Canadian home ownership highest since 1971

OTTAWA, June 4 (UPI) -- Home ownership in Canada reached 8.5 million in 2006, the highest since 1971, the Statistics Canada agency reported Wednesday.

Analyzing census data, the agency also said the proportion of Canadian households that rented their home slipped to 31.2 percent in 2006, or about 3.9 million households.

As for the country's recommended practice of spending no more than 30 percent of income on housing, StatsCan said an estimated 3.0 million households, or 24.9 percent of the total, spent 30 percent or more of their income on shelter, up slightly from 2001. Among homeowners with mortgages, the proportion was 25.7 percent, up from 23.6 percent in 2001.

Apart from farms, the median selling price Canadian homeowners saw for their properties rose from $134,240 in 2001 to $200,474 in 2006, a 49.3 percent increase, compared with a rise in the Consumer Price Index of 11.3 percent during the same period, the report said.