Millennials in Victoria have the lowest homeownership rate across the country. We look at why that is, how it impacts our market, and what it means for the future.
Millennials in Victoria have the lowest homeownership rate across the country. We look at why that is, how it impacts our market, and what it means for the future. Â
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Jackie: My name is Jackie Lamport. Today is Tuesday, May 25th. Welcome to the Capital Daily Podcast. Today on the show, we look at why millennials are being priced out of the Victoria housing market, how intergenerational wealth transfers impacts that, and what the future of the market may look like if this trend continues.Â
Jackie: Buying a home in Victoria isn't something that is on the table for a lot of young people. The purchase of your first home, which at one point was a monumental stage of your adulthood, is now out of reach for most millennials hoping to enter the market. Today we look at why the market is where it is now, how intergenerational wealth transfers impact the market, and what the future may look like. Before we get to that, we get a sense for where the market is right now.
To do that, we spoke to Leo Spateholz, an expert in real estate analytics on the Island. In 2019, Leo wrote an article that mentioned Victoria had the lowest millennial homeownership in the country. That's 27.4%. The highest rate in the country is Calgary, which has 50%. We asked him why those numbers may be so.Â
Leo: Yeah, it's a little bit of a mystery. That's a super low rate and Victoria. Some of it makes a lot of sense. You know, you see the higher rates of millennial homeownership in the lower price markets. But then you also see substantially higher ownership rates in the very expensive markets like Toronto and Vancouver. So it's a bit of a mystery why we're at the very bottom of the list here. It's really important to have some kind of solution for people to get into the homeownership side of things; otherwise, you're cutting off kind of the first part of that ladder. I mean, whether it's a good thing or not, homeownership has been a way to build wealth for people. And basically, for the city to have this very low rate, partially I would argue due to their own policies and approach to building those homes. I think it's a big problem. Right, I think it's going to be a problem for the vibrancy of Victoria in the future.Â
Jackie: Leo mentioned how that negatively impacts the vibrancy of the city.
Leo: Well, it's, you know, if it were just about being a retirement village, then great, but I think, you know, I certainly have a lot higher hopes for Victoria than that. I think a lot of progress has been made on the economic diversity front in the last 20 years. But that requires people to actually want to and be able to come here to live and to buy a house or even affordably rent, right. I mean, the rental side is the other side of this. But, you know, many people will also want to have the option of purchasing a house.
Jackie: Leo also pointed out that, in general, homeownership in Victoria is on the decline.
Leo: So Victoria, homeownership rates, overall, is about 63% as of the last census, so that data is somewhat out of date at this point. It's 2016 data. That ownership rate dropped a little bit from 2011, I believe, just because the house prices got so high, and people were forced out of the homeownership market. And currently, the census is being conducted. So we'll have new data by next year. And I expect the homeownership rate will drop even lower in the next census data. But if you look at the difference between millennial homeownership rates versus the overall homeownership rates, again, Victoria is the highest in the country. So compared to the overall rate, millennials own the least homes right there on a percentage basis.
Jackie: We asked him since this doesn't all come down to prices, given that Toronto and Vancouver have higher millennial homeownership if this could be a result of incomes being less in ratio than some of the larger cities. He said given the data we do have, as far as we can tell, this doesn't seem to be a factor. Â
Leo: There's not great data on wealth is one issue. It's a bit of a blind spot right now On the data front. That is my theory of why some of these much more expensive markets, or I guess, somewhat more expensive markets, like Toronto and Vancouver, have a higher millennial ownership rate, even though it's not really reflected in the incomes. Since they're both global cities, there is a higher degree of wealth floating around. And I think that is allowing some of those millennials to get into the property market. Whether it's family money or some other sources of wealth, we don't really have as much of that in Victoria. At least that's my theory.
