80% of Canadians now believe owning a home is only for the rich: poll

The dream of home ownership seems to be slipping further and further away for Canadians who are not already in the market.

That is the sentiment from a new Ipsos poll conducted earlier this month, which sampled 1,000 Canadian adults.

“Quotas and weighting were employed to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the Canadian population according to census parameters,” Ipsos explained.

The poll found that 80% of Canadians think that home ownership is now only for the rich, an 11-point increase compared to when the same question was asked a year earlier.

The Ipsos poll also found that 72% of Canadians who are not home owners already have “given up on ever owning a home,” up nine points from March 2023.

Over half of those polled think average home prices will increase (58%) and don’t believe enough housing will be built in Canada to keep up with demand (52%).

In addition, exactly half of respondents believe immigration will continue to drive high demand, and that feeling is higher in Boomers (58%) than Millenials (47%) and Gen X (46%).

And while housing costs continue to be a major concern for Canadians, daily expenses are proving to be an increasingly large stress on wallets as well.

In a separate Ipsos poll conducted earlier this month, 83% of Canadians said their weekly grocery bill has increased since the fall.

The large majority of people who have seen their grocery bills rise in the last six months said that the increase reported that the increase was up to $50 (36%) or between $50-100 (26%).

However, increases of $101-150, $151-200 and $201+ were reported by 7% of respondents in each category.

According to Ipsos, the average increase for the 83% of people who said their grocery bills have gone up was $78.90.

Click here to see the Ipsos poll on home ownership and here to see the poll on grocery prices.