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Aging in place may be tough for baby boomers sitting on $163B in real estate equity

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METRO VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Aging baby boomers may be sitting on tens of billions of dollars in mortgage-free real estate in Metro Vancouver, but it could still be very tough for some retirees to downsize and stay in their neighbourhoods.

There are many people who have owned homes for decades in places like South Vancouver or the city’s West Side, where property values have gone stratospheric through the years while, at the same time, some of the older, single-family neighbourhoods have strongly resisted densification.

One of the region’s top realtors says boomers are sitting on $163 billion in equity, which will start to free up as people age and want to downsize. But Bob Rennie has told an Urban Development Institute meeting those anti-densification fights throw up roadblocks to building affordable housing to allow aging in place.

Quoted in the Vancouver Sun, Rennie says it will only get worse as downtown Vancouver approaches saturation and the number of new condos being built continues to decline.

The head of the BC Real Estate Association says when it comes to change, there is no silver bullet.

“When you look at it historically, community resistance to development is really a defense of property interests,” says BCREA president Cameron Muir. “They see some threat from increased densification around one of those interests, which may be equity or amenities they have in the community — things that they perceive as impacting their use and enjoyment of their property. And that’s going to continue, I think.”

But Muir sees an “ongoing element of compromise” throughout the Lower Mainland.

“It’s in terms of engaging current residents in the development process and coming up with plans that are suitable both for the future of the region as well as for people who own residences in those communities.”

However, he says those compromises are much easier to make around multi-use developments where there are transit nodes available than in long established neighbourhoods such as Dunbar or Marpole.

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