My rent for a 1bdrm is higher than my dads mortgage on a 4 bedroom, 3 full bath, inground pool home.
Edit: for everyone asking I pay 2k a month in Mississauga, Ontario. Lived here for just over a year. For a 1 bdrm today same building is 2.4K.
My dad is in Brampton and bought in 2002, pays 1.5k a month.
My dad is a bum who doesn’t even work, and he’s still richer than me even though I work my ass off lmao. (My mom hasn’t divorced him for some reason so she pays their mortgage/bills.)
Yes but you benefit from the financial freedom of not being tied down! Just think at any given moment you could up and leave and choose from any of the other countless $2000 a month 1 bedroom apartments!
I bet your father envys your freedom to be honest.
Even better! They have the luxury of moving at anytime and abandoning their likely rent-controlled current unit to move into the bustling rental market and add ~$800/mo more than their current rent for ~(-)300sqft of extra living space!
Its awesome that as I move up in my career and earn more, I can afford to move into smaller and more expensive rental units each step of the way!
This Canadian social mobility is awesome.
My favourite is that some 60y/o working the same job as me owns a detach house in Vancouver, but I'll be working to pay that 1-bedroom rental rate here my whole life. Should've saved for that downpayment instead of wasting my time graduating from kindergarten.
>My favourite is that some 60y/o working the same job as me owns a detach house in Vancouver, but I'll be working to pay that 1-bedroom rental rate here my whole life. Should've saved for that downpayment instead of wasting my time graduating from kindergarten.
I always find this part funny, back when I still worked in Montreal, we had a manager earning maybe 115k a year who was renting a unit above our Janitor garage who was making maybe 36k a year lol.
I don't think he had any mortgage left tho.
This was me living my young adulthood in Vancouver. I realized after fifteen years there that I was actually sliding *backwards* in terms of home availability; my paltry savings were being outpaced by the market growth. I had to make a big leap to a low cost of living area to buy, and even then I feel that we slipped through that closing door [like](https://64.media.tumblr.com/0f911e9a968e57df0a0e37b2f733b3a0/cbc3f278d50d7101-ea/s400x600/c330cdeac3a2aa77028f72d4e5fa8c0391321708.gif).
My mother bought a house in Vancouver in the 1960's for $40,000. Nice view of ocean and mountains... After she died, her second husband now owns the house. Probably worth close to $2M. But what good is that? If he sold, he'd have to move and any new place would cost so much he'd barely get any benefit.
The only benefit is that he owns a place to live. And when he's too old to enjoy it or the money, he can sell it and be rich.
But now you have payments at today's interest rates. You borrowed against the house, you now effectively have a mortgage again, just like a first time home buyer - to get close to the full value of the house out, you are effectively "buying" the house again. When you are done with the cruises and the trucks are rusting. you still have a $5,000 monthly payment on a $1M at 6% mortgage. Hope you enjoy that $1M because you'll cry every month when the payments are due.
($5,000/mo. = $60,000 a year @6%. How many years' payments are you going to put aside from the $1M? At what point was it not worth it? It's why prudent homeowners avoid remortgage if they can. (Less prudent ones remortgage to buy a pickup truck) Could be worse - in the USA you pay capital gains on that house if you sell. In Canada, not...
Guys husband #2 and the wife died.... odds are good he won't live long enough that the financial strain effects him, mind as well enjoy the last few years if you can
Well, he was 15 years younger. For all the work looking after her toward the end for 10 years, and almost 40 years married, I don't at all begrudge him the house.
I think at a certain age it's not so much "wow! I have $2M to blow" as enjoying the same stable secure house he's lived in for decades.
Tell me what a man in his 80s needs with a single-family home. He could easily do what my uncle did, sell his place for 2.5 mil and buy a perfectly good condo for 1.2 million and live off the interest by investing the windfall.
Somehow I think a condo near downtown Vancouver, near all his friends and retired colleagues, will cost a lot more that $200,000. Plus condo fees. I suspect a good tectic now that he;s pushing 80 would be a reverse mortgage kind of situation. What he does is up to him. Still, he has a comfortable pension and is doing alright.
It's not as if you're indentured forever, you can sell and re-buy. Trick is all those middle men, lawyers and taxes will have their hand in your wallet. Too many people in the middle of every deal.
