What the February 2026 TD–Leger Poll Signals for Households Heading Into the Renewal Wave
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A new TD Bank Group survey puts hard numbers behind what many Canadian households have been feeling for months. Two-thirds of homeowners are uneasy about their upcoming mortgage renewal. More than half plan to cut spending to absorb the shock. Four in ten say they will lean on savings to make it work. The release, published April 8, 2026 and based on a nationally representative poll of 1,502 Canadian adults conducted by Leger Opinion in February, is one of the clearest reads yet on how the 2026 renewal wave is reshaping day-to-day household behaviour across the country.
The story is not only about anxiety. It is about timing, preparation, and the choices borrowers are already making before their renewal paperwork arrives. A clear majority plan to lock into a fixed rate. Four in ten intend to shop around for a new lender. Only nine percent plan to start the conversation early. That last number is the one worth watching — it is where stated concern and planned action diverge most sharply.
For Homeowner.ca readers, this piece is an explainer, not advice. What follows is a plain-language walk through what the survey measured, how it fits into the broader 2026 renewal picture, and which concepts readers should have straight as the story develops through the year.
The TD survey was conducted through the Leger Opinion online panel throughout February 2026, with a final weighted sample of 1,502 Canadian adults. Results were weighted by age, gender, and region to match the Canadian population. For comparison purposes, TD reports a margin of error equivalent to ±2.5 percentage points, nineteen times out of twenty. That is a methodologically standard, nationally representative read — not a niche sentiment poll. At that scale, the headline figures are not a blip. They are a snapshot of how Canadian homeowners are actually thinking about their renewals in the weeks leading into the heaviest renewal year of the cycle.
The core findings, published directly by TD Bank Group, cluster around two stories running in parallel: homeowners bracing for renewal, and prospective buyers quietly preparing to enter the market. On the renewal side, the behavioural signal is unambiguous.
On the prospective-buyer side, the signal is more nuanced. Three in ten say they are now more likely to purchase a home before the end of the year, citing lower home prices (50%) and stabilizing interest rates (35%) as their top motivators. Three-quarters are actively saving each month toward a down payment. Nearly half expect to put less than 20% down — which, in Canada, means a high-ratio mortgage that requires default insurance. About a quarter are weighing alternative living arrangements such as co-living or multi-generational setups to make the numbers work.
The anxiety in the data is not abstract. It is attached to a large, scheduled wave of mortgages coming up for renewal over a compressed window. According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's Residential Mortgage Industry Report, roughly 1.15 million Canadian mortgages are scheduled to renew in 2026, with another 940,000 queued up for 2027. Many of those borrowers originally signed their mortgages during the 2020–2021 period, when five-year fixed rates sat near historic lows.
The gap between original rate and renewal rate is the mechanical source of the payment shock. CMHC data shows the average rate on a five-year fixed uninsured mortgage moved from 2.36% in July 2020 to 3.95% in July 2025 — a 67% increase in the rate itself, separate from any change in principal balance or amortization. Bank of Canada research summarized by trade media suggests borrowers renewing in 2025 or 2026 from a five-year fixed are looking at average payment increases in the order of 15% to 20% relative to their late-2024 payments. That is the objective pressure behind the subjective stress the survey is capturing.
The central bank backdrop has not made the trade-off any simpler. On March 18, 2026, the Bank of Canada held its policy rate at 2.25% for a third straight meeting, with headline inflation at 1.8% in February but energy prices cited as an upside risk. Policy rates have come well off their mid-cycle peaks, but they remain substantially higher than the levels that applied when most renewing mortgages were first written. A held rate is not a low rate. For someone stepping out of a 2.36% fixed term, the 2026 rate environment is still a material step up.
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce's Business Data Lab, drawing on RBC research, has estimated that nearly 60% of all outstanding Canadian mortgages — about $900 billion in principal — will renew across 2024, 2025, and 2026, with the single largest tranche falling in 2026 itself. The TD survey is, in effect, a real-time read of how that tranche is preparing.
The single most revealing figure in the TD release is the gap between intent and timing. Forty percent of homeowners plan to shop around for a new lender. Only nine percent plan to start the conversation earlier than usual. Concern is high. Preparation is low. That is the piece of the story worth pausing on.
Federal regulators frame renewal timing quite differently from how most homeowners approach it. The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada sets out the ground rules clearly: when a mortgage term ends, borrowers must either pay off the remaining balance or renew; federally regulated lenders must send a renewal statement at least 21 days before the end of the existing term; and borrowers are explicitly not obligated to renew with their current lender. FCAC's guidance to Canadians is to begin shopping around "a few months before the end of your term" rather than waiting for the renewal letter to arrive. Measured against that benchmark, the TD survey's 9% figure looks less like caution and more like inertia.
Patrick Smith, vice-president of real estate secured lending at TD, framed it in similar terms in the release: "Mortgage renewal can feel overwhelming and Canadians appear to be feeling that pressure. In an evolving rate environment, understanding your options and planning ahead through earlier renewal conversations can help Canadians feel more confident, make clearer choices and stay in control of what comes next." The underlying point is structural: when a renewing borrower engages their current lender and at least one alternative several months out, they give themselves time to compare product structures, negotiate, and respond to rate moves. When they engage only after the statutory 21-day notice lands, most of that optionality is already gone.
