“It’s becoming very difficult to justify not considering that wealth as part of a financial plan. We think it’s just a matter of time until the market fully realizes and adopts this as a central part of a retirement plan.”

Another factor that could spur the growth of Canada’s reverse mortgage market in 2022 is the growing reliance of many first-time homebuyers on the so-called “Bank of Mom and Dad,” with the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) noting in October that just under 30% of new buyers received help from family members in their home purchase during the previous year.

Booming house prices across the country have proven “increasingly prohibitive” for younger Canadians to enter the market, said McCabe, with parents or guardians who wish to make a gift payment now beginning to contemplate taking out a reverse mortgage as a means of facilitating that transaction.

“We’re looking at a pretty bleak scenario where potentially only the children of high-net-worth parents are going to be able to get into the housing market and drive wealth generation through homeownership,” he said. “That leaves out a wide swathe of younger people who don’t have the luxury of having wealthy parents to support that right.

“We think that the reverse mortgage is a tool to support down payments – what we refer to as a living inheritance. I think that is going to become an increasingly common use case of this product.”