B.C. has the country’s highest rate of adults co-owning a home with their parents – and immigrant families are more likely to be the ones involved.
Statistics Canada’s latest report Wednesday (May 1) shows higher rates of co-ownership between adults born in the 1990s and their parents in more expensive housing markets, specifically in Abbotsford-Mission, Vancouver and Victoria. The report looked at parent and child co-ownership arrangements, such as multigenerational households, co-investment, early inheritance and mortgage “co-signing” across the country.
The report says co-ownership is highest in the most expensive housing markets, with B.C. coming in at the top at 20.3 per cent. It was followed closely by Ontario at 19.8 per cent.
Three-in-10 co-ownership properties countrywide are “likely to be mortgage co-signing arrangements,” the report notes.
About 34 per cent of parent-child co-owned properties could represent a multigenerational housing arrangement or a situation where the child was added to the title of the home for inheritance purposes. That arrangement was more prevalent in Vancouver (46.1 per cent) and in Toronto (42.6 per cent) than other metropolitan areas.
It was less likely, at 16.9 per cent, that a child who co-owned a home with their parents would own two or more properties.
The report also found that parents who are immigrants tended to co-own properties more frequently with their adult children than Canadian-born parents. Across the country, almost half of all co-owning parents are immigrants.
Statistics Canada says that is consistent with the fact co-ownership tends to happen in higher-priced metropolitan areas, which also tend to have higher proportions of immigrants.
The report was a second in a series from Statistics Canada on inter-generational housing in the country, examining the role of parental wealth in the housing market outcomes of young homeowners.
A report from the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce found nearly 30 per cent of first-time homebuyers in 2021 received a monetary gift from parents, up from 20 per cent in 2015.
READ MORE: ‘Bank of Mom and Dad’ helps fuel home ownership for young B.C. adults