{"id":48616,"date":"2015-05-08T20:09:36","date_gmt":"2015-05-08T12:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=48616"},"modified":"2015-05-08T23:23:21","modified_gmt":"2015-05-08T15:23:21","slug":"poll-canadian-homeowners-planning-to-spend-17000-in-renovations-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/05\/08\/poll-canadian-homeowners-planning-to-spend-17000-in-renovations-this-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Poll: Canadian homeowners planning to spend $17,000 in renovations this year"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"shutterstock\"<\/a>
shutterstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TORONTO — When Corinne McDermott’s mortgage came up for renewal, she and her husband considered moving.<\/p>\n

“We always thought this house would be our middle house,” McDermott said of the east-end Toronto abode she shares with her husband and two kids.<\/p>\n

But sky-high home prices, hefty realtor fees and land-transfer taxes deterred her. Instead she’s opted for a large-scale renovation — including building on a three-storey addition with an ensuite master bathroom and a walk-in closet — to the tune of roughly $150,000.<\/p>\n

“We’re creating our dream home, that we plan on never leaving,” McDermott said.<\/p>\n

Renovation contractors say soaring home prices in Toronto and Vancouver are encouraging many homeowners to pursue renovations instead of shopping for new homes.<\/p>\n

“They can’t afford to buy new, so what they’re doing is they’re improving the living spaces that they’re in now,” said Jon-Carlos Tsilfidis, the renovators council chair at the Building Industry and Land Development Association.<\/p>\n

According to a poll released by CIBC on Thursday, Canadian homeowners plan to spend an average of $17,142 on renovations this year, with basic maintenance such as painting, flooring and replacing appliances coming in as the top category for planned repairs.<\/p>\n

However, that’s down 13 per cent from last year, when homeowners planned to spend $19,754 fixing up their houses.<\/p>\n

The telephone poll of 1,020 Canadians conducted by Nielsen Consumer Insights is considered reliable within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.<\/p>\n

In Toronto, however, contractors say demand for renovations shows no signs of waning.<\/p>\n

“I can attest to the fact that we’ve never been busier,” said Brendan Charters, development manager at Eurodale Developments.<\/p>\n

Charters attributes the renovation boom to rock-bottom interest rates and soaring home prices, which mean that many people who bought properties years ago, when they were cheaper, now have excess equity in their homes.<\/p>\n

In addition, many professionals who work downtown are migrating towards the city core, where many of the homes were built between the 1930s and 1950s.<\/p>\n

“We have a very aging housing stock in Toronto that is ripe for renovation,” Charters said.<\/p>\n

Some contractors say weakening demand in western provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan, where housing markets have been hurt by the declining oil price, are likely dragging down the national average.<\/p>\n

“Canada is so diverse from coast to coast,” Charters said, noting that piping-hot real estate markets in the Greater Toronto Area and Vancouver are quite different from the remainder of the country.<\/p>\n

Brent Ballash, owner and managing director of Calgary-based Amorea Designs, says consumers are certainly spending more conservatively as a result of massive layoffs in the oilpatch.<\/p>\n

However, that could also end up boosting renovation spending since many homeowners would rather fix up their homes than purchase new ones during such uncertain times, he said.<\/p>\n

“Our experience is that people feel safer staying put and reinvesting in their current home when things are uncertain,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TORONTO — When Corinne McDermott’s mortgage came up for renewal, she and her husband considered moving. “We always thought this …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":48644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1482,18,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-news-ca","category-lifestyle","mauthors-alexandra-posadzki","mauthors-the-canadian-press1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}