When paying your mortgage doesn’t reduce your loan

Since the Bank of Canada started hiking its benchmark interest rate just over a year ago, there’s a growing number of mortgage-holders with monthly payments that no longer cover the principal or even the interest portion of their loan.

Rachelle Younglai covers real estate for The Globe and she recently reported that at CIBC, 20 per cent of mortgage-holders are seeing their loan balances grow instead of shrink. This represents $52-billion worth of mortgages. CIBC isn’t the only bank in this situation but it’s the only one that’s disclosing this information.

Rachelle is on the show to explain why this might be a cause for concern and what mortgage-holders should be thinking about.

Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at thedecibel@globeandmail.com