Traditional starter homes 'completely dead' in big cities: Realtor – Yahoo Canada Finance

For many young homebuyers, the days of being able to follow in their parents' footsteps and buy a traditional, detached starter home have largely come to an end in Canada's big cities, according to realtors.
"In most cases, I would say the traditional idea of the starter home is completely dead," Rhiannon Foster, the owner of the Opportunity Homes Collective under Century 21 In Town Realty in Vancouver, told Yahoo Finance Canada in a phone interview.
"Traditionally, starter homes used to be about 2,000 square feet and that was where families laid their roots down. And it's just not possible these days with the actual cost associated with larger cities."
Now, a starter home for many young Canadians is more likely to be a condo, she says.
That's the same trend that Cailey Heaps, a Toronto-based realtor and chief executive of The Heaps Estrin Team, says she's seeing, as the price of single-family homes has soared in recent years.
"It's remarkable to think about a starter home being north of a million dollars. That just seems wild to me, but in reality, that's what it is in Toronto unless you're in a condominium," she said.
The latest March data from the Toronto and Vancouver regional real estate boards show the average price of a detached house hovered around the $1.8 million mark in each of the cities, while a condo averaged roughly $740,000.
Another trend Heaps is seeing is some young buyers skipping over what would typically be thought of as their starter home and moving straight into their 'forever' home, a move that usually involves some form of inheritance money.
"A number of buyers, I think, are getting living inheritances from family so they can skip the starter home and get into a more permanent home," she said.
"I think a lot of that is the generation of parents who are now in their 60's, 70's or 80's that have accumulated so much wealth from their real estate. Although they never viewed it as an investment, it has turned out to be a very solid investment for them. And they want the same for their children."
Kyrsten and Ciaran Nicoll, who are both 29 years old and work full time, are in the process of closing on their first home, a one-bedroom plus den condo in a low-rise building in Vancouver. They have lived in their current rental unit in the city for a couple of years.
Part of the reason they are able to buy a home now is because of a financial windfall from Ciaran's grandfather that comprised most of the couple's downpayment.
They knew when they started house hunting that they likely weren't going to get a detached property and certainly not in the city of Vancouver.
"We knew we weren't putting a downpayment on a house. We figured we would be lucky if we were able to find a townhome but it was looking to be more smaller condos, which we were both comfortable with as long as it was bigger than the space we currently have," Kyrsten said via phone.
"It was kind of stressful and disheartening when you see all the costs and how high the market is right now, especially in Vancouver. We had to cross Vancouver completely off the list because there was nothing that we would have liked here within our budget."
They ultimately decided on a condo in New Westminster that came in under their maximum budget of $500,000.
Kyrsten says she'd be fine with staying in the condo for the next several years but isn't sure what their next step up in the property ladder might look like.
She says she'd prefer to stay in the Lower Mainland but might have to look further out to Surrey, Abbotsford or beyond if they want to get into a detached home.
The impact of shrinking starter homes is twofold, according to Foster. The first being that some couples are having to delay starting a family because it's "difficult to fathom how you would build a family" in a small one-bedroom condo.
The other issue is young people leaving B.C. altogether and heading to provinces with more affordable housing, such as Alberta, she says, a trend that's also seen in Ontario.
Both Foster and Heaps want to see more "missing middle" housing being built.
In the real estate world, the missing middle refers to the lack of mid-sized housing developments that bridge the gap between single-family homes and condo towers.
"The big issue in housing is how do we address that missing middle? How do we keep our talent in the city – so our nurses, our teachers, our healthcare workers – all of those people at some point are going to want to put roots down for their family. If they can't afford to do that in Toronto, we will lose them to periphery markets," Heaps said.
Michelle Zadikian is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance Canada. Follow her on Twitter @m_zadikian.
Download the Yahoo Finance app, available for Apple and Android.
Summer is one of the hottest times of the year to buy a home. The months of May, June, July and August are popular with potential buyers thanks to factors including kids being out of school for summer…
The property market has been on a rollercoaster ride.
On both sides of the Atlantic, people have recently been acutely worried about how the banking system would cope with higher interest rates.
Discover two top-quality REITs to secure lifelong, passive-income growth. Diversify your portfolio & enjoy steady returns with these real estate gems. The post Make a Lifetime of Growing Passive Income With These 2 Quality REITs appeared first on The Motley Fool Canada.
At the outset of the pandemic in early 2020, demand for second homes soared as those with the means jumped on low mortgage costs and higher savings rates. Like many pandemic-era trends, vacation home…
The Blaine Mansion is one of the last Gilded Age homes in DuPont Circle.
The property was once owned by an NBA champion.
In total, 30 real estate sales were registered in the area during the past week last week, with an average price of $635,883. The average price per square foot was $330.
When Precious Price bought her first home four years ago in Atlanta while working as a marketing consultant, she took advantage of her frequent business trips by renting out her house on Airbnb during her absences. “I knew I wanted to use that as a rental or investment property,” she said. “I began doing that, and it was honestly very lucrative.” Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times For Price, 27, and other young entrepreneurs of color, online short-term rental platforms li
Pushing broke out and police were called during a protest Friday against a Toronto company that served renovation eviction notices to tenants of two northeast London apartment buildings. The tensions flared as about 50 people took part in the rally, organized by the tenants' advocacy group ACORN, outside the two buildings at 1270 and 1280 Webster St. The tenants fear the rents charged for their units will be raised afterward, an increasingly common practice known as renoviction. Landlords can le
In total, 7 real estate sales were registered in the area during the past two weeks last two weeks, with an average price of $982,714. The average price per square foot was $504.
While television programmes such as Grand Designs celebrate houses made of steel, stone and glass, when it comes to the crunch, many people’s dream property remains a full-square Georgian house. The type of house a child would draw, they are distinguishable by their symmetrical pedimented entrances, stucco façades, classically inspired proportions and generous sash windows.
Since the 1980s, the economy has changed in ways that are simply difficult to describe. The real impact of inflation and wage stagnation isn’t apparent unless you dig deeper into the numbers. That’s precisely what a recent college grad did when her mother commented on the idea that young workers “expect too much.”
“I’m wondering if it wasn’t someone from the [Wyoming police department] that knew it was there…but one could only hope.”
The Russian air force suffered its worst day of losses in 14 months on Saturday after two fighter jets and two helicopters crashed in mysterious circumstances.
Another day, another slay.
Francisco De Jesus told King 5 News in Seattle that security agents met him at Charlotte airport after he arrived with his 13-year-old daughter.
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry went for a date in Santa Barbara at Sushi Bar, she was wearing a chocolate brown wraparound dress with long sleeves.
Former President Obama, with his wife, Michelle and daughter Malia, attended Sasha Obama's graduation from USC on Friday morning with a sociology degree.
During the chorus of "Bad Blood," fan clips of Taylor Swift performing in Philadelphia showed her appearing to scold a security guard in the crowd.

source