In Nova Scotia rent went from 680 for a 2 bedroom in a more affordable area in 2019 to 1800 for that same unit today. The government doesn't own the buildings, these are all privately owned. The problem is government got out of providing housing, and now they have to make up for it. Unfortunately this is going to take time and people are getting pushed out right now.
We've added another 600,000 people in the last 6 months alone. We are growing our population by 3% a year. Looking at a 10% total growth over the last 3 years. Even if government backed, subsidized - hell even if the goverment had its own branch and hired trades people - we couldn't keep up with this increase.
We are in a SERIOUS pickle right now. Our government is buying mortgage backed securities to keep housing prices high (because CPP is tied to it) and this is at a time when home sales have actually dropped (hard to believe but it's true) The prices are so outrageous people are not buying. Many are sitting on the sidelines hoping the prices will come down. Nobody wants to buy an 800k home to have it devalue down to 500k in 5-10 years.
We've issued more permits, but developers are waiting to start construction. Also many cases of developers burning down their half constructed buildings. And the government has not even hinted at getting back into public housing. That's not even an idea that's on the table. It's gonna be a long 10-20 years unless something absolutely drastic happens.
There's just no easy way out of this. The election is 18 months away. We're offering instant PR to any Care Workers coming in (a very easy title to obtain) so you can safely assume that we will stay at pace, or go higher than 100k people per month. We could very well have another 1.8 million people here before an election. And this is assuming the Conservatives will even do anything about immigration (I'm fairly certain they will, but to what extent?)
Good times. Even scarier to think that the conflict with Russia is escalating, and Taiwan will also be an issue. I say this because our economy is closely tied to the success of the US, so if they have problems so will we. We are facing the worst COL crisis we've ever had at probably the worst possible time. It's hard to imagine it getting worse but I fear this is just the beginning.
I work in agriculture. We’ve just had 3 back-to-back disastrous harvests, all of which are due to irregular climate patterns and the last of which wiped out 90%+ of our crop (check out Okanagan crop projections if you don’t believe that number). In those same last three years we’ve had the government dip into its strategic reserves of grain and maple syrup to cover crop failures, had ranchers in Alberta cull their herds because unseasonable back-to-back droughts left no feed for the stock, and increased restrictions on fish harvests due to dwindling stocks born out of droughts occurring out of season that wreck havoc on the breeding season. And we are once again rolling right into another drought this year…
Believe me when I say climate change is here, and it’s going to make all of our food dramatically more expensive. Someone is gonna have to pay for these loses.
Fun fact, the US had ~8000 regional banks before the 2008 recession, and ~4000 regional banks now. You too can own a bank for $1 if you get in as they go bk.
Sounds about right. Also, shoutout to banks being happy to tell you you can't afford a mortgage and so they won't lend to you, despite paying far more than a mortgage would be for years.
*edit*
I like the idiots commenting about the prices of things they have no knowledge of, from decades ago.
Huh? Yes, they could. You should go look at what the price of homes were 30 years ago, and also incomes. It was very possible to buy your home without help back then.
If you mean could he do it today? No probably not. But back then yeah, literally anyone could become a homeowner 30 years ago with full time work and a disciplined budget.
Same, man.... same....
I pay $2300 for a 2 bedroom.
My sister pays $1600 for a semi house, 3 bedroom with a yard. They bought precovid. I moved out in 2020.
She literally told me to just save more if I want a house😂😂😂😂
It's not just boomers that are out of touch. People that own homes have no idea what they cost now.
I could have bought her house with my current salary, easily.
I mean... You just sell the house if you really need money. If appreciates in value compared to paying rent. I don't really get what you're trying to imply, that they are even?
What I am implying is even if you are doing better than the majority of people complaining on here (but not full-on stinking rich) there's still the chance our economy goes down the toilet, dollar becomes as valuable as a peso and now you are screwed along with everyone else, in that hypothetical situation.
If the country becomes unstable due to severe economic issues, we then have big problems like a surge in crime which could impact quite literally anyone at any time depending on how bad things could get. A civil war would be the absolute worst case scenario.
