Young families are driving a trend toward downtown living in Canada: report
Posted October 28, 2014 7:53 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – You may not get a big yard or a two-car garage, but the conveniences of city life are drawing more home buyers downtown.
Right across the country, younger families and millennials are leading the charge back to urban cores, foregoing the spacious house in the suburbs to take advantage of the downtown lifestyle.
A report jointly produced by the PricewaterhouseCoopers and the non-profit Urban Land Institute points out downtown properties are, of course, smaller but offer more conveniences.
It looks at a number of factors behind the shift, including the environmental costs associated with urban sprawl and the cost in time and money of lengthy commutes.
But one of the concerns brought up in the report is what will happen to these urban properties once the younger generation grows out of them.
Will they move out of the city core in search of larger homes, schools, and services; or will they go the way of New York and simply adapt to smaller living spaces?
The rapidly growing condo market has also raised concerns about an over-supply of units and whether the boom is overly weighted toward wealthy, foreign investors who lease the units to others.
Vancouver is among the cities leading the wave of urban residential growth though next year, along with Calgary and Edmonton.
