Alberta Sees Spike in Mortgage Arrears – Should We Turn Out the Lights?

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Once again, it looks like it’s all over, Alberta blew another boom. With news like this is there any hope for the millions of people who call Alberta home?  Before we all get too carried away (and especially if you don’t know I am a sarcastic individual at the best of times), maybe we need to look a bit closer at this spike.

Statistically the spike was indeed huge, mortgages in arrears have increased, in fact they have more than doubled which is not good. They have increased from 0.20% all the way to 0.45% of the total number of mortgages out there. In case you missed it, there was a decimal point before the numbers. We have gone from one fifth of a percent of all mortgages being in arrears to just under one half of a percent.

So using a different way to explain this what it means is we have gone from one person out of every 500 with mortgages falling behind to a situation where just less than two people with mortgages out of 200 is falling behind. Let me try spinning it this way, we have gone from a point in May of 2007 where 99.86% of people were current with their mortgage to a point now where only 99.55% are able to.

On the serious side, it is incredibly unfortunate when anyone loses their home and in the past we have helped people to avoid foreclosure. The majority of those properties we dealt with had little to do with unemployment and loss of equity in properties which are creating a whole new set of families falling behind. It is not a good position to be in and the numbers will probably continue to increase over the next year. We just have to put it into perspective that it is not even remotely similar here to many areas in the US and we still have more upside in the near future than most other provinces.

When you do read some of these doom and gloom headlines don’t get dragged into the gloom, instead look into the numbers and see if it really is that bad.