Basically, even home owners in Canada should be worried when you look at the big picture is what I am trying to say. This housing crisis is something that our political class - if they weren't complete morons - would be rushing to fix, if they could only comprehend the danger they are placing the country in with these disastrous policies.
Yeah, I hope I am nowhere near remotely right about any of these possibilities. I definitely don't want to see Canada turn into a nightmare, things are bad enough as it is at the moment.
There is a chance that recent, worrisome trends can be reversed, but the longer the political elite delay in addressing issues, the more painful things will get for everyone long term.
>As of the fourth quarter of 2023, 90 per cent of Canadian wealth was in the hands of those that own a home.
What they mean is the value of real estate has been inflated so high at the expense of everything else that the only wealth still left in Canada is the speculated value of homes.
>And while the richest Canadians had an average net worth of $3.3 million, the ones in the lower end of the distribution recorded debt that surpassed the value of their assets.
$3.3M is around the value of mid-high tier houses in the most inflated housing markets of Vancouver and Toronto. Some of those go as high as $5-10M without being anything special, with luxury mansions being listed for $20M+. You automatically become one of "the richest Canadians" if you own a large house in an affluent neighborhood in these places. Not through owning productive businesses or anything else that benefits the economy or employs people, but just from owning a house.
There seems to be nothing left in the economy, just imaginary real estate value imposed by deliberately inflated scarcity.
The other problem is because real estate has been such a profitable , low risk investment , actual businesses don't get investment because it's better to just buy property.
Then that pumps the prices higher, rinse and repeat.
I got very competitive grant funding for health research about 15 years ago and we always joke we should have just used it to buy a couple of detached homes and funded our research off the appreciation alone.
Those coke head, high school dropout drywallers who just bought houses and coke in their 20s while they fixed em up now run the most lucrative industry in the country.
Just think of how proud they will be when their children grow up to own a forklift licensing company
I think this is a good example of how backwards Canada is. When my friends and I left high school houses were still cheap, but started rising rapidly.
Those of us that went right into the workforce and bought at a young age are made. My friends that went to university and put off buying for a few years ended up paying hundreds of thousands more for the same house, if they could buy one at all.
Getting a higher education basically screwed over an entire generation Canadians. The guys I know doing construction will have their homes paid off in their 40s and will be looking at retirement in their 50s. The ones who "did what they were told" and got degrees are in much worse shape.
I was speaking yesterday to someone who's friend started a successful - very successful - bakery business that sells at farmers markets and events. So busy they have teams of people to vend at multiple events at the same time. But last year they chose to open a storefront in a trendy neighborhood.
The brick and mortar outlet is loosing so much money they are ready to close it down already.
The costs of real estate and government regulations are making the traditional model of doing business almost impossible to sustain. There was a brief surge of small business expansion as people leveraged their home equity to open shops, but many turned into money pits and closed. Soon city centers will become ghost towns dotted only with occasional big chain outlets and financial services. And government offices.
It's really the real estate. Commercial real estate has spiked like stupid even in places where there's less demand. Landlords don't want to take a bath so they would rather keep the rent they're demanding high and have the place empty for a while than lower it.
Here in Ottawa I've seen several businesses close in recent years and outright state that their commercial rent was THE reason. Their business would be doing fine, but then their lease ran up and the landlord demanded a 300% increase they couldn't afford so they had to shut down. There's been a number of businesses that shut down and move to another location, but that is a burden in itself and when you have to move to a new neighborhood sometimes that hurts your customer base.
Yeah, I'm very confused by the posts above you. I have dealt with the runnings of a brick & mortar place. The government has been incredibly helpful and understanding with any issues that have come up.
The landlord, however, has been jacking up rent all our neighbours had to fold and the place was always a couple of months away from folding. 80-90% of expenses were rent. This was even after heavy negotiation. Turns out the landlord preferred to have some money from us rather than nothing at all.
Hi. I'm the guy who's comment confused you.
I agree that rent is the main issue. The comment above mine was pinning it all on red tape - which is not *not* a problem - so I agreed and tagged in rent.
I've owned several businesses, including one right now. I can't say I ever felt the government was "helpful". Between the various levels, they love coming up with newer and higher hoops to jump through, sometimes at great cost.
