Homeownership not quite as elusive for young Canadians: CREA

The Canadian Real Estate Association says housing prices have fallen across Canada, but Gen Z is still unsure they can afford homes.

A new Royal Bank of Canada poll suggests home ownership remains a major goal for Canadians, but many younger people still see it as increasingly out of reach despite falling house prices in many parts of the country.

Released Tuesday, the poll found 68 per cent of Canadians say they have always dreamed of buying a home but only 32 per cent expect to purchase a condo or home within the next two years.

At the same time, 44 per cent said thinking about whether they can afford to buy a home is constantly on their mind, and 46 per cent said there is too much pressure to buy a home today.

For Kaitlyn Cuenca Sandoval, a nursing student at Mount Royal University in Calgary, the idea of owning a home one day still feels more like a hope than a plan.

“The chances that you’re going to be able to build up enough wealth during your youth, to even (save up) for a down payment is quite low,” Cuenca Sandoval told CTV News.

Brad Evjen, a senior mortgage specialist with RBC, said many first-time buyers are being held back not only by affordability concerns, but by uncertainty about where to begin.

“It’s very telling that people are so nervous about the financial circumstances (and) the economy that they just they don’t even have the initial conversation to see where they stand,” he said.

Evjen said many prospective buyers may be more capable of entering the market than they think.

“As dire as some of the news is, as some of the stats are, there are opportunities in this market that were not possible two years ago,” he said.

The Canadian Real Estate Association says national housing activity slowed in January and February.

“We have a forecast that’s calling for sort of a transition this year away from population growth driven hot markets in the prairies and in Quebec and in the East Coast,” said CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart.

At the same time, the CREA expects first-time buyers to pick up some of the slack in the market later this year as some markets cool and others stabilize.

“Our forecast is for first-time home buyer demand to contribute disproportionately to the market this year,” Cathcart said.

In Calgary, Truman Homes says it is trying to help renters bridge the gap to ownership through a rent-to-own program.

“We are giving the opportunity for our renters to use the rent that they’ve accumulated over at least two year term and to put that towards credits as a down payment at one of our Truman properties within the city,” said digital marketing manger Abby Woitas.

Woitas said the program reflects the challenges many renters face trying to save while paying rising housing costs.

“It is hard for a lot of people who are renting to get approved for a down payment,” Woitas said. “This is a great way for people to be able to do that while still contributing,”

Still, for students like Cuenca Sandoval, the dream of owning a home remains uncertain.

“I do want to own a home one day,” she said. “It’s going to be quite difficult.”

The RBC poll was conducted online by Leger between Jan. 7 and Jan. 25, questioning 1,719 Canadians aged 18 to 64. Because it was based on a nonprobability web panel sample, no margin of error can be assigned.

For comparison, a probability sample of that size would carry a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.