I was just reviewing some past news articles this morning and stumbled across a story for October last year I thought needed some reflection. The story was about a recent report from TD Canada Trust called the Boomer Buyer’s Report.
They completed an online survey and found that almost 60% of baby boomers (baby boomers were classified as people born between 1946 and 1964) are mortgage free. The national average is only 44%. On the other side of the coin, one in ten Albertan baby boomers had paid less than 25% of their mortgage!
Now baby boomers do not make up the entire population and the report also doesn’t include what percentage of total home ownership this makes up in the province, but it does indicate that there is a considerable amount of equity in property. This equity is far less volatile than the equity found in many of the foreclosure properties which may actually have negative equity.
You can think of this as a stabilizing agent for the market which counterbalances the foreclosure situations. Couple this with the increase in spending currently going on in the energy industries this year, the increase in oil prices and the overall stability of the province and it is all pointing to a banner year for our economy.