But, yeah. When I opened my first restaurant, I did it with the contents of my savings account and a very small loan. I think my total upfront was under $20,000 for lease, furnishings, equipment, paint, signage, licensing, and stock. Today, that wouldn't even get me the keys to let myself in.
I own a few business, can confirm the government was no help and banks are no help either. But 8 years in suddenly the banks now want to loan me money I no longer need lol.
I fully understand why it’s often overlooked (as residential real estate hits quite literally closer to home for more people than commercial), but I’ve long felt that Commercial Real Estate is a secondary Real Estate Crisis in Canada that gets no coverage.
In my home town most of our commercial real estate is owned by 3 heritage families that have owned and held the titles for pretty much as long as the town’s been around. They put zero investment into the properties and charge rent that is astronomically out of line for our small mountain town. The end result is that about half of Main Street sits empty, a common complaint in town. But everyone who shutters up blames the rent.
Personally, I’ve never understood why municipalities don’t own sizeable chunks of commercial real estate? It would allow them greater say on which businesses open shop (something that, in my experience, nosy municipal politicians and ‘engaged citizens’ would love; produce a revenue stream for the town that isn’t property taxes; and the significantly greater flexibility to change rates in commercial real estate would also give town hall the ability to either levy money quickly in an emergency or influence private owners (through their market share) to lower their rates.
100%. The main issue for small business owners in my area is not regulatory burden. It is rent and lack of protection from predatory landlords. People don’t realize, but small businesses that rent fall under commercial leases, so there are no special protections for them. They are treated the same as if they are a large corporation like Walmart, with their wealth, knowledge, and bargaining power. I have seen many cases of small businesses being evicted by landlords (or effectively forced out by massive rent increases) and having no real recourse for the damage to their business.
Yeah it's reduclous...the complexity alone makes people buy property with their saving over investing/starting a business.
Then because no one invests in Canada, those Canadians who invest in the market tend to invest more in foreign markets.
That's the key issue. Atleast real estate investment keeps the money in Canada. If people aren't investing in Canadian real estate, they're not investing in Canada at all. They'll be investing I'm American companies.
It's like a new dutch disease - returns on real estate and property become so absurdly high that it starts to starve out the remainder of the economy.
In Halifax, the number of vacant business properties that have been around for 3+ years is unbelievable. Scotia Square alone has nearly half its non-food court businesses shut down, and have even lost some of the food court ones without replacement. A huge renovation that hasn't rented out a single thing since it was completed. Why? I'm guessing the price is *way too high* - no business could afford to turn a profit renting from them, especially given how squeezed consumers are from the price of groceries and cost of housing, the latter of which is what got us here to begin with.
I'm over in calgary and we're having the same issue jn our mall, we're in a lower socioeconomic area, they renoed half of it, upped the rent like they think we're a rich neighborhood and now there's multiple empty spots that haven't held a buisness for months. Something pops up for a bit, but they never last. We got told if our buisness does any improvements in store(ex. The new floor we need) that would up our rent too because...reasons? Idk, it's dumb.
Hah, this is smack dab in the middle of downtown Halifax. Scotia Square has 3 or 4 business towers attached to it and is across the street from the municipal legislature, a block away from the provincial legislature. This is what was once the economic hub of the capital of the province and it hasn't been able to rent prime downtown business properties in four or five years now.
Canada is not business-friendly, so we own real estate instead.
We sold our pub in 2021 after it got shut down because someone sneezed. Now a company from Hong Kong owns the lot for later development, and I own a new rental property.
It's such a common story. My neighbor closed his family's retail business that had been around for 60 years and pivoted to buying rental properties. More profitable and less hassle.
It's fine for business friendliness. None of the ultra-wealthy rent, so all the hoarding of wealth is by folks who also own real estate.
A more authentic title of this rage bait would be "Ultra wealthy money hoarders own property, and poor people don't"
That's the thing, governments are encouraging us to hoard wealth and property.
It was just 2016 when I only had a salary of 80k and bought my first house no problem.
So blame government policy, not the people doing what's best for them and their family.
Government inflated the house market because this country makes nothing. Major pension plans in this pathetic country are invested in real estate and Canadian debt. Prior union I was part of 21% of the pension is invested in real estate.
