Quote:
Originally Posted by craneSpotter
well Calgary seems to gave the highest non-mortgage debt levels and Montreal the lowest - out of major cities.
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It makes sense to correct for income here, and Calgary has higher incomes than average (maybe that is slipping now). Vancouver is around average or lower, so the debt load on households there might be more onerous. If you make $50k a year, $20k in debt is huge, but if you make $200k it's not a big deal. I am surprised though by how little variation there is from city to city.
In Vancouver I suspect the mortgage debt is a bigger issue than the non-mortgage debt. You also might qualify for less other credit if you've got a big mortgage. I've never seen numbers for the amount of mortgage debt actually carried by households in Vancouver, however, so this is all just my conjecture. A lot of people living in very expensive houses inherited them or bought them back when they were cheaper.