Home ownership is out of reach for most Gen Zs, but there’s a better way to build wealth
Home ownership is increasingly unattainable for many Gen Z individuals, particularly in high-cost cities like Toronto and Vancouver. Instead of pursuing home ownership, some young adults are finding success in renting and investing in the stock market. This approach has allowed them to build wealth and achieve financial independence more effectively than traditional home ownership.
- ▪Average detached home prices in Toronto and Vancouver exceed $1 million, making home ownership a distant goal for many young adults.
- ▪Investing in the stock market has historically provided better returns than residential real estate, with significant growth observed over the past two decades.
- ▪The stock market offers affordability advantages, allowing for fractional investments, unlike the all-or-nothing nature of real estate purchases.
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| Original publisher | The Globe and Mail |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/retirement/article-home-ownership-gen-z-build-wealth-stock-market/ |
| Publication time | Thu, 21 May 2026 15:00:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-21T15:06:11.139Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-21T15:06:11.139Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | L3AhiSYtBCB5 |
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| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
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| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Open this photo in gallery:According to the Toronto Real Estate Board, between 2001 and 2025 the average house price soared from $253,658 to $1,067,861.Carlos Osorio/ReutersShareSave for laterPlease log in to bookmark this story.Log InCreate Free AccountThe dream of home ownership has been out of reach for many people in this country for some time. With average detached home prices in Toronto and Vancouver parked above $1-million, that traditional milestone of adulthood is about as reachable for most Gen Zs as the far side of the moon. Young adults have been sold a story that owning a home is the only path to building wealth, because that’s what our parents did. But my wife Kristy Shen and I discovered that it’s very possible to become rich as a renter.
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