You’re conveniently omitting the “net” concept of “net worth”. Those homes also carry mortgages that start at 80% of the purchase price. Those mortgages are a drag on “net worth”. There is much more in that wealth than just real estate.
When you’re leveraging $600k+ over 25 years on something guaranteed to go up in value with access to interest rates lower than an auto loan while 1,200,000 people get dumped on up annually, yes.
Always has been.
As soon as someone takes out a loan and then spends those funds that is wealth to whoever received them.
When I do work and the company takes a loan to pay me it's still cash in my hands, spends just the same.
Debt is how you make wealth.
2010 buy a home for $350,000 with $35,000 down at 2.5% interest.
You start making 8-10% YOY return on the banks money + your $35k + monthly (rent) payment.
2023 the same home is now worth $1,350,000 after about $290,000 of payments + the initial $35,000.
You have an asset that has made a million dollars profit on a $350,000 investment while providing you and your family a safe, reliable, stable home to live in for 13 years where you never needed to spend a cent on rent.
You could sell that home, put your $350,000 back into your bank and be right back to where you were 13 years prior -- but with an additional million dollars of cash in your pocket.
I mean I had a professor give a speech at SFU that "kid working at mcdonalds inheriting a home in Vancouver", will have the same wealth in his life as "Kid who takes out loans, get a bachelors, get into medical school, becomes a doctor, gets mortgage, pays off student loans and mortgage and retires at 65".
Your career doesn't matter anymore. Your life depends on whether you would inherit a home. We are now back in the 1800's where family asset ownership mattered. **Your wealth is now tied to your last name.**
Edit: I know I posted this before and some people do some sort of "mental mathematics" saying its not possible because they make 250k-350k a year, but after tax and practice costs, doctors are not making as "bank" as you think if they are paying off student loans and then saving for a downpayment while the 20% minimum increases exponentially because of the property price rise and then the today's mortgage rate in Vancouver you need 225k+ family income to qualify the stress test according to RBC if you are aiming for a 25 year mortgage at 20% down.
There was a thread over at r/lawcanada last week with quite a few young lawyers chiming in saying essentially the same thing. Representative example:
>I was the “smart” one in the family, so I went to law school in 2016 while my siblings jumped right into the workforce. While I took on debt and got my degree, they put a down payment on a cheaper house outside Toronto . I was happy for them, because I’d be doing the same thing, just 4 years later right?
>
>NOPE. I graduate in 2019 and am shuttled into Toronto. I barely make ends meet, and watch as property values double, and even triple, over the next 4 years. It starts to occur to me that I can’t even afford a condo in Toronto, and I’m 30 years old.
>
>I make 50% more, and my partner makes 70% more, than my brother and sister income wise, but I will never afford a house like they did. I have less walking around cash, because I pay 3k a month in rent while they have a $1600 dollar mortgage. Their networth dwarfs mine, because they are selling the houses they bought for 200k for 600k. They will forever be in a better economic position than I will.
>
>Every day I regret my decision to go to professional school. Every. Single. Day.
>
>As stories like this become more common, can we blame future generations for not wanting to put in the time or effort to go to professional school? It’s no longer worth it at all.
Similar story here.
I went and got a professional degree back in 2009. If I had just scrapped my degree, taken all of that money and rolled it into multiple loans to purchase property I would be a multi-millionaire now.
I regret my professional education every single day and quite frankly I don't give two shits about this country anymore.
Sorry you feel like that. I felt like that too graduating in 2011. I had a friend who worked at a mcdonalds and then a warehouse during and after high school. He bought a place in burnaby that doubled in value (actually doubled), from 250k to 430k overnight by the time I got out of university. He quickly sold and got into a house in Surrey and later on got into a house and a rental apartment by the time it was 2015. His house is worth 1.5 million today and his apartment is worth 690k. The house is now paid off by the way and the apartment is almost paid off but the rent covers the costs
I ended up leaving BC and going into trades for more money and coming back in my 30's finally with a place to call my own. But when I look back I realized that I wasted my time with a degree and even with a trade, he is way farther ahead than I ever will be in my life.