The 40% shopping-around figure is the practical hook. It tells us that a substantial minority of renewing borrowers are open to switching lenders — which implies a substantial minority are open to a negotiated outcome. The 9% figure tells us that most of those same borrowers are not yet building in the lead time to do that well.
Sixty-four percent of surveyed homeowners plan to renew into a fixed-rate mortgage. Roughly half of that group is choosing a five-year term, and about a sixth is choosing a three-year. That tilt toward fixed and toward medium-term terms says something specific about where borrower psychology sits right now, but it only means something if the definitions are clean.
FCAC's consumer explainer on mortgage interest rates lays out the two structures neutrally. A fixed-rate mortgage keeps the same interest rate — and therefore the same principal-and-interest payment — for the entire term. A variable-rate mortgage moves with the lender's prime rate over the term, so the payment (or the composition of the payment) can change as conditions shift. FCAC also flags a specific risk on variable-rate mortgages with fixed payments: when rates rise, a larger share of each payment goes to interest, and in extreme cases none of the payment goes to principal — which can leave the outstanding balance higher than the original schedule implied.
Against that backdrop, the survey's skew toward fixed reads less like a view on where rates are going and more like a preference for predictability. Borrowers stepping out of rising-rate territory are not trying to time a bottom. They are trying to buy certainty on their monthly budget for three or five years. The three-year term's popularity — 17% of respondents — suggests some of them want that certainty without committing to five years of the current rate environment. Both choices are defensible. Neither requires a rate forecast. Our related coverage on the Bank of Canada's decision to hold rates at 2.25% gives the macro context sitting behind that preference.
The 56% planning to cut household spending is the most quoted figure in the survey. It is also the figure most likely to show up in home-related ways over the next twelve to twenty-four months.
Discretionary spending is typically the first thing that comes off the table when a renewal payment steps up. Eating out, travel, and subscriptions are the obvious cuts. Less obvious — and more consequential for a house — is the category of deferred maintenance. When a household tightens, the leaky eavestrough gets another season. The aging roof waits another year. The HVAC service gets pushed. None of those individually is catastrophic. Collectively, over a multi-year window, they can compound into larger repair bills and, in some cases, insurance complications. The survey does not measure this directly, but the behavioural logic is straightforward: when 56% of homeowners are cutting spending, a meaningful share of that cutting will show up as maintenance and renovation projects that get postponed rather than cancelled.
That has a secondary implication for the home-equity products homeowners may eventually turn to. FCAC research on home equity lines of credit — based on a survey of roughly 4,800 Canadians — found that most respondents scored below 50% on basic HELOC terms and conditions, that more than a quarter routinely made interest-only payments, and that 19% of HELOC users ended up borrowing more than they had originally intended. FCAC also flagged that HELOCs are now the largest contributor to non-mortgage consumer debt in Canada, more than double credit cards or auto loans combined.
The TD survey echoes the awareness gap from a different angle. Nearly half of Canadians polled (47%) said they are not familiar with HELOCs. Among prospective buyers, the share rises to 58%. If spending cuts this year lead to deferred maintenance that eventually gets financed through a home-equity product a year or two from now, those awareness gaps become an operational issue for the household, not a trivia question. Our deeper primer on HELOC limits, rates, and risks and the comparison between HELOC, home equity loan, and refinance walks through how these products actually work before a homeowner signs on.
The behavioural chain is worth tracking as its own indicator: renewal payment shock → discretionary cuts → deferred home maintenance → later-cycle home-equity borrowing. Each link is measurable. Collectively, they are the way a rate cycle passes through a single house.
The TD–Leger poll is a February 2026 snapshot. The renewal wave it describes runs through the rest of this year and well into next. A few data points are worth flagging for readers following the thread.
The first is the renewal calendar itself. The roughly 1.15 million mortgages renewing in 2026 are not distributed evenly through the year, and CMHC's next Residential Mortgage Industry Report will update both the volume and the weighted-average renewal rate. The second is the Bank of Canada's rate path. The central bank's next scheduled decision will either reinforce the current preference for five-year fixed terms or shift it. The third is the early-action gap. If survey readings later this year show the "start early" figure moving meaningfully above 9%, it will be an indication that regulator guidance — and the arithmetic of shopping around — is reaching borrowers. If it stays pinned at single digits, the gap between anxiety and preparation will continue to widen.
There is also a useful counter-indicator in adjacent research. TD Economics' recent analysis, summarized in our coverage of the 2026 renewal payment shock easing from 10% to 6%, suggests the average payment increase facing renewing borrowers is smaller than it was in 2025. That softer arithmetic sits alongside the survey's high anxiety reading — a reminder that household sentiment and household math do not always move in lockstep. For now, the TD survey's clearest contribution is not a prediction. It is a snapshot of how much planning, comparison, and lead time Canadian homeowners still have in front of them as renewal paperwork begins to arrive.
