Canada's housing portrait - Video transcript
(Statistics Canada symbol and Canada word mark appear on screen with the title: "Canada's housing portrait")
On September 21, 2022, Statistics Canada released information about housing from the 2021 Census.
From 2011 to 2021, the homeownership rate in Canada fell. 66.5% of Canadian households own their home in 2021, a decline after peaking in 2011 at 69%.
Adults under the age of 75 were less likely to own their home than adults in that age range a decade earlier. This was especially the case with young millennials aged 25 to 29. In 2021, 36.5% of them owned their homes, down from 44.1% in 2011.
A large share of newer builds in Canada are rentals. Of the housing built from 2016 to 2021, 40.4% was tenant-occupied. This is the highest tenant rate next to the 44.5% of dwellings built in the 1960s post-war apartment boom.
Over one-third of recently built dwellings constructed from 2011 to 2021 were occupied by millennial renters or owners.
The share of condominiums in Canada continues to rise.
The share of occupied dwellings that are condominiums edged up to 15.0% in 2021 from 13.3% in 2016.
Condominiums made up 39.9% of the occupied stock in the primary downtowns in 2021. Half of these downtown condos were being rented out by investors.
Canadian home values continued to surge through 2021.
The average value of an owner-occupied home, not adjusted for inflation, rose by 39.6% from 2016 to 2021. The average expected values of homes grew the most in Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec.
Canadians found their housing more affordable in 2021 because of higher incomes.
The proportion of households that spent 30% or more of their income on shelter costs fell from 24.1% in 2016 to 20.9% in 2021.
Differences in the impact of temporary COVID-19 benefits on household incomes—for renters and for homeowners—were a key contributor to the different degrees of improvement in housing affordability seen for each group, from 2016 to 2021.
Unaffordable housing rates are highest in downtowns. In 33 of 42 downtowns of large urban centres, the percentage of renters spending more than 30% of their income on shelter costs in 2021 was above the national average.
Almost 1 in 10, households were in core housing need in 2021.
Almost 1.5 million Canadian households lived in an unsuitable, inadequate or unaffordable dwelling and were not able to afford alternative housing in their community.
Definitions and concepts, as well as data at the provincial, territorial and subprovincial levels, are in the 2021 Census Daily release of September 21, 2022.
(Canada wordmark appears on screen.)