Jackie: Leo also said that he expected to perhaps see more first-time home buyers entering the market during the pandemic as a result of lower interest rates.Â
Leo: I recently looked at some first-time buyer data to see if the pandemic dropped interest rates and encouraged some more first-time buyers to get into the market; I didn't see it. So the rate of first-time buyers was the same as it was pre-pandemic; about 10% of all buyers are first-time buyers.Â
Jackie: We asked why this may be.Â
Leo: I think one of the reasons is the mortgage stress test did not drop. So if you have some existing wealth, you can take advantage of those low-interest rates, if you're an owner already, or if you have a bunch of money for a downpayment. Great, you can take advantage of that. But the mortgage stress test, so you have to prove that you can pass and pay your mortgage at about 5% interest rates, even though the actual interest rate you're paying is only about one and a half 2%. And so, if you weren't able to prove that you didn't have the income or the downpayment to do that. Those interest rates do nothing for you.
Jackie: He also highlighted that the low-interest rates may have helped people who already have money save even more.
Leo: Low-interest rates that are a transfer of wealth to people who have the assets already. I think it’s a massive problem.Â
Jackie: We then started to ask Leo about some solutions to the problem. We mentioned a situation in Vancouver where the Squamish First Nation has reclaimed land in Kitsilano. The land is an oceanfront neighbourhood near downtown. They plan to build 12 towers containing 6000 units, primarily rentals and offer them affordable prices. We asked Leo if projects like this could be a part of the solution.Â
Leo: Yeah, it could. And I think that the neglect from the government side and building rental properties is a big part of the problems we’re facing today. So in the last 30 years, Greater Victoria has added about 2000 rental properties, purpose-built rentals, and the population has grown by 113,000 in that time. And so, of course, what happens in that case? If the government is not providing those rental properties, investors dive into the market, buy up a lot of properties, and then rent them out. But we have no one to blame but ourselves for this. And this is an act development is great because it really shows what is the demand for housing, without the impediments neighbours being able to shut it down. Right. So they’re building 6000 units because that’s what they think the demand is. And it’s a prime location, very close to downtown Vancouver. So I think there may be potential there in Victoria as well. I have no idea if the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations are considering this kind of thing. But that may be an opportunity. How do we build that housing without the constraints right now in getting that housing built?
Jackie: This brought up the idea of switching to a rental first market. This is what Leo had to say about that.
Leo: It’s difficult to say what is the optimal rate of homeownership, right? Is it 60%? Is it 70%? Is it 50% more like Germany? Hard to say. I think what we have to remember is that whatever somebody decides to do, it should be affordable and secure. And right now, if somebody wants to rent, there’s not that much purpose-built rental availability. They often have to rent from private investors, and that housing is not that secure. There’s some data that shows 10% of moves in BC were forced. So most recent moves that people reported were forced either by a landlord or the bank, or the government. And the reality is that it’s mostly by landlords. So if you live in a rental suite that’s owned by a private investor and that a private investor sells, you’re gonna get kicked out most likely. So I think we have to do better on both the rental and the ownership front.
Jackie: Lastly, we asked Leo about the argument of entitlement. Is it that the market has truly priced millennials out? Or is the average millennial just not committed enough to save for a home?
Leo: It takes a lot of savings to buy a house. But this is a bit of the avocado toast argument. Millennials are not buying houses because they’re entitled, and they’re not saving the day that contradicts stuff. It’s harder than it ever has been from an affordability standpoint to buy a house in Victoria. That’s just the facts, and it’s all down to kind of individual drive.
Jackie: After we spoke to Leo Spateholz, I wanted to get more information about how intergenerational wealth impacts buyers and the market, so I spoke to Andrew Ramlo, the VP of Consulting Services at Rennie Group.
Jackie: Andrew, thank you so much for joining the show today.
Andrew: It’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Jackie: So we want to talk about purchasing homes as a millennial. And according to an article in The Globe and Mail in 2021, you estimated that it was close to 90% of millennial homeowners have had help from families to purchase properties. What kind of help are you referring to?
