Home ownership rates take historic dip

OTTAWA — Not everyone wants to own a home these days, Evan Siddall concedes — not even his own millennial-age son. For the head of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., that’s really saying something.

But Siddall’s experience is far from uncommon, the latest census figures show: 30-year-old Canadians are less likely to own a home today than their baby boomer parents were at the same age, mirroring a modest but unmistakable decline in the national home ownership rate.

At age 30, 50.2 per cent of millennials owned their homes, compared to 55 per cent of baby boomers at the same age. Young adults today are more likely to live in apartments than their 1981 counterparts, are less likely to live in singledetached homes, and more likely than ever before to still be living with their parents. The figures should change the way Canada thinks about its real estate sector, said Graham Haines, research and policy manager at the Ryerson City Building Institute in Toronto. Policy-makers have focused almost exclusively on policies to promote home ownership over the last 20plus years, he said, pointing to tax policy and incentives. “We have to start thinking about — if rent is going to start becoming a more important part of our real estate sector once again — how we make sure we’re building the right type of rental, rental where we need it and rental that’s affordable for the people who are going to be using it,” Haines said.