Chantel Zhang looks over the three towers in the new King Edward Village complex — a large residential project that is expected to appeal to Chinese and Vietnamese buyers. CREDIT: Mark van Manen, Vancouver Sun

Immigrants are more likely to purchase their own residence within the next year than their Canadian-born counterparts, according to a national home-ownership and mortgage survey released Wednesday by CIBC.

And more immigrants say they would rather put their money into real estate than investing it in the stock market.

Meanwhile, immigrants are more apt to take out riskier but lower-rate and shorter-term variable rate mortgages than would Canadian-born home buyers.

Among other key findings, immigrants who arrived in Canada later in life purchased their homes twice as fast as younger immigrants did.

In B.C., 26 per cent of homeowners and prospective purchasers said they were born outside Canada, compared to 15 per cent in the rest of Canada.

“The dream of home ownership has become a reality sooner for new Canadians who currently own a home,” said Paul Mims, CIBC vice-president of mortgages and lending.

“We also found that the older immigrants are when they arrive, the sooner they are able to purchase their first home.”

CIBC’s poll indicates that immigrants who arrive between the ages of 18 and 34 take an average of 8.9 years to buy their first home. By comparison, it takes less than half as long — just over four years — for those who arrive between ages 35 and 49.

Veteran Vancouver realtor David Campbell concurred with the survey’s findings.

“Immigrants want to put down roots and be Canadian, so owning a home is one way of doing it,” said Campbell, who over the years has sold hundreds of properties in the Strathcona and Commercial Drive areas.

“It’s at the top of their list. So some of them will struggle very hard to achieve home ownership.”

Often, especially among working-class immigrants, an entire family consisting of parents and several children will pool their resources to qualify for a mortgage, said Campbell, of Re/Max Real Estate Services.

He recalled the instance 10 years ago of three Filipino sisters in their late 20s who got together to purchase a modest five-bedroom, 1,950-square-foot home on Semlin Drive for $250,000.

One-by-one, the sisters got married and moved out, ultimately prompting them to get Campbell to sell the property for them last August for $335,000.

A new residential project coming on stream in Vancouver that is expected to have huge immigrant appeal is the 380-unit King Edward Village, being built by Tri-Power Developments at Kingsway and Knight, a well-known working-class immigrant neighbourhood.

While selling won’t start until May 1, project marketer Bob Rennie already has more than 1,200 people on a priority list, about 70 per cent of them with Asian surnames.

The condominium units are to range in price from about $150,000 for a studio, to $400,000 for a penthouse.

In the mid-1990s, a Vancouver Sun study of land registry data indicated that although Chinese and other Asians make up only about one-third of the Lower Mainland’s population, they accounted for more than 50 per cent of all homes sold.

When the $1-million threshold was factored in, Asians jumped to between 80 and 90 per cent.

Anecdotal evidence suggests those demographics remain largely unchanged, even if choices of property types may have.

“The trend hasn’t changed much in recent years,” said realtor Grace Kwok, co-owner of Anson Realty.

“Asian culture trains people at an early age to own their shelter. Only now, instead of picking monster homes, they are focusing more on condos.”

At two Richmond condo projects that Anson sold out quickly in recent months — the 225-unit Perla and the 97-unit Jade — Kwok noted the majority of purchasers were Chinese immigrants.

The CIBC/Decima poll, conducted between Jan. 29 and Feb. 10, was based on random telephone interviews with 1,267 Canadian household decision-makers across the country. A sampling this size has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 per cent, and results are considered to be accurate 19 times out of 20.

CIBC is Canada‘s second-largest residential mortgage provider, with $77.9 billion in loans under administration.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004