Small-scale individual investors held 9.6 per cent of British Columbia's housing stock in 2022, according to the Canadian Housing Statistics Program study.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Individual mom-and-pop investors owned about 10 per cent of the housing stock in Ontario and British Columbia in 2022, according to a Statistics Canada report examining investor ownership in the country’s residential real estate market.
The small-scale investors – or individual investors with up to five properties – owned 8.9 per cent of the housing market in Ontario in terms of assessed value, according to the study by Canadian Housing Statistics Program or CHSP.
Medium-sized individual investors, who have more than five properties, held 1.3 per cent of the inventory in the province.
The analysis was based on the assessed value of properties, not the number of properties.
In British Columbia, small-scale individual investors held 9.6 per cent of the province’s housing stock in 2022, while medium-scale investors owned 1.9 per cent.
CHSP, which is part of Statscan, started looking at the role of the investor during the pandemic. Near the peak of the real estate frenzy in 2021, investors accounted for one-fifth of all home purchases and were blamed for driving up home prices.
But at the time, there was no comprehensive data available on the size or type of investors active in the housing market.
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The study, which was released on Tuesday, showed that in the country’s two most expensive real estate provinces of Ontario and B.C., individuals held more of the investment properties than businesses and larger investors.
In Ontario, businesses owned 3.2 per cent of the residential stock in 2022. Institutional investors, which include pension funds, family offices and real estate investment trusts or REITs, owned 4.9 per cent of the housing inventory by assessed value.
In B.C., businesses owned 4.5 per cent and institutional investors accounted for 4.3 per cent of the stock.
In comparison, institutional investors owned a larger share of the housing inventory in Nova Scotia at 9.5 per cent and in Manitoba at 6 per cent.
Overall, investors held the largest share of housing in Nova Scotia at nearly 30 per cent, followed by PEI at 27 per cent. In Ontario, they accounted for 22 per cent of the stock and in B.C. it was one quarter.
The study also analyzed investor ownership across all types of rental homes. That includes condos and houses that individuals rent out and purpose-built rental buildings or apartment towers that are specifically designed for rental, not homeownership.
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In Ontario, small-scale individual investors held 52.6 per cent of the rental stock and institutional investors owned 23.6 per cent.
It was a similar story in Toronto, the country’s most populated city, and other major cities in the province such as Hamilton and Kitchener-Waterloo. In London, however, institutional investors held the largest share of the rentals at 46.5 per cent.
In B.C., small-scale individual investors held 49.4 per cent of the rental housing stock and large investors held 20.3 per cent. Vancouver and Victoria were similar with institutional investors accounting for more than a fifth of the stock.
The rental ownership cited in the study likely does not fully capture the inroads institutional investors have been making into rental-only buildings since 2022. Pension funds and large investors have been funding the development of purpose-built rental buildings. And as the condo market craters, some developers have been turning their condo developments into purpose-built rentals.
Recently, larger investors have been trying to buy some of the unsold new condo inventory in the Toronto region at a discount.
CHSP was established after the 2016 real estate boom in Toronto and Vancouver to better understand the housing market. The program uses tax filings and land registry information among other sources for its research.
The study did not provide information for Alberta, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador and the territories.