Home rehabilitation mortgages – smaller sized and much more easily financed compared to bigger mortgages accustomed to finance new house construction for which happen to be disparagingly dubbed ‘McMansions’ – could be an increasing element of the Canadian mortgages market because the baby boom generation goes into retirement. Canadians might be more and more purchasing home renovations and upgrades instead of building new, ‘greenfield’ homes – approximately statistics for 2007 released through the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Canada’s federal mortgage insurer, appear to point. Which, before Canadian homeowners observed secondhand the implosion from the U.S. housing industry.

Based on the CMHC’s Renovation and residential Purchase Report released in May of 2008, homeowners in Canada’s ten major urban centres spent over $19.7 billion on home renovations in 2007 – and that’s only in Canada’s largest urban centres, and not the smaller sized metropolitan areas, suburbs, villages and towns scattered coast to coast. Based on the CMHC’s estimates, “1.5 million households in ten of Canada’s major centres indicated they’d completed some type of renovation in 2007.” To interrupt individuals figures lower further, that is representative of 37 percent of homeowner households during these major centres, with 31% of these households undertaking renovations that cost more than $1,000 Cdn.

Statistics across Canada’s five major regional centres – Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax – implies that the typical amount allocated to home renovations in 2007 was $13,200 Cdn, slightly over the $12,800 average for those ten major regional centres. That isn’t McMansion money, but neither could it be chump change or perhaps a mere trifling amount.

How come Canadians invest so heavily home based renovations? “The primary reason provided by households for renovating in 2007,” based on the CMHC, “ended up being to update, add value in order to prepare to market – 59 percent. (While) 27 percent of respondents mentioned the primary reason behind renovating was their home needed repairs.”