Andrew: That would be helpful in terms of the down payment for the purchase of a home. So that would be either as a result of a gift from parents or grandparents for that matter or family members to that first-time homebuyer or some form of a loan or just a loan to the kids to actually help them get out of the basement and form households of their own.
Jackie: How accurate would you say the 90% number is?Â
Andrew: This is where I have to digress a little bit that is there. Unfortunately, I’d love to say we’ve got a really good database of this. And unfortunately, we don’t; the data is kind of wide and varied and that 90% came from a survey that BC notaries did. They had found that 90% of first-time homebuyers were getting help with their down payments. And interestingly, they did a similar study back in 2015, and the same question was asked for those first-time homebuyers and the response to say, “Yes, I got help from mom and dad or from family members,” was only 70%. So a big shift on that front. So that was 2015 versus 2019. They haven’t updated to 2020. Yet, our internal data is on sales that we have here in the Lower Mainland on the presale side of things. It says anywhere between 50 and 60% of our first-time homebuyers received help from mom and dad. There’s also another source, the professional mortgage association of Canada does an annual survey as well. One of the questions they ask is, “Are you receiving help from mom and dad for your down payments?” Now they’ve come in at between 40 and 50%. Now that’s a national survey as well. So we get people in Woodstock, Ontario, answering that particular question. And we know that the real estate prices are a little bit different out here on the west coast. So, I would say that if we were able to regionalize that we would certainly fall above average. But even anecdotally, if we talk with some of the mortgage brokers that we work with, the anecdotal side of things says that it’s well more than 50%. And it would. I don’t know if we would get up to that 90% again, but the notaries actually surveyed almost 200 notaries in the province of British Columbia. So it’s a relatively good sample size, and it seems to indicate that the numbers are going up in terms of the number of kids who are receiving help from mom and dad.
Jackie: I want to highlight that because you said 2015, The number was around 70%. And then it went up 20% within four years. So that's looking at it through a historical lens, and is that even already a lot compared to maybe 2025 years ago?
Andrew: Oh, I would say most definitely. And there's a couple of factors that are sort of weighing in on this right now. We've got a much different demographic context than what we had 20 or 30 years ago, and we have a much higher proportion of people moving into the stage of the life cycle where they would be mortgage-free. We also have those particular groups like the post-World War Two boom generation moving into the empty-nester stage of the lifecycle and retirement. So they're in a much larger financial position to be able to help out. Interestingly, we also have their kids who are getting into the housing market right now. So we've got kind of like there's this on the demographic side, yeah, there's a bigger bulk of people a bigger share of the Canadian or local population ageing into those older stages of the life cycle, and they have kids going in. So that could be one of the drivers in terms of the rates going up in terms of helping out. We've also had a little bit of a social shift in the last two decades, a growing proportion of kids spending longer periods of time at home, whether that be remaining in the parental home, or like that Boomerang generation, they're moving back after they do post-secondary. So there's that factor as well. And the third interesting or challenging leg to the school to that stool is just pure increase in housing prices, which from the first time homebuyer side of things and make you sit increasingly challenging to get into the market. But on the other side of that, the post World War Two boom, they've seen very, very significant increases in the value of the residential real estate, many of which bought in that 20 or 30-year time frame ago, and are looking at that as a potential tax-free windfall with regard to the total dollar value that they have there.
Jackie: You said something interesting; it was that we're at a point where the boomer generations are at the same time as millennials are getting into the housing market; they are sitting on a lot of money without children. Are we perhaps seeing a moment right now where because of that, we're seeing millennials who do have the money getting into the market, and that could be driving up the housing costs? Are we potentially seeing maybe a return to normal within 20 years or so?
Andrew: Great question. I'm gonna say no, I don't think so. That post-World War Two boom generation right now is between the ages of 55 and 74. And they've got kids who are entering the market. So the degree to which this is going to continue, I think, is it's not a flash in the pan; I don't think we've hit the peak of it yet. So I think that there's a whole bunch of really interesting things that we can talk about relative to that. But the root fundamentals on the demography side are that post-World War Two boom and the 55-year-olds are sort of just entering that stage where they're hitting empty nesters getting towards the end of their mortgages and have the kids who are getting into the housing market? So, you know, I say that this is probably something that will persist, especially in an environment right now, where we've seen very significant increases in the last year, in the value of that residential real estate. There may be an increasing number of households in the coming years who are willing to help out with the kids in terms of getting them into the market.
