Edmonton Journal

Homeowners­hip slips despite increase in household incomes

- SHANTAÉ CAMPBELL

Canada's homeowners­hip rate has declined to 66.5 per cent after peaking in 2011 at 69 per cent, Statistics Canada said, acknowledg­ing people are having a hard time getting off the sidelines.

“Trying to figure out the right time to buy is a difficult decision that can leave Canadians wondering how long they want to hold out on entering the real estate market — or whether they even want to,” the agency said in latest census release Wednesday.

While the slowdown in home starts and sales continues, home prices had previously increased to such levels that even a major correction may not be enough for most Canadians to enter the market given current interest rates.

Adults under the age of 75, especially young millennial­s aged 25 to 29 years, were less likely to own their home in 2021 than a decade earlier, Statistics Canada said in its report, Portrait of Housing in Canada 2011-21.

Meanwhile, the growth in renter households has more than doubled the growth of owner households. The agency said renter households grew 21 per cent between 2011 and 2021 compared to the homeowners­hip growth rate of 8.4 per cent.

Housing is still at its most unaffordab­le level in 30 years — since the height of the housing bubble in the 1980s and the 1990s — according to recent reports by the National Bank of Canada and Royal Bank of Canada.

Still, Statistics Canada said the number of households that spent more than 30 per cent of their income on housing declined to 20.9 per cent in 2021 from 24 per cent in 2016.

The rate of unaffordab­le housing for renters fell to 33.2 per cent from 40 per cent during the same time frame, with most of the decline occurring among renters earning below the median renter household income (68.4 per cent in 2016, compared with 56 per cent in 2021).

According to Statistics Canada, Canadians found housing more affordable in 2021 because they had higher incomes, in large part due to pandemic support programs.

Even with the broad-based increases in wages and salaries, income inequality increased in the first quarter of 2022 compared to the same quarter a year earlier, according to the latest Distributi­ons of Household Economic Accounts estimates.

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