Rising costs haven’t put dent in home ownership
Census shows 73% of people in region own their homes, same as in 1996
The level of home ownership in Kelowna has stayed constant over the past 20 years despite a steep increase in housing costs.
Seventy-three per cent of Central Okanagan residents live in a home they own, according to newly released information from the 2016 census. That’s the same percentage as in 1996.
However, the average monthly cost associated with home ownership last year was $1,345 compared to just $700 in 1996.
Renters account for 27 per cent of the population, three per cent higher than five years ago but in line with the percentages of renters in 1996 and 2001.
While overall home ownership levels have held constant, there’s been a shift in the type of properties people are buying, says the president of the Okanagan Mainline Real Estate Board.
“There’s still a huge appetite for single-family homes, as you can see with all the development in the Upper Mission, Wilden and in Lake Country,” Tanis Reid said Thursday.
“But there are a lot more strata developments, condos and townhouses than there used to be,” Reid said. “These projects are just everywhere now.”
From January through September, there were 3,686 listings for single-family homes in the Central Okanagan. During the same period, there were listings for 2,870 townhouses and condos.
The average price of a single-family home last month was $625,000 compared to $300,000 for a typical condo and $455,000 for a townhouse.
In 2000, a typical single-family home in Kelowna cost $180,000 and a strata unit cost $127,000.
In 2015, for the first time, construction of homes in multi-family developments exceeded the building of new single-family homes. That year, 59 per cent of all new homes were condos, townhomes or rental units compared to 40 per cent that were traditional single-family homes.
With developers responding to tax incentives offered by the city and a low vacancy rate, Kelowna has seen a flurry of new rental housing projects. Of the 2,500 permits for new housing units issued so far this year, half of them are in rental buildings.
But renting is not much cheaper than owning, the newly released data from Statistics Canada shows. The average monthly shelter cost for rental units in the greater Kelowna area last year was $1,184 compared to $1,345 for home ownership.