May 16, 2022
Real Estate News
RYPM
TORONTO - Single-detached houses are still the most
plentiful type of housing in Canada, but apartments and row houses are slowly
catching up, the latest census data reveals.
The figures released by Statistics Canada on Wednesday show
the country's 7.8 million single-detached homes made up about 53 per cent of
Canada's housing supply in 2021, down from roughly 54 per cent during the 2016
census.
The data agency found the growth of single-detached homes
was outpaced by apartments in both low-rises and highrises along with row
houses.
Housing experts attributed much of the shift to consumer
preferences, zoning regulations and the lack of space in several regions,
especially popular downtown cores already known for their high density.
“The problem is land. You cannot grow it,” said Murtaza
Haider, a professor of data science and real estate management at Toronto
Metropolitan University.
“It's a scarce commodity for horizontal construction, but
for vertical construction, you can layer up floor after floor after floor.”
Housing prices, which are soaring beyond many people's
budgets, are also fuelling the demand for apartments.
The national average home price was $796,000 in March, up
11.2 per cent from the same month last year, the Canadian Real Estate
Association said. Excluding the heated Greater Toronto and Vancouver Areas from
the calculation cuts $163,000 from the national average price.
Apartments tend to cost less than detached houses. In the
Greater Toronto Area, the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board found the average
detached home sold for almost $1.7 million last month, while condo apartments
averaged more than $808,000.
The “overwhelming majority” of people would still prefer a
detached home, but Haider said many rethink their housing choices, when
“reality kicks in.”
“People don't have that kind of income to buy
million-plus-dollar homes, especially if you're young and you're looking for
the starter home because you're a first-time homebuyer,” he said.
“They end up gravitating toward these highrise homes,
apartments or condominiums.”
As these patterns have unfolded, Statistics Canada counted
1.5 million apartments with more than five storeys across the country last
year. They made up 10.7 per cent of the country's housing stock last year, up
from 9.9 per cent in 2016.
Apartments with fewer than five storeys edged up slightly to
18.3 per cent in 2021 from 18 per cent in 2016.
Row houses experienced a slight uptick, rising from 6.3 per
cent of the housing supply in 2016 to 6.5 per cent last year.
Much of the growth is concentrated in and around the
downtowns of large urban centres, where millennials, who are most likely to be
first-time homebuyers, account for the largest share of the population.
They make up more than one-third of the downtown populations
of large urban centres, while baby boomers comprise just one in five people
living downtown, despite being the country's largest generation.
“Downtowns tended to grow faster in larger urban centres, so
what types of dwellings can you build downtown, where space is a premium? You
need the types of dwellings that are going to allow for densification, for more
people to flow into,” Statistics Canada senior analyst Jeff Randle said.
A tranche of data the agency released in February showed
more than 1.2 million people, or 3.5 per cent of Canadians, lived in the
downtown portion of one of the country's 41 large urban centres in the spring
of 2021.
Those downtowns saw their populations grow by 10.9 per cent
between 2016 and 2021, a much faster rate than the 4.6 per cent growth they
experienced during the previous census period, which covered 2011 to 2016.
Cody Skrzypkowski, a senior partner at North Group Real
Estate in Toronto, expects these areas and their apartment buildings to
continue to surge as the country recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, which
pushed many to consider rural and suburban real estate.
He saw Ontario's York, Halton and Durham regions explode
with buyers at the onset of the pandemic, but the trend is reversing now.
“We're going to start to see a resurgence in the more urban
communities, where typically you find the highrises and the multi-dwelling
properties,” he said.
“Then, as we start to go back to whatever version of normal we may see, the demand for more urban properties will continue to grow, and so will the condo market and more densely populated areas.”
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