How Will the Baby Boomers Affect the Future Housing Market? – From your Vancouver Mortgage Broker
February 26, 2013 by Adil Virani
Filed under Home Series, Latest News, Latest Rates, Mortgage FAQ, Recent News, Selling Your Home, Vancouver Mortgage Broker
How Will the Baby Boomers Affect the Future Housing Market? – From your Vancouver Mortgage Broker
The baby boomers are the largest single generation alive today. They are aging but they are still very affluent. Many forecasters believed that they would eventually leave their larger homes and that this might result in the creation of an overabundance of single-family residences as they would most likely begin to occupy smaller homes.
This does not seem to be the case. A recent survey performed by Royal Lepage indicates that almost half of this generation, around 43.5%, said that of those they surveyed and who are planning to move will be looking for a home that is at least as big if not bigger that the homes where they currently live in right now.
The Baby Boomer generation is considered to be the richest generation that has ever appeared in Canadian history. They apparently need and like large homes for their expensive items and seemingly also enjoy their outdoor yards and garage space.
The survey also shows that more than half of Generation Y or 55.7% are looking to suburbia for their next home and almost 21.7% of this generation are looking to buy in the core of the downtown area.
Although it was projected the Baby Boomer generation would be buying smaller homes, they are in no rush to do so at the current time. Presently, almost 78% of this generation already own a home and slightly over 40 per cent are looking move to another place.
One of the main reasons for this trend is that their children aren’t leaving the proverbial nest as young as they once use to, and continue to live in their parent’s home long after they have become adults.
About 25% of their offspring or Generation Y continues to live at home or with either their family or friends and often they do so rent free. From the survey and it breaking down geographically, the survey found that in the western provinces, the rate of Generation Y living at home was about 33.4% and that in Ontario it was 27.2% while in Quebec the percentage of Generation Y still living at home was 29.7%.
One of the biggest reasons for this trend is that the availability of good paying jobs is fairly limited, and so many of this group are using the opportunity to spend more time in college.
Looking at the statistics, it’s no wonder that the Baby Boomer generation is bucking the trend and staying or looking for large size homes, and not the single family unit homes that many of the experts had predicted.