Immigrants in Canada Gain Wealth through Real Estate

While the data shows that immigrant families accumulated more wealth between 1999 and 2016 than in previous years, it has also revealed that their focus on real estate means they have more mortgage debt than Canadian-born homeowners do. This could put immigrant families at higher risk if there were a future debt crisis. StatCan’s report, “The Wealth of Immigrant Families in Canada,” used data from the 1999, 2005, 2012, and 2016 Surveys of Financial Security (SFS) to look more closely at the wealth of the country’s immigrant families – an area that StatCan says has received relatively little attention in the past. Established immigrant families (major earner in the household is 45 to 64 years old and has been in Canada for at least 20 years) had an average net worth of $1.06 million in 2016, making them slightly wealthier than Canadian-born households, with an average net worth of $979,000. Note that a person’s net worth is made up of all their assets (including their house), minus debts.