![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.livabl.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/canadian-house-poor.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nPhoto: Kurt Bauschardt\/Flickr<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n A quarter of Canadian homeowners are \u201chouse poor,\u201d a new RBC-commissioned Ipsos survey suggests.<\/p>\n \u201cHouse poor refers to Canadians who overextend themselves and spend an unusually large proportion of their total income (roughly 30\u201340% or more) on home ownership,\u201d an RBC news release<\/a> highlighting the survey results explains.<\/p>\n Mortgage payments, repairs, property taxes and utilities can all contribute to house poorness.<\/p>\n\n A larger 39 percent of respondents to the survey of 2,224 Canadians aged 18 and up indicate they have been house poor at one point or another.<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t surprise me,\u201d Nicole Wells, vice president, home equity finance with RBC, tells Livabl.<\/p>\n Although this survey, which is completed annually, marks the first time RBC has questioned Canadians on house poorness like this, Wells suspects the share of house poor homeowners has remained \u201crelatively stable.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you start to buy a home, it\u2019s kind of a rite of passage. You start to adjust your lifestyle,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n For homebuyers who don\u2019t want to end up in a house-poor situation \u2014 like the 51 percent of respondents who say they won\u2019t put themselves in that position \u2014 Wells has some advice.<\/p>\n \u201cI like to say, \u2018Test-drive your budget,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cSo when you\u2019re thinking about buying a home, maybe you want to spend a couple months living at what that budget would look like, right, and then figuring out if that\u2019s something that\u2019s comfortable for you,\u201d Wells says.<\/p>\n