New-construction homebuyers’ preferences decidedly unsexy
Builders association finds brick, upstairs laundry, walk-in closets among Canadian wish-list items
Tim Bailey likes to joke that he’s always on the lookout for something sexy in the data he tracks on the preferences of Canadian new-construction homebuyers.
“Give me something to work with, consumers,” pleads Bailey, the division president of Avid Ratings, a market research company that has been surveying newconstruction homebuyers since 2014 for the Canadian Home Builders Association.
What the survey shows is that Canadians’ home-buying tastes are, well . . . quintessentially Canadian.
Forget home theatres and indoor swimming pools — it’s upstairs laundry, walk- in closets and stand-up showers that quicken our collective pulse.
Canadians still like a fireplace, but its desirability has cooled. In the age of open-concept, we have oddly been warming lately to formal living and dining rooms.
When it comes to home exteriors, there’s a marked preference for brick over vinyl siding, particularly in Ontario. But vinyl still has a place on the Prairies.
Single-car garages are trending up slightly, but double-car coverage continues to be the preference, although it’s our gear rather than our autos that typically take up that additional space, Bailey suggested.
“As Canadians, we tend to be — or at least we want to be — active. That brings with it a lot of gear like bicycles, snowboards, skis, stand-up paddleboards,” he said.
In-unit luxuries are more important than building amenities among condo-shopping, downsizing baby boomers, Bailey said.
“Psychologically, they’re ready to take a smaller footprint in life but they don’t want to sacrifice. They want the treats in the suite — the quartz, the granite, the custom glass showers,” he said.
Builders are seeing a slight uptick in the take-up for homes with two master suites.
“My theory is that culturally we’re more diverse than ever before so you’ll see more multi-generational families under the same roof. If you have a mom and dad still living with a son and daughter-in-law, you might want to have two master suites,” Bailey said.
The online survey, which contains about 200 questions, gives homebuilders of every housing category — from highrise condo, to suburban detached houses — a beat on the musthaves and the might-be-nice-if-wecan-afford-it features that buyers want.
The 2,775 survey respondents have purchased a home from one of 86 builder members Canadian Home Builders Association that commissions the survey. So the answers are based on experienced buyers’ preferences for a second or subsequent home, including 47.5 per cent who identified themselves as move-up buyers.
Three years of survey data isn’t enough to see a revolution in the country’s housing tastes, but there are signs some features are fading, as others are growing in popularity.
“Special-purpose rooms have fallen off the grid — the man caves, the wine cellars, the workshops, home theatres,” said Bailey, who attributes that to a space issue.
Most condos don’t have room for those specialty spaces.
Skylights, on the other hand, are trending up.
“That could be density. If we’re getting into more townhomes, you don’t have as much exterior wall to put windows on so you’ve got to find other ways to get brightness into your home,” he said.
The drive to density is a national phenomenon that means the Toronto region isn’t unique in building fewer single-family, detached houses, Bailey said.
“In Calgary, where they could sprawl forever, there are government initiatives that don’t let them . . . it’s about intensification. It’s not like they’re constrained by Lake Ontario or a mountain region, and yet they’re still having that drive to density there as well,” he said.
At the same time, the Canadian appetite for a house with a yard is growing.
The 2017 survey found 65.5 per cent of respondents want a single-family house, up from 55.7 per cent in 2015.
That desire for lowrise, single-family homes is impacting affordability in markets such as Toronto, Bailey said.
“There’s not a lot of product coming on stream. Again, desire and actuality don’t necessarily mingle,” he said.
But the study report notes that buyers are increasingly reluctant to save money by buying a smaller lot and — no surprise in the Toronto area — will commute farther for a more affordable home. About 91 per cent of newconstruction homes sold in October in the Toronto region (4,884 units) were condos or stacked town houses. Only 9 per cent were lowrise homes, including detached and semidetached houses and townhomes, according to the Building and Land Development Association.
When it comes to traditional ground-level homes, Canadians must be good neighbours, because they like their patch of paradise to be private.
Fences are considered a must-have item by 49.7 per cent of newconstruction buyers, and a further 28.2 per cent said that’s something they really want.
In the most recent research, 42 per cent of respondents were families with children; 37.9 per cent were singles or couples with no children. The respondents were almost evenly split among millennials (36.9 per cent) and Generation Xers (35.9 per cent) followed by baby boomers (23.7 per cent).
Those with household incomes of between $100,000 and $149,000, comprised 23.9 per cent of respondents, followed by 18.6 per cent who made less than $75,000 a year and 18 per cent with incomes of $75,000 to $99,000.
The findings are considered accurate within 2.45 per cent.