Jackie: And how much do you think that is what's impacting housing prices? Because I know that I mean, as I understand it, the biggest thing is just that we don't have the supply to meet the demand. But we were also looking at this amount of people like this large amount of people who are buying because they have the money because of the wealth being passed down. And how much is that impacting the market and negatively affecting the people who don't have money coming in from mom and dad?
Andrew: Yeah, again, a super question that I don't have an exact answer to. I would love to be able to say, "Oh, it is 10 or 20%." CMHC (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation) did a study a good number of years ago that looked at trying to dissect all of the different elements that are contributing to price increases, and they basically came off and said like, there are certain things that we can account for, like the change in interest rates or incomes, land availability or supply. But there was this big bucket that was "unknown." And one of these issues falls into that unknown bucket. So but all of that being said, another important point on that, though, is I think that some of Well, there's a lot of issues on the affordability challenges out there. And I don't disagree with any of them. It's incredibly, incredibly challenging to get into the housing market right now, not just for owners but for renters as well. But if we just take a really simple example of how some of those common metrics between housing prices and household income have typically or traditionally been looked at, I actually say that some of the ways of looking at that are broken. Now. If I take an example of a first-time homebuyer couple, let's say that they go to the bank and they have their 5% down because they've been scrimping and saving to do it. They go in, they meet the bank's financing requirements, and the bank says, that's great, you've got your 5% down, you can afford to go out and buy a $500,000 condo. Okay, great, they can go out into the market, mom and dad come around and say, we just really, really, really want to get you out of the house, we want you out of the basement, so we can go and enjoy retirement and start to travel. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna give you $100,000 to help you out with your down payment, we're gonna get you by that squeaky CMHC insurance thing. And we'll get you up to the level where you don't have to pay that, and we'll help out. So right now, that particular couple has two choices, they can go and buy the same $500,000 condo and significantly reduce their mortgage payments, right? Because they're putting $100,000 more down as part of their down payment. Or they can turn around and say, "wow, I'm going for 600k." And I'm upgrading to granite and stainless steel in the kitchen. And I'm probably going to say that the vast majority of the first-time homebuyers out there are going to opt for option number two. But as soon as they do so, that notion of what they can afford versus what their incomes are is broken. Because now that it is like on the top side of things, that unit at $600,000 with their household income now appears in their traditional equation to be broken and unaffordable. But the reality is that their mortgage payments have not changed at all because they're still mortgaging the same amount of money. So it's really interesting in terms of what has been driving some of the price increases, yes, declining interest rates, huge, huge impact. We're at a historic, historic low concerning where interest rates are. But something that I think also has had a very significant impact on pushing prices forward is this transfer of wealth down into the new generation of homeowners. Because it's broken that equation in terms of these traditional metrics of how we look at issues of affordability, which is to take sales prices, and average household incomes and stick those two things together. And we can't do that anymore.
Jackie: Wow, that's so interesting. I wouldn't have even thought about how that's impacting that. Wow. Okay. Also, it kind of stresses me out to think that people would opt for the higher-priced one because if I see lower mortgage payments, that's the one I'm going for.
Andrew: Yeah, but this is where it becomes really interesting because we don't have any really good data on these issues. And if we want to sort of unpeel the onion a little bit more with respect to what some of the drivers are, and you know, what some of the leverage is in the market for those first-time homebuyers. And we really need to start asking some of these more detailed questions about things like "well, where are you getting your down payment and how much is that of what the total purchase price is as well?"
