BCBusiness

JUNE 2017 BCBUSINESS 33 BCBUSINESS.CA $1,000,000 – $800,000 – $600,000 – $400,000 – $200,000 – -$200,000 – $0 – Real estate was by far the biggest chunk of B.C. households' $883,000 average net worth in 2015 Canada B.C. Alberta Saskatchewan Manitoba Ontario Quebec Atlantic Territories Liquid assets Real estate Employer pension plans Debt B.C. is the most notice- able example of Canada's eco- nomic extremes, says Peter Miron of Environics Analytics. Whole subsets of people in this province should feel prosperous but don't, courtesy of the real estate market. Other whole groups, who would be no more than mod- erately well off in any other time and place, are now cashing in a big pile of chips ++ B E W A R E T H E W E A L T H E F F E C T That's one group of Vancouverites. Then there are the others, the people who don't look or act or have a lifestyle that says "rich." And yet, by some standards, they are. Judy and Peter Sauer worked at unspectacular jobs their whole lives. Peter, now 72, did property management and maintenance. He doesn't have a company pension, just CPP and old age security. Judy, 62, worked in client services for insurance companies for 40 years. She has a company pen- sion, but not a huge one, and a small stream of money from family oil rights. But they bought their ›rst house, in Coquitlam, for $47,000 in 1980. Buying and selling several more times—including one downsizing to a town- house when Judy lost her job temporarily—they acquired their last Coquitlam house for $216,000 in 1997. This spring, they sold it for their asking price of $1.16 million and moved to a condo in New Westminster that cost only $448,000. That gives them a plump cushion to support their retirement. The Sauers are part of a phenomenon that makes B.C. residents look, on Environics Analytics spreadsheets anyway, like the wealthi- est group in Canada among a prosperous nation with ample real estate, pension and investment holdings. In fact, the company's latest WealthS- capes report dubbed Vancouver the nation's "›rst city of millionaires." "Overall, I think Canadians are extremely well o¢," says Peter Miron, Environics Analytics' Toronto-based vice-president for economic data. "We have a strong economy; we haven't experi- enced the big correction." B.C. is the most noticeable example of Canada's economic extremes, Miron says. Whole subsets of people in this province should feel prosperous but don't, courtesy of the real estate market. Other whole groups, who would be no more than moderately well o¢ in any other time and place, are now cashing in a big pile of chips. The Environics Analytics stats show that Canadians are relatively prosperous, but not always in the same way, depending on how the numbers are teased apart. People in B.C., and especially the Lower Main- land, look like the wealthiest in the country at ›rst glance. Households in the Vancouver region had average total assets of $1.25 million in 2016, according to Environics Analytics, which esti- mated last year's values based on statistics from 2015. That put the Vancouver region ahead of Toronto at $1.15 million, Calgary at $1.1 million and Ottawa at $900,000. And debt isn't a big factor. Even when the list is recalibrated to put cities in order of average household net worth, Vancouver still led in the 2016 report, with Toronto and Vic- toria following closely. (Calgary dropped behind, after the fallout from plummeting oil prices.) But once real estate is stripped out, the pic- ture isn't so rosy. Households in the Vancouver region have the lowest average income ($101,000 in Environics Analytics' 2016 report) among the six largest cities in Canada except for Montreal. Employer pension plan values here, at an aver- age of $110,000 per household in 2015 data, are also the lowest. And liquid assets in the region, at around $352,000, are a few hundred dollars P E R S O N A L F I N A N C E

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