Young homebuyers spend more than planned, need help from family
By Diana McLaren • Bankrate.com

"They got caught up in them, offering more than the asking price only to lose the house. After several times, emotion takes over and they became determined not to lose another offer, so they bid higher than planned. There's a lot of hype around everything to do with buying a house," Smith says, "and we are doing everything we can to resist getting in over our heads."

Tradition favoured
Both Corbett and Smith reflect their generation in another area of the research -- location and type of home.

"Younger buyers are rejecting condos and townhouses in favour of traditional houses close to the city," says Wisniewski. Sixty-four percent of younger Canadians purchased a house in the city versus 50 percent of people 55-plus.

"Access to the subway was a big factor for us," says Corbett. And while their new home is on the fringe of east-end Toronto, it's still only a few blocks from a subway stop. "I work downtown and all of our friends are downtown, so we didn't want to feel that we couldn't still be part of the city. We also wanted a yard for Daphne to play in."

He says that in their previous downtown rented condo, "I couldn't even find a place to take her for a walk in her stroller."

Shopping for rates
Financing such a large debt weighs heavily on Smith's mind, and he is already looking carefully at mortgage options before starting his actual house hunting. That is consistent with the generational study's findings that 62 percent of older homebuyers financed at a bank where they were already a customer, compared to only 36 percent of younger Canadians.

"For sure we will shop around for a mortgage," says Smith. "Just like with house prices themselves, there's a lot of hype where mortgage rates are concerned. Even if the interest rate is low now and it's fixed for five years, I know it will end up higher eventually. It's a huge amount of debt to take on, so I'm just trying to mitigate the effects of the hype by trying to take my time."

Feels like home
One finding that interested Wisniewski in the survey was the generational difference in responding to the statement, "It's just a house."

"Only 30 percent of younger folks said they agreed with that statement while 41 percent of older people said they did," she says. She speculates that it reflects an older generation that thought of buying a house as "just something you do, the natural order of life."

The old adage that "a house is not a home" rings true for the Corbetts.

"We constantly asked ourselves when we moved in whether this feels like home. That's what's important to us, to feel like our house is our home, a place to raise our daughter and to feel like we are part of a community."

Diana McLaren is a writer living in Toronto.