Posted By 
It seems Canada’s soaring real estate market has started to affect Millennial dating patterns. According to a survey coming out today from HSBC Bank Canada 61% of Millennials feel anxious about buying a property, so much so that shared financial (39%) or property (33%) goals are considered more important than looks when daters are considering a potential future partner.
HSBC adds that this obsession with shared property has a downside for Canadian millennials: “They are far more likely to say they had stayed in a bad relationship due to property (16%) than Canadians on average (6%).” Sounds like a possible basis for a new Millennial situation comedy!
All this is contained in Beyond the Bricks, an HSBC-sponsored annual global survey of almost 12,000 adults in ten countries, including 1,077 in Canada.
HSBC says that getting on the property ladder can be both exciting and stressful for Canadian millennial once they’ve found their perfect partner. Most (62.8%) Canadian millennials said financial considerations drove their last house move, and the top two reasons for the move were getting more house for their money (25.5%) or a lower cost of living (23.4%). And the biggest source of tension was accepting money from parents for the purchase (in 14% of cases.)
As for the baby boomers, HSBC says only one in five Canadian boomers feel overwhelmed by buying property, compared to more than half of Millennials (many of whom presumably are the Boomers’ children.) In fact, all age groups in Canada (25%) found sources of tension in applications, land surveys, fees and contracts associated with the mortgage process, although this was slightly more pronounced for Millennials (in 33% of cases.)
Nerves over the biggest purchase most will ever make
In a press release, HSBC Bank Canada senior vice president Barry Gollom says such anxiety is justified: “Close to 70% of Canadians own their home but less than 30% do so without a mortgage. It’s good to be a little nervous about the biggest purchase you’ll likely ever make. But you shouldn’t be overwhelmed.”
Unfortunately, the anxiety doesn’t end when the deal finally closes. In order to afford their new home, Canadians are more likely than their global counterparts to cut back on daily spending (30% plan to), or major purchases like cars or luxury items (29%) and/or curtail their social life (28%). There is a similar pattern globally but global respondents were far more likely to delay having children (35% versus just 6% in Canada), and much less likely to cut back on day to day spending (11%) than Canadians.
Obsessed with checking home prices
Millennials also keep a close eye on the value of their property once they’ve made the plunge, somewhat like those participating in the stock market. HSBC found more than a quarter of Canadian millennials admitted to checking on the value of there home at least monthly, while almost half (49%) say they check it annually.
Furthermore, on average, Canadians spend 2.08 hours a week viewing or reading about property, or searching for properties. While less than their global counterparts, that’s also more time than they spend reading to their children or talking to their parents on the phone.
On average, Canadians live in their current home for about 13 years, according to Gollom. Historically it’s unusual for the value of a home to decline over a decade, Gollom says, “so there’s no good reason to be checking the value frequently. It just creates unwarranted anxiety.”
