A factoid from a recent Statistics Canada study on homeownership and mortgages may cause some head scratching at first blush.

In 2016 — the year major Canadian markets were approaching all-time peak prices — the rate of homeownership in the country was actually higher than it was back in 1999.

According to Statistics Canada, 63 percent of Canadian families owned a home in 2016, versus 60 percent in 1999.

So what about that housing-affordability crisis? After all, by the final quarter of 2016, the median-earning Canadian household needed to use 44.2 percent of its pre-tax income to cover the cost of owning a home, according to RBC research from 2017.

That surpassed the 10-year average at the time (38.7 percent), was up 3.4 percentage points from Q4 2015, and remained well above the one-third of income Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation deems to be the threshold for true affordability.

Well, in the Statistics Canada report, researcher Sharanjit Uppal lays it out: “Almost all of this increase was because of population aging, given that families in older age groups are more likely to own their homes.”

Canadians under 35 years of age are more likely to still be in school and busy socking away money for a downpayment, Statistics Canada explains.

It’s yet another example of Canada’s aging population — for the first time ever, seniors represented a larger share of the population than children, as per the 2016 Census — impacting the housing market.

Another cohort appears to have supported the homeownership rate: recent immigrants.

Characterized as persons who moved to Canada within the last five years, recent immigrants saw their homeownership rate explode from 1999 to 2016.

By 2016, 39 percent of recent immigrants were homeowners, up from 17 percent in 1999.

“Despite the large increase in homeownership rates of recent immigrants, they remained less likely to own their homes than established immigrants and Canadian-born individuals,” notes Uppal.

If Canadian Housing Affordability is So Bad, Why Did Canada’s Homeownership Rate Rise? by Josh Sherman | Livabl