Jackie: Interesting. Okay, you also mentioned very briefly that this also impacts renters getting into the rental market. And I think that a lot of people are looking ahead and thinking, my generation and me specifically, I'm thinking, "I'm not going to own a home, I'm going to be a renter, and I'm just going to stay in the rental market." But as home prices and, you know, condo prices increase, we're also seeing an increase in rental costs. How much do you think this will also impact people who are looking just to rent?
Jackie: Yeah, in terms of the sort of wealth transfer, I don't know if it's going to have I can't see how much impact it's gonna have on the rental side of things. But I think if there's one advantage on the rental side of things is there has been a renewed interest in adding purpose-built rental across the country, so not just within our major markets like Victoria or Vancouver. It's the purpose-built rental segment that we do see, in terms of the housing stats data has taken up a much, much larger share than it has historically. We haven't built Goods for a significant amount of purpose-built rental across Canada since before 1980. It's old, old stock. In terms of the sort of wealth transfer, I don't know if it's going to have. I can't see how much impact it's gonna have on the rental side of things. But I think if there's one advantage on the rental side of things is there has been a renewed interest in adding purpose-built rental across the country, so not just within our major markets like Victoria or Vancouver. It's the purpose-built rental segment that we do see, in terms of the housing starts data has taken up a much, much larger share than it has historically. We haven't built goods for a significant amount of purpose-built rental across Canada since before 1980. It's old, old stock. And it's heartening to see that the developers and the provincial government, and the federal government are all moving towards trying to add to that stock. So that's not to say that there are not going to be any challenges for renters in terms of increasing rents. I think that issues of security of 10 years, as well as a new and refreshed stock on the rental side of things, will certainly help out that side of things. And we will likely see the share of our total population who are renters and may continue to be relative to owners' increase in time, just as we do see a growing stock of rental within most of our communities. And that's definitely a good thing. We need a good diversity of 10 years, just like we need a really good diversity of structure types within our communities to make housing widely available to a wide range of folks.
Jackie: This might be out of my expertise to speculate, but I'm sure gonna ask the question. So if this trend of affordable housing and purpose-built renting does pick up and is something that becomes more of the norm as opposed to buying a home for a young family or whatnot, are we possibly going to see a drop in price for the houses that maybe a lot of the millennials right now are purchasing at massive amounts of money? Are they going to lose some of their money as the market just kind of stalls?Â
Andrew: I've been working in this sector for probably 20 years now. And one thing that I have made a point of not doing is speculating on where housing prices are going to go. Just because there are so many factors that are influencing prices, all of that being said, I don't see that there's a ton of upcoming downward pressure on housing prices. The reason why I say that is you look at whether it be the Victoria region or the Vancouver region, both relatively geographically constrained regions. So it's very challenging to add supply. We add on to that both jurisdictions being a collection of individual municipalities that all have different objectives concerning growth. And that challenges the supply addition process and elongates it for many respects. In addition to that supply constraint, we have the federal government, which last year welcomed about 184,000 immigrants nationally. That was down from what our target was as a result of COVID from about 340,000. So in response to that fall back in federal immigration levels, in October, the federal government came around and said, well, we're going to up our targets, irrespective of a relatively slack labour market and unemployment rates that you know, are above, at that point about 10%. We're going to up our immigration targets from 340,000 that we thought we wanted to get for this year, 401,000, next year, 411,000, year after that 420. So we are going to see an increasing flow of immigrants into the country, which is definitely a good thing. We've got back to the notion that ageing post World War Two, boom, getting into the retirement stage of the life cycle, we need the immigration to fill in for them as they retire out of the lifestyle and retire out of the labour force. So, in addition to the supply constraints that we have, in terms of adding housing, we've got growing demand. And that's just from the immigration side of things. There's also all of those really smart Ontario kids like myself who figure that shovelling the snow in the wintertime just sucks, and we're going to move westward.Â
