Missed Payments Show Up on Credit Cards and Lines of Credit Before the Mortgage: What CMHC’s Early-Warning Point Means for You

The order in which household budgets give way

Most people will skip a credit card minimum before they skip the mortgage. CMHC treats that as a feature of the data, not a flaw in people, and it uses it to read the early stages of stress.

In its fall 2026 Residential Mortgage Industry Report, CMHC says delinquencies on auto loans, credit cards and lines of credit have continued to rise. The reasoning is direct: households typically prioritize their mortgage payments over other debts, so rising non-mortgage delinquencies can be an early signal that financial strain is building before it appears fully in mortgage arrears. The report’s highlights say the same thing, that rising delinquency in these products may signal household stress before it shows up in the mortgage.

CMHC’s figures for the first quarter of 2026, drawn from Equifax Canada, show the share of balances 90 days or more behind in each product, with the fourth quarter of 2025 in brackets:

• Credit cards: 1.87% (1.80%)
• Auto loans: 2.46% (2.36%)
• Lines of credit: 1.02% (0.99%)
• Home equity lines of credit: 0.17% (0.16%)

Each has crept up, none sharply. Home equity lines, which are secured against the house, sit far below the unsecured products, which fits the same ordering: people protect the debts tied to their home.

The more reassuring reading

It would be a mistake to read that as a warning for everyone. CIBC Capital Markets economists Benjamin Tal and Katherine Judge published a report this week that, according to Canadian Mortgage Trends, found little evidence that mortgage stress is spreading into a broader deterioration of household credit. They wrote that “the credit quality position of Canadian households is surprising on the upside.” In their data, average credit scores are slightly higher than before the pandemic and have edged up over the past year, and 90-plus day delinquencies on credit cards and lines of credit held by mortgage borrowers have levelled off. They treat those unsecured measures as an early indicator of future mortgage performance, and note they are steady.

CIBC also reported that insolvency filings are up about 6% over the past year, though the overall insolvency level remains near its 2019 reading, and that consumer proposals accounted for 77% of filings, up from 60% in 2019. A consumer proposal is a formal arrangement to repay part of a debt over time instead of a bankruptcy.

Using the signal on your own finances

The useful thing about an early-warning order is that you can apply it to yourself. Ask which debts have started to feel hard to pay and whether any minimums have been getting missed or paid late. If the answer is yes for the cards or a credit line while the mortgage is still current, you are at the stage the data describes, and it is the stage where you have the most choices.

What is available depends on your lender, your file and your equity, but the common routes are worth knowing before you need them:

• Talk to your lender early. A lender that hears from you before a payment is missed generally has more it can discuss than one that hears after. Ask what options exist for your product.
• Look at your renewal date. A renewal is a natural point to restructure. See our explainers on switching lenders and extending an amortization at renewal, and what each does to the total you pay.
• Consider whether consolidating unsecured debt into the mortgage makes sense. It lowers the monthly outflow in some cases and raises the total interest paid over time in others. It involves qualifying again, and breaking a mortgage mid-term can carry a penalty. Our piece on when refinancing is the wrong move, and our Refinancing page, set out the trade-offs.
• Know the credit consequences. Missed payments are reported to the credit bureaus, and a lower score can limit what you qualify for later, including at renewal if you switch lenders.

None of this is a recommendation for any one household. It is a list of the questions a mortgage broker would walk through with you, and the earlier they are asked the more of them have answers.

Why it matters more in Ontario right now

CMHC expects mortgage delinquencies to rise in Ontario, British Columbia and Atlantic Canada through mid-2027, with Ontario recording the largest increase, and it flags the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area and southwestern Ontario as the places where trade tensions and weaker resale conditions leave stretched borrowers with fewer ways out. Our companion piece on CMHC’s Ontario findings covers that in detail. For a household in Waterloo Region, London or elsewhere in the southwest, the message is not alarm. It is that acting on a tight budget early is cheaper than acting late.