Why Rising Mortgage Rates Threaten Canada’s Banks
Wolf Richter with Jim Goddard on This Week in Money:
Interest rates will continue to rise in the US and Canada. In both countries, potential buyers face affordability issues, which puts a damper on demand. But in Canada, variable-rate and adjustable-rate mortgages dominate (while ARMs are only 6% of all mortgage originations in the US), and currenthomeowners have to struggle with rising monthly payments of homes they bought at inflated prices. This has already started to happen. Here’s my take:
Home-equity-loan balances in Canada per capita are now 3.3 times what they were in the US during HELOC peak before it all collapsed. Read… HELOCs in the US & Canada: As “Scarred” Americans Learned Bitter Lesson, Canadians Went Nuts