Apparently, the more things change the more they stay the same.
For all the talk about urban life, downtown living and choosing space-and-money-saving condominiums and townhouses in the city centre, many Canadians still have a very 1950s ideal when it comes to home ownership.
Nearly two-thirds -- that's 64% -- of potential Canadian home buyers aspire to live in a renovated, single-family house in the suburbs.
The statistic comes from the 2024 Great Canadian Dream Home Survey conducted by pollster Angus Reid for Wahi, a platform that lists homes for sale.
"For most Canadians, it's suburbia in a single-family home, baby," said Wahi CEO BEnjy Katchen with a laugh.
"It takes a long time to change culture. So, as a result, most people tend to want to live in the same kind of house their parents own. And, that's a house with a yard in the suburbs."
Wahi wanted to know what kind of homes appeal to would-be-buyers in order to give them more of what they want on the platform.
"The government may tell us we should live in condos to create denser cities and use less land," said Katchen.
"But, most of us don't want to live in a condo."
The survey results may be surprising to some for their conservatism and conventionality.
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The preferences were collected from potential home buyers who see themselves buying in the next five years.
So, that means those thinking of making the jump from renting to ownership and those looking at selling their existing home and buying another.
As such, that doesn't mean the 64% is actually buying a renovated, single-family house in the suburbs.
But, that is the aspiration.
Reality, aka house unaffordability -- especially in the most expensive cities across the country, including Kelowna, Victoria, Vancouver and Toronto -- means renters may stay renters and those that eventually pull the trigger may end up buying a condo or a townhouse because they are typically cheaper than a single-family home in the 'burbs.
"Yes, there comes a time when expectation vs. reality kicks in for first-time home buyers, who are usually a couple, and they have to compromise on their dream," said Katchen.
"That generally means starting with a condo or a townhouse or 'drive 'til you qualify.'"
Drive 'til you qualify is going farther and farther out of town until you find a house you can afford.
Using Kelowna as an unaffordability case in point, the benchmark selling price of a typical single-family home is just over $1 million, a townhouse $723,000 and a condo $506,000.
In Kelowna, as is the case in most mid-size and big cities, the push is on to encourage more people to live in land-saving condos and townhouses in urban centres.
During the first half of this year in Kelowna, construction started on 2,558 multi-family units (apartments, condos and townhouses) and only 156 single-family homes.
The Angus Reid-Wahi survey didn't break out responses for specific cities.
But, it did so provincially.
In BC, when potential home buyers were asked where they would prefer to buy a home, 43% said suburbia, 33% urban and 24% rural.
The biggest suburban response was from Saskatchewan at 55%, the largest urban yearning from Manitoba at 48% and the biggest rural aspiration in Atlantic Canada at 59%.
Thumbnail photo credit: Wahi
