Real estate prices not keeping millennials away from Metro Vancouver: report

Metro Vancouver’s soaring real estate market isn’t scaring away millennials, according to a new report.

“An examination of population estimates for the region reveals that millennials are, in fact, not retreating from Vancouver, and that the population aged 20-34 years old has increased significantly,” Cameron Muir with the British Columbia Real Estate Association wrote in a recently published study.

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“In addition, home ownership rates for the millennial age group were significantly higher during the most recent census than in the previous decades.”

Using data from British Columbia Stats, Muir claims Metro Vancouver has seen an increase of 86,000 people aged 20-34 between 2005 and 2015, an 18 per cent increase. Metro’s Vancouver total population grew 9.3 per cent during that same time frame.

“Growth in this age group over the past 10 years has been so strong that they are now the most populace age cohort in the city by a wide margin,” the report said.

Thomas Davidoff, a professor at UBC’s Sauder School of Business, said the report is far from conclusive.

“The fact that there are more people aged 20 to 34 doesn’t tell me that the recent increases in prices aren’t chasing people away,” he said. “You need to do a deeper study and I’d be interested to see what they come up with when they do that.”