Jackie: That's what I did.Â
Andrew: Yeah, well, I'm with ya. I was one of the smart ones, and you as well. So we're also, you know, BC is a big destination for the young labour force, whether for jobs or education. And I think we're going to continue to be that and so on both the international as well as the domestic front, we have this issue of growing demand. So that's a long way of not answering your question. But to say that, I think that the continued supply challenges, as well as what I would see as growing demand going forward, aren't going to result in any kind of longer-term crash with regard to housing prices. I would only hope that on the supply side that the federal government starts to match their objectives in terms of increasing immigration, with some policies that help the local municipalities, as well as a province. And start to add to the supply and or reduce the time frame to which the supply is added within our communities.Â
Jackie: Okay. I also want to talk about the other group of millennials. And it's difficult to split them into two. But there's a group of people who have been held by their parents, and then there's the group of people who don't. How common Do you see these people, and how did they do it?Â
Andrew: Yeah, you know, really challenging. And I know that. Anecdotally, I can talk about the mortgage brokers and the saying 90%, and the notary saying 90%; I think for some of my younger colleagues, I'd say that it's 100%. So you know, the vast majority of them are, but yeah, in terms of the ones who aren't, this is where you have to get really creative. If homeownership is something that you aspire to. Some of the banks are doing creative financing on the mortgages, where you can get a couple of couples together and buy a house. And so you can go title on the mortgage, and, you know, reduce the cost, you can go and buy an astronomically expensive house from, you know, most other Canadian cities perspective. But it may be called a living situation or buying the house to eventually split it up into something that's a little bit more amenable to households rather than just one. So you know, that's to say that it is challenging both for those who may have a little bit of help from mom and dad, but then yeah, increasingly challenging for those who don't. But if it is something that homeownership is something that you aspire to, you just have to be creative about how you do it. And fortunately, at the federal government level, right now, we announced this yesterday, with some changes to the mortgage lending rules, as well. And outside of the exuberance of people to get into the market, both the federal government for insured mortgages and the Office of the Superintendent of Financial institutions, for the uninsured side of things, has set a higher threshold for what people need to qualify at a threshold of the interest rate. And so that does put some downward pressure on people's the level that they're able to pay and isolate some a little bit from increasing interest rates, which we're gonna see that we've had the luxury of the last three decades or so of generally seeing declining interest rates, making it more or easier to get into the market. And that being said, ten years ago, I said, "we won't see mortgage rates went down much more than five years ago," and then we had COVID. And I've heard of people's mortgages that you know, 1.59% for a fixed five-year mortgage, which is a little bit mind-blowing in a historical context. So but that being said, at the national level, they are putting some regulations in place that are firming up some regulations that may try and quell some of the irrational exuberance of first-time homebuyers to get into the market as well. So I have to look at that as being a bit of a positive side. But it is a super-challenging thing to do. And I'm back to my supply-side comments, we need to recognize that we do have a whole new generation of first time, home occupiers whether they be renters or owners coming into the market, and that's the kids of the post World War Two boom, and we need to accommodate them. So we have a real supply constraint issue as well.Â
Jackie: What can cities, and I mean, the provincial and municipal governments do to address the issue, but I'm specifically thinking, Victoria, which is at astronomical costs. What can we do?