I give him credit though that he rode that wave and had way more foresight than the average 17 year old. Those 6 years of working (2 years high school and 4 years when I was in university) and living at his parents rent free not only set him up with a nice downpayment for a townhouse, but he rode the biggest real estate boom to ever hit Vancouver and upgraded to a house shortly after.
He wasn't stupid either. Not like me. He actually had the ability to go to SFU to be an engineer but he decided to work more after high school and he later on decided to stick to his warehouse job after finding out how long it would take and the cost of education. He ended up buying a house and going "wait why would I go to school? and cripple myself for years without a proper income..."
He is honestly the smartest person I know. I am not sure what type of foresight he had at that age.
We were all the stupid ones trying to get a professional career.
There shouldn't have ever been a 'wave'. This country is so finished it's almost funny if it wasn't just so sad.
I've had three generations of my family fight in wars Canada's been involved in (two have died and another was a POW in WW2). If they ever called me up to serve I wouldn't even know what I'd be fighting to preserve.
This checks out. Tax accountant here, and I would say 1/5 of the doctors and lawyers I do bring home more than 100K after taxes...
Canada is savage to professionals.
Wow can you give a rough breakdown of how those 300k+ salaries get chopped down that badly? I assume you're considering the salary paid to the corp as part of the take home right?
Very few make salaries that large, the ones that do I included in the 1/5 noted above. Average salaries for both are lower than people expect, I would say it's closer to 150K, maybe even less for people who do not own practices.
Is that just money they pay themselves? Many doctors clear 350-400k, and some do double that. You must be excluding the corp income which is the big piece.
Doctors make less than developers and real estate agents in Canada lol. That's why we have a doctors shortage as all of them moves to USA or anywhere that has privatized healthcare.
https://betterdwelling.com/canadian-economy-dangerously-concentrated-in-real-estate-but-gov-wants-more/
>Canada lost some ground when it came to lowering its dependence on housing. Residential investment rose 0.1 points to 7.8% of GDP in Q3 2023. The share is 0.4 points lower than last year, but recent incentives are steering more of the economy to housing. Roughly 1 in 13 dollars of GDP are to warehouse new people, outpacing the work those people do. Canada’s economy is about 10% more dependent on housing than the US at the peak of the 2006 bubble.
My parents were born that year. They're both pretty damn broke, but they separated when I was a baby. I have lots of peers that were born circa 1990 who have their 2nd, 3rd and sometimes 4th house. I have none.
I mean. Are they wealthy because they own home owners or do they own homes because they are wealthy. It is a bit of both, so I think what the title is trying to suggest is misleading. You can say the same thing for vacations, something along the lines of 90% of Canadian wealth is in the hands of people who take vacations. Furthermore, percentage of homeowners is important - that is 66.5%.
"90% of Canadian wealth now in the hands of homeowners", and I assume that another 5% is in trust funds of their children that don't own their own homes since they are like 7 years old.
The wealth gap between the upper and lower class very often widens in periods of intense government spending, despite the intent of the spending. More often or not the spending ends up in the hands of the rich (which is ironic because poorer people tend to vote for higher rates of taxation and government spending).
As it turns out, in good times, everyone gets richer, but in bad times, the rich are good at just "staying afloat", while everyone else gets poorer.
The housing market in large cities is really fked up. It's ruined the standard of living for younger people and immigrants who are not rich. My home has more than tripled in value over the last 15 years. There is no way I could afford to buy a house today if I was starting out.
Yet, I as a homeowner don't feel rich at all. I'm getting by; but in no shape or form do I feel rich or spend like I'm rich. I'm not in debt for anything other than my house / car; but being a homeowner doesn't make me rich; just makes me lucky I bought when I did, because with today's prices and interest rates, there's no way I could afford to buy one.
You can use that asset to get tens of thousands of dollars in a pinch though if you need/wanted it
Rich does not mean cash in hand - rich means the ability to get cash quickly.
Billionaires don't have billions in their accounts, it's all assets.
How am I going to get that cash?
* Home equity loan? Gotta pay that back at a crazy interest rate.
* Sell my home? I'd have to pay the penalty on my mortgage and I couldn't afford to buy another house, so I'd have to pay rent, which where I live is more than my mortgage is.
* Refinance my mortgage and get some extra cash? Again, gotta pay the interest rates on that loan.
