Number of Toronto homeowners who have missed mortgage payments has quadrupled in three years, new report states

Man and woman hand consider on calculator expenses of family budget against home background. Lending purchase rental housing mortgage concept

The number of homeowners in Toronto struggling to pay their mortgage each month has more than quadrupled over the past three years, a new report has found.

The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation published its report on Thursday. CMHC said that while there has been a rise in homeowners across the country missing their mortgage payments for 90 days or more, the problem is most apparent in the Greater Toronto Area.

The report showed that 2,797 mortgage consumers in the Greater Toronto Area were in arrears in the third quarter of 2025 compared to 662 mortgage consumers in the same time period in 2022.

It should be noted that the overall mortgage delinquency rate in the GTA remains relatively low at 0.26 per cent.

“We’ve been seeing mortgage arrears increase quite steadily for the last two to almost three years, but that increase is steadily being driven by the Toronto market,” Tania Bourassa-Ochoa, deputy chief economist at CMHC, said.

Using data from the Equifax, the CHMC’s report states that mortgage arrear rates are expected to keep rising modestly across the country into 2026, and places like Toronto and Vancouver are expected to be the hardest hit.

Approximately 2.2 million mortgages, representing 45 per cent of all outstanding mortgages in Canada, renewed in either 2024 or 2025 with many of those homeowners facing higher payments than what they had under pandemic-era interest rates from 2020 and 2021.

Arrears rates across the country remain historically low despite the recent increases, but the rate of growth has been faster than expected, the report stated, adding that arrear rates reached unprecedented lows in 2022 partially due to pandemic-period supports.

The current challenges fueling the payment delinquencies include issues like rising household debt, declining home prices and slower sales, unemployment and higher living costs.

“We know that when we look at mortgage arrears, that the main driver, historically speaking, of mortgage arrears is unemployment,” Bourassa-Ochoa said. “If you lose your job, if the household loses an important loss in income then it could translate to mortgage arrears down the road.”

“If we see an important economic shock. If we see massive job loses across the region that could result in an acceleration even deeper or even stronger than what we are seeing right now.”

Housing prices and sales in the GTA continued to fall in January with the average selling price for a home in Toronto dipping below the $1-million mark for the first time since 2021, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board.

“While arrears remain low, they’re projected to continue rising over the next year,” the report states. “The acceleration in mortgage arrears in Toronto is being driven by several interconnected pressures, alongside the reset of mortgage rates for many homeowners.”

In other parts of the country, the report states there is more stability. In Montreal, delinquency risk remains stable, the report states, while Ottawa, Winnipeg and Halifax are seeing smaller increase in arrears.

The report also found that certain borrower groups across regions are shower greater signs of financial pressure. Groups that are facing the strongest financial pressures are those who took on large debt levels relative to their income, first-time buyers and other homebuyers with limited equity and households that purchased at peak prices with historically low interest rates, otherwise known as pandemic-era buyers.

“Wherever you are in Canada, first-time homebuyers that bought during the pandemic era or just after that, so meaning high prices and low interest rates, those groups are at most risk,” Bourassa-Ochoa said.

“Those groups are showing a more rapid increase in mortgage arrears and these first-time home buyers were very prevalent in the GTA area.”