time of high hous­ing prices, mak­ing them vul­ner­a­ble to bank­ruptcy in the case of a sud­den down­turn in the real estate mar­ket or rate increases.

Finance Min­is­ter Jim Fla­herty and Bank of Canada Gov­er­nor Mark Car­ney have both warned repeat­edly against increas­ing debt lev­els, and many ana­lysts believe the gov­ern­ment will soon inter­vene to tighten mort­gage rules.

National net worth increased in the fourth quar­ter by 0.8% to $6.6-trillion due to higher non-financial assets and house­hold net worth per capita increased to $182,100 from $180,600.

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Con­tact the Jef­frey Team for more infor­ma­tion – 416−388−1960

Lau­rin & Natalie Jef­frey are Toronto Real­tors with Cen­tury 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these arti­cles, they just repro­duce them here for peo­ple
who are inter­ested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
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