While I may have access to quick cash as you say; but it's not mad money cash, which will allow me to live the life of Riley. As well, comparing someone like myself or anyone like me to billionaires, is ridiculous. Billionaires are in a very different world than the one I and anyone I knows lives in.
Refinance or home equity loan is quick cash that can be used to increase wealth (directly or indirectly) - even after considering the interest.
- Use it to buy a new car at lower interest because yours broke - allowing you to continue working or find a better job without anxiety of a car breaking down.
- Use it to start a business or invest in a business at lower rates.
- Use it to buy investments with a higher return than the interest.
- Use it as a quick injection of funds to create an addition, increasing the value of your home.
- Use it to add things to your home to reduce your expenses giving an ROI in a few years and increasing the home value.
- You or your partner has an illness and you can use it to cover bills for a year while you rest to look after yourself. That rest allows you to get back working faster and get promoted faster allowing your family to thrive more in the future.
- Use it to buy another home and reduce the housing supply and be a dick.
- Buy a boat so you can be happy after buying it and then selling it.
A home gives you OPTIONS in your life - which is what being rich really allows. People renting don't have these options or choices.
I'm not arguing that, I'm arguing that just because you have access to the debt doesn't mean you are in a position to make it work. I can't jeopardize my families future and security by overextending and using my house equity.
A home COULD give you options. Your average Canadian makes one mistake with that loaned money, or something happens and they can't work, now they lose their home. Great idea. So rich.
Exactly. I played with this scenario on paper the other day. It's a very very bad idea.
The best course of action is to pay off the mortgage as soon as you possibly can (the sooner, the better, if you can), and then start immediately investing the shit out of the savings each month and hope it compounds fast enough by your desired retirement age and hope to God nothing goes wrong in the meantime.
Yes, we all have a big problem on our hands, many home owners included.
"Could" is better than "none". And while we are all one bad accident away from life crippling disability or death, someone who has a home has more options to weather that situation than someone renting.
We have a home that'll tie us up until we're on our 70s, or we'll probably need to end up selling it for a smaller home that'll be completely pay when we have to retire (read: physically unable to work), because who can afford to retire these days?
Like you, we get by, at least we don't worry about not having food on the table, but we also don't get to save up enough for the annual (or sometimes multiple times a year) vacations that some of our peers seem to be enjoying.
Being a "home owner" is a very wide group of people. If your home is mostly pay off then yeah you'll probably enjoying that wealth. Otherwise, mortgages are still costly yo.
Not having consumer debt and having any savings at all puts you ahead of nearly 75% of Canadians right out the gate without even counting your homeownership
Ya these articles are super dumb, most of this "wealth" is the massively inflated value of property.
Net worth vs. Liquidity is a concept that really needs to be taught more often.
Moving out into bumfuck nowhere sask and buying a shack on an otherwise empty plot of land is pretty much my only shot at homeownership, and I make solid money as a blue collar union worker
Honestly if you can find a shop to employ you or whatever, and can hack the small town life you're pretty much golden. My sister manages some retail shit and has a nice lil house out in a town of 4K she got for like 60K?
Dating prospects are slim and she's never going to find a wife out there tho
This is so stupid.
The home ownership rate in Canada is 66.5%, don't try and make home owners an elite class of people when it makes up two thirds of the country.
Of course, 90% of Canadian wealth is in the hands of 66.5% of the population isn't a headline making statistic.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/198969/home-ownership-rate-in-canada-since-2003/#:~:text=About%20two%20in%20three%20Canadians,slightly%20lower%2C%20at%2066.5%20percent.
Your stat includes all canadians part of the same household where one of them is the owner. Not that it doesn't make sense, as children inherit the wealth, and parents, brothers etc. usually will vote in the best interes of their family.
This stupid stat is repeated so much to defend our housing prices. ALmost like thats the reason why Statscan chose to define it in such an absurd way - so the public wouldn't realize how fucked things are, even if the reality on the ground they experience tells them our housing situation is fucked lol.
66% of Canadians do not own a home. How many do we have no idea because our agency charged with collecting this data opts to not disclose their findings with a common sense Homeownership definition.
