The number of multiple-property owners who keep homes for investment or rental income possess a significant chunk of the housing stock, according to newly-released information from Statistics Canada.
New 2019-2020 data from the Canadian Housing Statistics Program (CHSP) show that multiple-property owners possess nearly one-third of all residential properties. The top 10 per cent wealthiest property owners account for about one-quarter of residential housing value, according to the data.
Multiple-property owners are considered to be those who hold onto properties or recreational homes for rental income or for other investment purposes in addition to their primary residence. In this report, multi-home owners are people whose name is on the property title of more than one residential property within a given province or territory, but not those who have properties in different jurisdictions.
“Owners seeking additional properties contribute to increased competition in already tight real estate markets, making it more difficult for prospective homeowners to purchase a home,” said the CHSP findings. “The overall impact of such holdings on housing prices and housing affordability, however, depends on a multitude of factors that are not fully assessed in this release.”
Multiple-property owners hold up to 40% of the property supply
Despite accounting for a small number of property owners, individual multi-home owners also hold a significant portion of the residential supply, as much as 40 per cent in some cases according to the CHSP findings.
During 2020, multiple-property owners in Ontario and British Columbia held 31.1 per cent and 29.1 per cent of homes, but accounted for 15.5 per cent and 15 per cent of all homeowners. In Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, 21.6 per cent and 19.6 per cent of owners were individual multi-property owners, and possessed 40.9 per cent and 38.7 per cent of residences.
By comparison, businesses, government and other entities made up between 1.6 per cent (Ontario) to 2.1 per cent (New Brunswick) of owners. They own between 7.6 per cent (Ontario) and 10 per cent (B.C.) of the property stock.
Still, the majority of residential owners are individuals who have a single property, between 77 per cent (Nova Scotia) and 83 per cent (B.C.) of all property owners. In Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, single-property owners held around half of the property stock, and about 60 per cent of the home assets in Ontario and B.C.
The majority of multi-homeowners have two properties, the most popular combination being two single-detached houses. As of 2020, the majority of multiple-property owners held all of their properties within the same census metropolitan area or census agglomeration. In Ontario and B.C., about 40 per cent of multi-home owners possessed all of their properties in the same census subdivision, which is “consistent with owners who would want to remain close to their rental properties.”
Income and property wealth distribution follow similar patterns
Income and housing wealth are concentrated at the top as 10 per cent of owners earned more than the bottom 50 per cent when combined.
When ordering individual owners by their yearly income, the CHSP report said that the top 10 per cent of homeowners in Ontario and B.C. had yearly incomes over $125,000. Meanwhile in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario and B.C, the top 10 per cent declared incomes between 29 per cent (New Brunswick) to 35 per cent (B.C.) of the total income declared by all owners in those provinces.
The income of the bottom half of property owners was less than one-quarter of the total in each of these provinces, ranging from 20 per cent in B.C. to 23 per cent in New Brunswick, according to the CHSP report. Owners in this group had annual incomes under $55,000 in Ontario and B.C.
“The bottom 50 per cent contained five times as many owners as the top 10 per cent, yet received a lower share of total income,” said the report. “This is because the average income in the top 10 per cent was at least five times the average in the bottom 50 per cent.”
In this context, the distribution of housing wealth between owners followed a similar trend. When ordering individual owners based on the value of their real estate holdings, the top 10 per cent owned between 24 per cent (New Brunswick) and 29 per cent (B.C.) of the total residential property values in each province. The bottom half of individual owners possessed less than one-quarter in every province, which ranged from 21 per cent in Nova Scotia to 24 per cent in New Brunswick and Ontario.
Number of first time buyers increased more than repeat purchasers
Despite the large share of multi-property owners, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and B.C. reported a jump in first-time home buyers between 2018 and 2019.
The number of first-time home buyers increased at a faster pace than repeat buyers, particularly in B.C. where the quantity of new buyers grew 5.6 per cent as the number of repeat buyers decreased by 10.1 per cent. In New Brunswick, new buyers surged 16.5 per cent between 2018 and 2019, and 9.2 per cent in Nova Scotia. Data was not available for buyers in Ontario.
“The decrease in the number of repeat buyers in British Columbia came in the wake of provincial legislation implemented to cool the real estate market, which may have dissuaded existing owners from moving or from investing in further properties,” said the report, which pointed to housing demand policies like the province’s vacancy and speculation taxes.
The number of first-time buyers varied by region in B.C, rising as high as 31.1 per cent in Kelowna to 6.1 per cent in Vancouver between 2018 and 2019. Home sale prices, buyer ages and population growth may have been a factor in these geographic differences. For example, Kelowna had the lowest median sale price among the B.C. CMAs at $535,000.
