British Columbian homeowners born in the 1990s most likely in Canada to co-own with their parents: StatsCan

British Columbians born in the 1990s are more likely to co-own a home with their parents than anywhere else in the country, a new report from Statistics Canada has revealed.

The report, based on statistics from 2021, found that 20.3 per cent, or one in five residential properties owned by British Columbians born in the 1990s are co-owned with their parents.

The rate of parent-child co-ownership among all properties in Canada is 17.3 per cent. Ontario has the second highest proportion at 19.8 per cent, while the Northwest Territories has the lowest at 5.8 per cent.

StatsCan says some of the highest rates of co-ownership are found in expensive urban markets such as Vancouver, Victoria and Abbotsford-Mission.

Noam Dolgin, a realtor who specializes in co-ownership and is a co-founder of CoHo BC, told CTV News this type of living arrangement is a growing trend amid sky-high real estate costs.

“People really require the support of family to get into the housing market,” he said. “The barriers to entry are so high these days in terms of qualifying for a mortgage and down payment that most young Canadians can’t afford to get into the market without a heads up.”

The report shows that around 30 per cent of properties co-owned by parents and their children nationally are “mortgage co-signing” agreements where the adult child lives in the home they own and the parents live in another property.

However, in Vancouver, StatsCan says in 46.1 per cent of cases the parents and child co-owned a single property. A multigenerational family living together or a situation where a parent added a child to the title for inheritance reasons both fall into that category.

Dolgin explained that there are many reasons people enter co-ownership agreements, not just financial but also to meet social needs. Rising housing costs as well as growing social isolation during the pandemic made interest in co-housing grow, he said.

“It also speaks to the growing trend of intergenerational living,” he said. “People have come back to realize that living intergenerationally is great for everybody. It’s great for the kids and grandparents and it’s great for the parents.”

StatsCan also found that immigrant parents are more likely to co-own properties with their adult children, with nearly half of co-owning parents nationally being born outside of Canada. In Vancouver, 76.9 per cent of parents who co-own properties are immigrants.

In his work, Dolgin says he sees interest in co-ownership agreements among all age groups, from people in their 20s and 30s looking to enter the housing market to boomers and young families wanting to live with community support.

“There’s an advantage to it at pretty much every stage in life and we’re seeing growth in all of those areas,” he said.

With files from CTV News Vancouver’s Isabella Zavarise