The seemingly endless population growth projections for the Thompson Okanagan region are bringing infrastructure challenges to communities across the region.
But a new study reveals that while conversations about housing often focus on the rapidly rising cost of construction and financing, the secondary costs associated with buying a home 鈥� conveyancing, appraisals, legal services and mortgage broking 鈥� are also experiencing labour attrition shortfalls that could impact costs and timelines of building, buying and selling.
The study was produced by REIBC (Real Estate Institute of B.C.), a demography and demand report that had not been updated since 2007.
Andrew Ramlo, vice-president of advisory services with the Rennie Group in the Lower Mainland and author of the study, said the Thompson Okanagan region is expected to accommodate 236,000 new residents over the next 18 years, reflecting an ongoing significant housing demand for the region.
Ramlo said that population growth projection has declined slightly, impacted in part by immigration policy changes by the federal government which have recently been eased.
"Immigration itself is not a predominate growth indicator," Ramlo said, noting in the Thompson Okanagan the biggest impact is felt by in-country migration, particularly among retirees and seniors.
"In B.C. the Lower Mainland forms about 12 per cent of the population but absorbs about 50 per cent of the immigration population flow...but even if those growth projections have come down a bit, that is still a significant chunk of people who will be calling (the Thompson Okanagan) region home."
Migration patterns, he says, are not a statistical impact commonly incorporated into demographic or economic models, but is something the economic forecasting community is looking more at because of the impact of climate change.
"It is not just in the U.S., climate change is impacting people around the world...this notion of climate refugees has become increasingly important to understand, and for better or worse they are looking to temperate climates like ours to escape from extreme weather events," he said.
"Those numbers have been pulled down in recent years by immigration limitations imposed by the federal government, but in the longer term there is a growing pool of people who will see an increasing need to move north which will be felt across Canada."
But beyond the economic factors at play such as health, education and transportation infrastructure, Ramlo says a focal point of the study examines the workforce called upon to provide supportive services for real estate transactions.
"What we found is while there has been a lot of interest in the construction and development side, the demographic challenges fulfilling future labour force needs, what is going on is not as acute now as what we are seeing on the secondary costs of real estate transactions," he said.
For example, Ramlo says the trades workforce tends to be in the 25 to 44 age group, on the conveyance and mortgage broker side that age range is between 55 and 64.
"Anecdotally, the (Okanagan Thompson) region is very busy right now for appraisers, lawyers and notaries who do a lot of that secondary work. That will be an added demographic challenge in replacing those people as they leave the workforce and retire," he said.
While Artificial Intelligence offers technological improvements to reduce labour demand on real estate transactions such as for appraisals or other data collection services, the concept of buying a home, taking out a mortgage, remains one that requires personal interaction between the lender and the buyer/seller.
"It is the largest purchase most of us make in our lifetimes, and from my perspective not a process that can be wholly taken over by technology," he said.
