Photo: James Bombales

The majority of young Canadian families would prefer to live in a single detached home, but many have given up on the dream of ever being able to buy one.

In fact, 43 percent of families surveyed in a recent report from Sotheby’s International Realty Canada said that high detached home prices meant they had to settle for higher density housing.

That’s despite 83 percent of respondents indicating that they would prefer to live in a low-rise home, with just 17 percent saying they would rather live in a high rise. The data comes from a poll of 1,743 families in the Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal Census Metropolitan Areas, with a focus on families where the adults are between the ages of 20 and 45.

But while 82 percent of respondents said they felt they had made compromises in the home they purchased, 93 percent reported being “somewhat” or “very” satisfied with their home. Another 48 percent of respondents indicated that they believed real estate would outperform their other financial investments in the next five years.

“Young families are much more influential in Canada’s metropolitan real estate markets than many realize,” writes Brad Henderson, president and CEO of Sotheby’s International Realty Canada, in a statement. “With 9.1 million Canadian Millennials now entering the partnership, marriage and parenting stages of the family life cycle, the ranks of these ‘modern families’ are swelling.”

Henderson writes that the survey results show that demand for low-rise homes continues to rise, in spite of affordability pressures.

“It highlights the fact that cities will continue to face significant pressure to overcome these challenges with solutions that go beyond the addition of higher density housing,” he adds.

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