Andrew: Well, you can do a couple of things. So from the policy side of things individually, municipalities can work with developers to give them incentives to add units that are affordable. So this is a sort of a traditional development play where the city is gonna, it was able to say, well, we're going to give you the extra density for a particular development. But what we want you to do is to provide a certain share of your units either to go to the rental or to be rented and subsidized or something like that. So that's certainly one option that cities can use. We also just have to streamline the process just in terms of the timeline for what it takes to go from an initial application to keys in the door. So that's something that certainly needs to be considered. The rezoning approach definitely just adds a ton of time. So some municipalities I know are looking at pre-zoning whole areas of cities to say that, you know what, we're going to absorb a whole bunch of stuff. And if you have an application within that zone, you don't need to go through a formal rezoning and all of the public hearings and rigmarole for that because we just need to add the supply. So that's certainly another option. And it, those would probably be the two big ones in terms of trying to, to get stuff to market. The other side of it, I guess, is tackling some of the notions of nimbyism. As you probably well know, there's a big movement of a "not in my backyard movement, but there's also those who say, "yes," a YIMBY (yes, in my backyard). This is the housing cry of the millennial generation. And we talk a lot about the missing middle here. I know the term is used a lot, but it fits both with respect to the housing forms, you know, like, there's certainly the towers that are being added, but not everybody wants to live in a tower. And the other end of that spectrum is that traditional white picket fence and single-detached house, which we just really don't have the land and space to accommodate anymore. So, you know, let's get stuff in the middle of that. But then it's also the middle demographic. It is you guys, and it's not the post World War Two, boom, it's not the Gen Xers; it's that middle ground of the demography; it is the millennial generation. So we need to figure out policy-wise how to, to sort of push down on some of those very, very vocal minorities in terms of these issues of not in my backyard, and no towers and no densification. And try and figure out how to be creative, work with some of the individuals who may be resistant to some of those changes, and figure out how to get the density into a lot of the older communities. And Victoria is a great example of that. It's like the west side of Vancouver. Now, there's a lot of single detached homes on Big Lots that could use a lot of densification. And it doesn't have to mean going in and near ripping down whole blocks of homes. It could mean simple densification with respect to take some of the big old character homes in the city of Victoria and let them get split into duplexes or triplexes, even within the same building structure. Unfortunately, that comes with a lot of community resistance, depending on exactly where you are. So I think that's sort of another avenue that we need to move down towards as well is how we creatively work with some of the apprehensions of communities and that notion of "not in my backyard."Â
Jackie: What issues arise from only having a generation who can afford to get into the market via their parents?Â
Andrew: It's a good question. I think it's probably an increasing share of renters. So an increasing share of renters who are staying at home, sorry, who are renting rather than owning. So, but there's nothing wrong with that. That's just a consequence. You look at some of the Canadian contexts, and Montreal has a much higher proportion of renters than it does owners, relative to other Canadian municipalities. It's a great city. New York is exactly the same. But you do get those notions from some of the older generations who aspired to be homeowners that rental tenure is bad, and it's not. There are some amazing cities around that are predominantly rental. So that's probably one of the consequences on that front. You know, ironically, probably the other consequence is kids staying at home for longer periods of time. And so that's that, that notion of that, you know, the sort of the 20 to 29-year-old at home, is probably going to transition into the well, the early 30-year-olds at home, and maybe the early 35-year-olds still at home. So I think that's probably Another consequence on that front. But I think the predominant one probably is just a growing share of that younger generation of householders moving into rental tenure versus owner occupancy.
Jackie: I think I could take from that. I mean, Canada, culturally, for the longest time, was a single-family home, you don't live with your parents, but sometimes your parents will move in if they're getting old. But there are many other places in the world where it's normal to live with your family and keep that connection and keep prices low by staying together, and maybe we will see a cultural shift.
Andrew: Well, I can only hope so, but I'd broaden the cultural shift as well. And I'd probably say that I'd love to see the cultural shift move farther enough along the spectrum to allow densification of some of the Existing communities because you know that the notion of the empty nester stage of the lifecycle truly is that and that's, you know, we have lots of households in Victoria specifically because you guys, you guys are like a demographic window through which the rest of Canada looks because you do have an older population over there. And, you know, a lot of those empty nesters are in homes that have empty bedrooms in them as well. And so the degree to which we can try and find a better match from a cultural side of things between housing need and housing form, if we can stick those two together to try and incentivize that empty nester generation to downsize and open that housing stock, either to redevelopment or just purely open it up to families who can fill the bedrooms up. We would probably do much better in terms of quelling price increases for many family housing styles.
Jackie: Andrew, thank you so much. This has been great.
Andrew: Thanks, Jackie, it's my pleasure.
Jackie: Like the themes discussed in this episode, Jimmy Thompson wrote an article about how Victoria could increase density, which could be blanket rezoning. You can read about that at capitaldaily.ca.Â