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So, let’s forget all the old Surrey jokes. Anyone who has stepped off the SkyTrain at Surrey City Centre knows that those are outdated stereotypes.

As a stand-alone city, Surrey is Canada’s 12th largest with 517,887 people. Vancouver is eighth with 631,486.

You probably already knew that. But here’s what you may not know:

As a bedroom community, Surrey was home to tradespeople, service-industry workers, minimum-wage earners, and many new immigrants made it their first home. That last part is still true. The greatest percentage of the region’s immigrants end up there.

But the rest of that is no longer true.

In the last 20 years, there have been triple-digit increases in the number of residents with high school diplomas and university degrees. High school graduates increased 307 per cent, while residents with bachelors, masters and PhDs rose 287 per cent.

The number of tradespeople and others with non-university post-secondary training has also increased by 47 per cent, and they continue to outnumber those with university education — 143,195 compared to 90,690 university grads.

Better education translates into higher wages. Surrey’s median household income is $77,494 and is $12,000 higher than Vancouver’s and nearly $5,000 higher than the Metro average.

That doesn’t mean housing affordability is not an issue. But the affordability gap is not as great as in other Metro municipalities, meaning that if there were a massive correction due to interest rates rising, fewer people are likely to be at risk of defaulting on mortgages.