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Millennials' Home Ownership Dreams Can't Be Killed By Ontario's Reality

Not in Ontario, anyway.

You can take their prospects away. But you can't kill millennials' dreams of home ownership.

Not according to a survey by the Ontario Real Estate Association (OREA), anyway.

As many as one in four Ontario millennials (24 per cent) plan on buying a home in the next two years, a figure that's up eight points from last year, said the Ontario Home Ownership Index, released by OREA Wednesday.

Millennials were most likely to prefer a detached home (51 per cent), followed by a condo/apartment (28 per cent), and then a rowhouse/townhouse (13 per cent).

Respondents were primarily motivated by the "desire to own a home of my own" (38 per cent), followed by the "desire for a larger home" (28 per cent) and then by having a long-term investment asset (28 per cent).

And millennials aren't the only ones who won't let skyrocketing home prices dampen their aspirations of owning a home.

About 18 per cent of Generation X respondents said they were likely to buy homes in the next two years, a figure that's up by six points year-over-year.

The survey was released on the same day that the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) revealed that the average home price in the 905 area code, which covers the outlying regions of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), now exceeds that of the city of Toronto proper.

The average home in the 905 cost $720,462 in July, jumping 19.2 per cent from the same time last year.

It was $690,103 in the 416, up 11.7 per cent from 2015.

OREA spoke to 1,006 Ontarians as part of the survey, which took place between May 31 and June 2.

The results were slightly less optimistic than those contained in a survey released by the Bank of Montreal (BMO) in April.

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