Toronto Star
Real Estate: Six in 10 GTA homeowners plan to buy again within five years
Sales are falling and prices are rising, but most GTA homeowners says they will buy again in the near future
Real estate prices continue to rise, but a new Bank of Montreal poll says that hasn’t damaged GTA homeowners’ belief in the market.
According to research released Wednesday morning, 57 per cent of local homeowners polled plan to buy a new home within the next five years. That figure was down two per cent from last September, but 11 per cent ahead of the national average.
While the number varied widely in other cities compared with last autumn’s poll, BMO analyst Sal Guatieri says GTA homeowners’ intentions to buy in the future will hold steady for the rest of this year.
“Maybe people are sensing more stability,” says Guatieri, a senior economist with BMO Capital Markets. “I would not expect people to become more optimistic and jump into the market, but I don’t see a further fall back in sales, either In Vancouver and Calgary homeowners’ confidence in the future of the housing market was much more volatile.
When surveyed last fall, 53 per cent of Vancouver homeowners polled planned to buy a new home within five years, while 52 per cent of respondents in Calgary expressed the same intention. But by May, the percentage of Vancouver residents with new home plans had jumped to 58, while in Calgary that number slumped to 39 percent.
“That left us scratching our heads,” Guatieri says. “We expected the opposite because Calgary is supposed to be close to fair value. Affordability is quite good there.”
One possible explanation, Guatieri says, is that even though Vancouver remains an expensive place to buy a home, real estate prices there have begun falling, which in turn could prompt prospective home buyers to feel confident about finding a better deal in the future.
The survey, conducted for BMO by Pollara, also found that 46 per cent of homeowners under 40 planned to buy a new home within five years.
Compared to last September, respondents were also less sensitive to changes in price. The percentage of Ontario residents who said they would buy a new home remained steady, even when pollsters introduced a hypothetical five per cent price increase.
Nationwide, four per cent fewer residents said they would buy a home if prices rose five per cent. Last fall the hypothetical price hike slashed the intention to buy a home by 10 per cent.
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