Homeownership

Who owns a home: by age at every census since 1971, three generations compared at the same age, what young owners own, and young adults’ homeownership by city

Owning a home is the largest purchase most Canadians make, and whether young adults can still make it is one of the most discussed questions about affordability. This page follows homeownership by age at every census since 1971, compares three generations at the same ages, shows what young owners own, and ranks the cities. Prices, rents, and household debt are on the Housing page.

Homeownership by age since 1971

Every census records whether a household owns or rents its home, and the age of the person who pays the rent or mortgage, the primary household maintainer. This chart shows the share of households that own, by that person’s age, at every census since 1971. Ownership rises quickly through the twenties and thirties and levels off after 60. The chart opens with the three young-adult groups and the all-ages line; use the legend to add the others. Among households whose primary maintainer was aged 25 to 29, ownership was 33.2% in 1971, 43.4% in 1976, and 42.2% in 2006, before falling to 36.5% in 2021. Across all ages, ownership peaked at 69.0% in 2011 and stood at 66.5% in 2021.

The 1971 and 1976 censuses identified a household head rather than the person paying for shelter, and the 2011 National Household Survey, a voluntary survey, published only ten-year age groups, so 2011 appears on the all-ages line alone. The rates for 1971 to 2006 come from a Statistics Canada study of those censuses; the later years are computed from the census tables.

Three generations at the same age

Counting households understates the change among young adults, because a 28-year-old living with their parents is not a household maintainer at all. A 2026 Statistics Canada study counts people instead: everyone aged 25 to 39 who lives in a home that a member of their household owns, leaving out those who live with their parents. On that measure it compares baby boomers in 1991, Generation X in 2006, and millennials in 2021, at the same ages. Among 25- to 39-year-olds, 49.9% of millennials owned a home, against 55.9% of baby boomers at the same age. The gap is widest in the late twenties, 31.3% against 39.0%, and narrows by the late thirties, 64.2% against 69.5%. Use the dropdown to compare eight metropolitan areas: ownership at these ages was lower for millennials than for baby boomers in 7 of the 8, with the largest fall in Winnipeg, from 59.3% to 51.3%. Part of the shift is in living arrangements: the share of 25- to 39-year-olds living with their parents rose from 8.2% to 16.3%, and among 25- to 29-year-olds from 15.7% to 31.1%.

What young owners own

The decline is concentrated in one kind of home. This chart splits the same young owners by the type of dwelling they own, so the height of each bar is the adjusted homeownership rate and the bottom band is the single-detached house. Nationally, 45.7% of 25- to 39-year-old baby boomers owned a single-detached house in 1991; 34.1% of millennials did in 2021. Use the dropdown for four metropolitan areas. In Vancouver the share fell from 36.3% to 12.2%, and in Toronto from 32.7% to 19.4%, while ownership of apartments in buildings of five or more storeys rose from 0.6% to 6.5% in Vancouver and from 2.6% to 7.8% in Toronto.

Young adults’ homeownership by city

The 2021 Census gives the household-based rate for every census metropolitan area. This chart ranks the 41 of them for households whose primary maintainer is aged 25 to 39; use the dropdown for the five-year groups or all ages. The rate ranges from 66.5% in Oshawa to 38.2% in Victoria, against 51.7% for Canada as a whole. What young owners own differs as much as whether they own: 65% of young owners nationally hold a single-detached house, compared with 22% in Vancouver and 39% in Toronto.

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