First-time Home Buyer
Q&A with Minister Sean Fraser
Mediaplanet sat down with the Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities to discuss Canada's housing crisis, outlining government initiatives that can ease the first-time home buying process. How does the government plan to collaborate with real estate stakeholders and developers to encourage the creation of affordable housing options tailored to the needs of first-time buyers?
The housing crisis is impacting Canadians in every region of the country, and has a unique impact on those seeking to buy a home for the first time. The rising cost of buying a home has created a generational wealth gap between those who got into the market years ago, and benefitted from the extraordinary growth in their home’s value, and those who are not able to save for a downpayment, not just because they are unemployed or because they come from a low-income household, but because the price of a new home in markets across Canada is out of reach for many middle class families who don’t have significant financial support from their parents.
We can overcome this phenomenon, and my engagement with the sector tells me that we, as a society, know how.
Canada faces a shortage in housing supply. We need to build homes, and we need to build them by the millions. In order to remedy the supply gap, we must implement measures to reduce the cost of home building, including tax measures and low-cost financing programs that incentivize home construction.
Second, we must help change the way cities build homes by incentivizing faster municipal permitting processes, and encouraging more density where infrastructure, services, and opportunities already exist.
Third, we need to embrace a new way of building homes by encouraging workforce development in home building and increasing the manufacturing of factory-built homes.
Fourth, we must directly fund the construction of more affordable housing for low-income Canadians who cannot afford a place to live in the market.
Fifth, we should embrace opportunities to help first-time home buyers save for their first home through measures that make it easier to save for that downpayment.
Finally, we need to target challenges in the sector that have caused investors and at times, bad actors, to buy up properties that are not being used to provide homes for families, including short-term rentals, mortgage fraud, and other challenges that have artificially restricted supply that exists but is not available in the market.
Though not all of these measures explicitly target first-time buyers, we know that growing the supply for buyers, renters, and low-income families will help ease pricing pressures in the market, and supporting a new generation of home-buyers through targeted incentives will ensure those who missed out on home ownership because of the generation they were born into have a fair shot at owning a home if they choose.
We need to build homes, and we need to build them by the millions.