Douglas Todd: Metro Vancouver is the ‘mortgage helper’ capital of Canada

The cities of Vancouver and Surrey have by far the most people who rent out a secondary suite, laneway house or half-duplex, according to a new Statistics Canada report.

Almost one-in-six homeowners in these two large Lower Mainland cities are “investor-occupants,” according to an innovative StatCan study of Canadian investors by Joshua Gordon and Joanie Fontaine.

The unusually high rate of Metro Vancouver homeowners who rent out units on property they also live on, which is the essence of the “mortgage helper” phenomenon, sharply contrasts to Ontario, where less than one per cent of homeowners are investor-occupants.

“While densification can take the form of large buildings, it can also emerge through more incremental forms of density, such as single-detached houses with secondary suites or laneway units, duplexes or triplexes,” says the report, titled A profile of residential real-estate investors in 2020.