The Case for Lifelong Renting |
When I was growing up in Toronto in the 1990s, one message kept coming from older generations: purchase a house as soon as you can. I heard it everywhere. If you rent, you’re throwing money away. Buy land, they’re not making any more of it. Those lines were repeated so often that I internalized this pressure to get into the housing market as quickly as possible.
That mindset has been pervasive for decades because homeownership has delivered enormous wealth gains for many families. Between 1990 and 2023, Canadian housing prices increased by an average of 6.3 per cent annually, which helped multiple generations of homeowners build substantial equity. Back in 1999, the median net worth of homeowner households was $226,000, compared to $14,000 for renter households. Homeownership was the best financial strategy for so long that it became ingrained in our social narrative. Homeownership isn’t just seen as a financial choice; it’s treated as a marker of adulthood and responsibility.
When I started working in the financial sector in my mid-twenties, I looked at house prices and thought: there’s no way I can afford that. I was young and my income was relatively low. When my parents bought in the area in 1993, the average sale price was $206,000—that might cover a 20 per cent down payment today. Today, the average house in the Greater Toronto Area sells for just over $1 million. In 2000, the typical Canadian household needed about 35 per cent of its income to cover ownership costs. By 2024, that figure had climbed to 59.5 per cent nationally, and in Vancouver it reached an astonishing 98.6 per cent. For younger Canadians aspiring to be homeowners, the numbers have become so daunting that many don’t even bother running them. There’s no world in which they can afford to live where they want to and maintain the quality of life they want.
Many younger Canadians are now dependent on parental help to buy homes. In 2024, CIBC reported that the average down-payment gift for first-time homebuyers was $115,000—a 73 per cent increase from 2019. Thirty-one per cent of first-time homebuyers received financial help from family, compared to 20 per cent in 2015. But what does that mean for Canadians who don’t have access to family help and can’t accumulate sufficient wealth? Are they frozen out of the homeownership market forever?
That’s the situation I found myself in, and it didn’t help that I wasn’t financially literate. After I got my first credit card, I racked up $20,000 in debt because I was overspending, and I........