Royal LePage: Canadians Embracing Collaborative Homeownership to Crack the Market

As interest rates continue to rise, many individual buyers are being priced out of Canada’s housing market. In response to this, brokerage firm Royal LePage has released a report indicating that Canadians are increasingly turning to family and friends to afford a home.

The report, based on an online survey conducted by Leger in August, revealed that six percent of homeowners currently co-own their property with someone other than their spouse or significant other. Of that group, 89 percent co-own with family members, while seven percent co-own with friends. More than half of these co-owners share ownership with a parent or parent-in-law.

Surprisingly, only 44 percent of respondents in this group said they live with all the other co-owners named on the deed.

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Royal LePage’s report also highlighted that 76 percent of survey respondents cited affordability concerns as the main motivating factor for purchasing property with someone else. Two-thirds of those who expressed affordability worries said they made their purchase after the Bank of Canada raised its benchmark interest rate in March 2022.

Since then, qualifying for a mortgage has become more difficult, preventing individuals and couples from affording homes in their desired size or neighborhood.

A recent survey of real estate professionals conducted by Royal LePage found that nearly one in three (31 percent) reported an increase in the number of people buying property with someone other than their spouse or partner since before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Karen Yolevski, Chief Operating Officer at Royal LePage, stated that while families living together is not a new phenomenon, the decision to do so is increasingly driven by financial reasons.

“In an environment where home prices and interest rates have risen quickly and sharply, and where the threshold to qualify for a mortgage has become much more challenging, Canadians are pooling their resources and buying homes together,” said Karen Yolevski, Chief Operating Officer at Royal LePage.

According to Royal LePage, nearly two-thirds of those who co-own a home have a detached, single-family property. Yolevski added that by sharing the cost of a home, Canadians can not only enter the property market more easily but also expand their search to more desirable locations and larger properties that may have been out of reach financially.

Royal LePage noted in the report that their web panel polling did not have a margin of error specified, but explained that a similar sized survey would likely have a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percent.

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