Toronto

Still Short: Suppressed Households in 2021

Checking in on household suppression in Canada using 2021 data.

Jens von Bergmann Nathan Lauster

13 minute read

(Joint with Nathan Lauster and cross-posted at HomeFreeSociology) In May we estimated suppressed household formation across Canada using what we called the Montréal Method, finding strong evidence for suppression across many parts of Canada. As a reminder, we designed the Montréal Method to estimate housing shortfalls related to constraints upon current residents who might wish to form independent households but are forced to share by local housing markets. Now that we’ve got 2021 Census data out, it’s time to update our estimates.

25 Years of Structural Change

Taking the long view on changes in our dwelling stock by structural type.

Nathan Lauster Jens von Bergmann

7 minute read

(Joint with Nathan Lauster and cross-posted at HomeFreeSociology) How are big Canadian Metros growing? Can we see different patterns? Here we want to provide a brief look back at the last 25 years, exploring change over time from 1996 to our most recent Census in 2021. This is also a test of R skills for one of us, who began this post as a learning exercise drawing upon Jens' excellent CanCensus package and recent data updates.

Residential mobility in Canada

Residential mobility is essential for family formation, accommodating life changes, and the economy. A look at residential mobility in Canada over time.

Jens von Bergmann

8 minute read

This excellent NYTimes article on mobility in the US coming out today nudged me into doing a quick post on residential mobility in Canada. While there are lots of similarities between Canada and the US, there are some important differences when it comes to residential mobility. A while back Nathan Lauster compared residential mobility between the two countries and noticed that the declining trend in US residential mobility is much more muted in Canada, and may have reversed by the 2016 census, the last year for which we currently have data in Canada.

Estimating Suppressed Household Formation

Household formation is a complex process that is impacted by many factors. We explore the variation in household maintainer rates across Canada to estimate the CMA-level effects on household maintainer rates and suppressed household formation using Montréal as a counterfactual, paying attention to differences in age structure and cultural aspects.

Jens von Bergmann Nathan Lauster

24 minute read

(Joint with Nathan Lauster and cross-posted at HomeFreeSociology) TL;DR We develop and elaborate a Montréal Method for estimating housing shortfalls related to constraints upon current residents who might wish to form independent households but are forced to share by local housing markets. Applying simple versions of the Montréal Method to Metro Areas across Canada suggests that Toronto has the biggest shortfall, which we estimate at 250,000 to 400,000 dwellings, depending upon assumptions.

Transnational property ownership in Canada

We talk a lot about people living abroad owning property in Canada, let's take a look at Canadians owning property abroad.

Jens von Bergmann Nathan Lauster

6 minute read

(Joint with Nathan Lauster and cross-posted at HomeFreeSociology) We know transnational ownership of properties is real. But how should we define it? And how many properties are owned by who where? First to definitions. We’re primarily interested in ownership of dwellings, where we can define ownership of properties in terms of titles and – in the relatively rare case of corporate ownership – in terms of beneficial ownership. Given this start, we can define transnational ownership of properties in at least two ways, the key distinction being how we locate property owners.