For most Canadians, home ownership is just a dream

Skyrocketing housing prices have turned home ownership into a pipe dream for most Canadians.

According to Manulife Bank’s biannual debt survey, 75% of adults in Canada who want to own a home said they can’t afford one. Seventy-one per cent of respondents who don’t own a home said they were worried about saving for one.

The survey found that most Canadians may have to move to another city if they want to own a home: 67% of respondents said they were worried about housing prices in their local communities.

Surging housing prices in Canada’s major cities have caught the attention of the federal government.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government would offer cities federal resources to address red-hot housing. The Liberals proposed billions to boost the supply of affordable housing in the federal budget.

Another way to make housing more affordable is to use money that isn’t yours for a down payment. According to the Manulife survey, 33% of homeowners admitted they paid a visit to the Bank of Mom and Dad for help.

“With the housing market pricing many Canadians out of the market, younger generations are forced to turn to their parents to close the gap,” Rick Lunny, president and CEO of Manulife Bank, said in a statement.

Indeed, 47% of Generation Z respondents to the Manulife poll and 46% of millennials said they had help from their parents when buying a home.

According to Manulife, 7% of parents said they’d helped a child buy a home during the pandemic. Meanwhile, 5% of parents with a mortgage said they used the equity from their home to help their child buy a house.

Manulife commissioned Ipsos to conduct an online poll of 2,001 adults aged 20–69 who had a household income of more than $40,000. The poll was conducted from April 30–May 4. Online polls cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.

Staff

The staff of Advisor.ca have been covering news for financial advisors since 1998.