It’s Indira again… but don’t worry, Vince will be back next week.
Last week, I was in Blue Mountain with my family. As I parked at our villa, I noticed that several parking spaces were reserved for owners.
For a moment, I caught myself thinking, “How cool would it be to own a vacation home here someday?”
Then I thought about how many Canadians are still working toward buying their very first home.
That immediately brought me back to a statistic I had read just a few days earlier.
Today, the median age of a first-time homebuyer in Ontario is 40 years old.
Ten years ago, it was 36, according to an article by Canada Housing Market.
At first, I assumed this was an Ontario-specific trend.
But then I found something even more surprising.
A global study by Bloom Holding, published by Canadian Mortgage Trends, found that Canadian first-time homebuyers are among the oldest in the world.
To put that into perspective, the average age across Europe is around 31, and in cities like Bucharest, people buy their first home at about 25. In the United States and Australia, the average is closer to 35.
In Canada, however, the average reaches 40 in Toronto and 46 in Vancouver.
That makes Ontario’s numbers even more meaningful.
And honestly…
that hurts.
Because it stops looking like a local issue and starts looking like a sign that something much bigger is happening.
As I was reading through all of this, I found myself asking a question.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen one program after another introduced for first-time homebuyers: the First Home Savings Account (FHSA), changes to the Home Buyers’ Plan, new amortization rules, and, more recently, the GST/HST rebate for newly built homes.
And yet…
the average age of first-time homebuyers continues to rise.
So I can’t help but wonder:
Are we solving the right problem?
In the same Canadian Mortgage Trends article, Michael Davenport, Senior Economist at Oxford Economics, makes an observation.
He explains that while monthly affordability has improved due to lower interest rates and moderating home prices, homeownership remains out of reach for many households.
But there was another detail that caught my attention:
Oxford Economics’ affordability index assumes that buyers already have a 20% down payment.
And that simply isn’t the reality for many first-time buyers.
It’s something we see regularly in our office.
Many people qualify for today’s first-time homebuyer programs, but the biggest obstacle remains the same:
Coming up with the down payment.
That’s where I think the conversation becomes interesting.
Many of today’s programs help once you’re already close to buying.
But what about the people who are still trying to save for that very first down payment?
Are we making homeownership more accessible…
or simply making the last stretch of the journey a little easier?
I’m not questioning the programs themselves.
Many of them are meaningful improvements and have helped thousands of first-time buyers.
What I do wonder is whether we’ve put the same effort into understanding why it’s taking longer and longer for people to reach the point where they can actually benefit from those programs.
Because, in the end…
A mortgage isn’t the starting line.
It’s the finish line.
And for many people, the road to get there seems to become a little harder every year.
All the best,
Indira
P.S. I’m officially handing this space back to its rightful owner.
And before I go, thank you to everyone who took the time to leave us a Google Review last week. If you haven’t done so yet and you’ve had a great experience with us, they’re always more than welcome.
