Movers and new construction

The map estimates the share of movers that moved into new buildings. More specifically, it looks at the population that lived at a different address 5 years prior to the 2016 census and compares that to the number of homes built 2011 or later multiplied by the average household size (of the population 5 years or older) in each region. The multiplier of the household size is needed to translate between households and people, but it is a rough fudge factor that is likely to over-estimate the share of movers into new buildings if the new buildings have smaller average household sizes compared to the overall stock, which is often the case if e.g. new construction is denser and has a higher share of 1-bedroom homes. Moreover, this is counting people who moved at least once over a 5 year timeframe, which under-estimates residential mobility because some people move more than once. While generally over-estimating the share of movers moving into new construction, this map gives a general idea how much moving is dominated by old buildings. In the City of Vancouver this map estimates that 16% of movers move into new construction, while in neighbouring area around UBC 30% of movers live in new construction. Some of that difference is explained by the City of Vancouver's (occupied) dwellings growing by roughly 8% whereas the dwellings in the area around UBC grew by 27%. Here we estimate the occupied dwelling growth by taking the number of occupied dwellings built before 2011 as the baseline. We can show the relation ship between dwelling growth and share of the population moving into new housing. Residential mobility is a lot more complex and depends on other features, we have learned from the Canadian Housing Survey that residential mobility is below average in Metro Vancouver and Toronto, and we know that residential mobility has been falling over the years. There is also interesting work exploring the role of new construction "priming the pump" and enabling residential mobility through vacancy chains.

Author: CensusMapper Team

Dataset: CA16