Canadian Funding Corp. Reviews CMHC Statistics

The Canadian Funding Corporation says that a profile of renovation intenders across the five major centres shows that the majority of intenders are between the ages of 25 to 44, while those who are 65 and over have the lowest intentions to renovate this year at 25 per cent.

Renovation intentions are highest among owners of older homes. Fifty-one per cent of households living in homes built before 1920 intend to renovate in 2008.

In fact, households living in homes built prior to 1945 had the highest incidence of actual renovations in 2007, with 48 per cent of households renovating. Of those who intend to renovate in 2008, the older the home the higher the proportion of households performing maintenance and repairs. On the other hand, the younger the home the higher the proportion of households performing alterations and improvements.

A large portion of households intend to renovate so as to update, add value, or prepare to sell their home, according to CFC CEO, Moishe Alexander.

Across the five major centres, 67 per cent of households who intend to renovate this year, will do so to update, add value, or prepare to sell their home.

Twenty-one per cent of households intend to renovate this year because their dwelling needs repairs, while 19 per cent say that it needs maintenance.

Renovation intenders in Toronto plan to spend the most on renovations

When asked what the household expected to spend on their renovations, the average estimate across the five centres was $12,880. Households in Toronto expected to pay the most on average ($14,920), while households in Halifax expected to pay the least on average ($8,200).

Spending intentions on renovations were, on average, underestimated, in 2007 by $1,000. Households surveyed in 2007 expected to spend an average of $11,270, while in actuality spent an average of over $12,800 on renovations for 2007.

Toronto homeowners underestimated their renovations, on average, by over $4,000, while those in Vancouver were off by only $800.

According to Canadian Funding Corporation CEO, Moishe Alexander, 40 percent of homeowners across Canada intend to renovate this year.

Across the ten markets surveyed, close to half of all homeowners reported having an intention to undertake home renovations valued at $1,000 or more in 2008. The share of households that intend to renovate in 2008 is greater than the share of households that undertook renovations of $1,000 or more in 2007 (31 per cent1).

The share of households that intend to renovate in 2008 is highest in Winnipeg and St. John’s at 50 and 48 per cent, respectively. Québec had the lowest share of households that intend to renovate in 2008 at 35 per cent.

In five of the ten markets surveyed, households were asked more detailed questions about their intended renovations. Thus, the analysis of the survey results for renovation intentions focus on these five centres: Halifax, Montréal, Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver.

Moishe Alexander says: A renovation intender is defined as a household that either commenced a renovation in 2008 or that intends to begin a renovation in 2008 and plans on spending more than $1,000 on the renovation.

According to Marty Lapedus, 40 per cent of homeowners across the five major centres plan on renovating this year.

Of those households who intend to renovate in 2008, more than half (55 per cent) had very high confidence that they would be renovating this year. Out of these households with high or very high probability of renovating this year, 2 out of 5 households intend to do some form of maintenance and repairs, while more than three quarters will undertake alterations and improvements, similar proportions to actual renovations completed in 2007.

Regionally, the share of households planning on undertaking maintenance and repairs was the highest in Halifax (48 per cent), while the share for alterations and improvements in Calgary was the highest at 85 per cent.

Only 13 per cent of households who intend to renovate felt that there was a low chance that they would start the work in 2008.