Builders taking on more debt as some in residential sector struggle

New Bank of Canada data show that Canada’s chartered banks doubled the debt they have extended to real estate developers and builders in the last year, raising outstanding loan commitments to an unprecedented $85-billion.

The data reflect the financial standing from the first quarter of 2025, and the largest growth area of new lending comes from a subcategory called “interim construction lending” that rose to $32.9-billion, up 383 per cent from $6.8-billion in the same quarter in 2024. Interim lending spiked to $25-billion in the second quarter of 2024 and has been above $30-billion for three quarters now. The latest number is the highest ever recorded by the Bank of Canada (which began tracking interim lending in 1994), and is more than double the previous record of $16.2-billion in the second quarter of 2022.