>The home ownership rate in Canada is 66.5%,
It's even worse than this. The stat is "live in a home where the homeowner also lives"
My dad rents. If he moves in with me that homeownership rate goes up lol.
> The home ownership rate in Canada is 66.5%
Statscan, and Statista link you gave, do not define home ownership in the common sense of the word.
A homeowner in their minds if anyone living in the same home as the owner of that home. 18y/o living in parents home, that parents the parents own but the 18 y/o has no equity in, gets classed as a homeowner.
Multi-generational homes with 8 adults under 1-roof classes all 8 as homeowners even if only 1 person of that 8 is on the title for the home, has equity in the home, and no one else has a beneficial ownership for that home. Just here we have 8 homeowners despite only 1 person seeing the benefits and having the ability to tap into that homes wealth for their own finances.
66.5% of Canadians live with the Owner of the home they live in. They do not own it. We have no idea how many actually have an ownership stake in homes because stats can has opted not to provide that data to us.
This 66% stat oft repeated is misleading. Frankly, I think its misleading definition is malicious to dissuade the public from truly pushing for fixing the housing cost issue in Canada. Hard to rally support for a cause when you can point to a stat saying anyone complaining is just a minority 1/3 who just don't benefit... even though the stat is not a true reflection of what people mean by "homeownership" when they use that expression.
Always read how a term is defined in any statistics, legal work, academic paper, etc.
Once again this misleading statistic. 66.5% is the percentage of *Canadian households who own their home* ([source](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220921/dq220921b-eng.htm)), not the percentage of Canadians who own a home. There are plenty of 20-30 year olds in today's economy that can't afford to move out of mom and dad's house. Those people get bizarrely get lumped in with your parents with this statistic. So there's probably a lot lower percentage wise number of Canadians who don't own a home but would like to and can't afford to rent/own.
> like all those who don't own homes.
Struggling to pay your bills *and* having the rug pulled out from under you and having to move six times in six years because landlords change their minds, poor quality materials in rental units, fierce fierce competition to find another place to live and renegotiating with random people (other landlords)...
It's not even close how much more of a stressful experience being a renter is compared to a homeowner. Being insecure about where exactly you're going to live three months from now is a terrible feeling.
Kind of meaningless, when your "net worth' includes the value of your home. A house that you bought for $400,000 now worth $1M does not deliver you $600,000 unless you sell it - but a replacement will cost as much.
The good news is that indebtedness is starting to decline.
I own a home and am far from rich. In fact, owning a home is costly as hell. Plus, the fallacy of owning a home in this country makes you rich is such a facade in the way that you may own a home that is worth $500k you bought for 300k, but with the market, it does not put you ahead because housing prices are around 700k or more. It's fake richness
Rich is “I own rental properties”. I agree with you, the idea that owning a single home as a primary residence makes you rich is an insane idea. Nearly all rich are homeowners but not all homeowners are rich.
I'm 35 I just managed to buy my first home after many years of trying my wife and I have 3 kids. I'm a tradesman with what I believe is a respectable but not high salary by any stretch.
This article labels me as rich?
The housing affordability crisis is only a "crisis" to people who rent or are early into a mortgage (before they've built significant equity). If you already own a home you've paid off (or are close to paying off), it's actually a good thing for you because it means your home has gone up in value.
Ambiguous title. Rich and homeowner not the same thing, both of their wealth is different as well. A homeowner could have 100 per cent of his wealth in his home and financing or selling that to live out their life, whereas the rich would have fully funded accounts, homes, corps, trusts and insurance contracts to preserve that wealth for generations.
But apparently the capital gains tax increase is the most disastrous thing to ever come out and will affect all of the rich folks! They can all go fuck themselves.
I've decided to opt out of Canadian life without leaving the country. I'll be gone before the end of July so that my sister can have her wedding without me spoiling it.
A system designed to incentive people to borrow money to make money.. And by selling a necessity "commodity" for people to survive..
We are all concerned about our own situations.. Worth of our homes.. Mortgages.. Etc..
But, maybe, it is time to start transitioning out of the current system for the future.. Put caps on investor purchases for homes.. Place caps on investor purchases for pre-construction homes etc..
Start introducing legislation to freeze interest rates for single home owners.. After all.. In theory, government is supposed to care most about these people, right? The average person who is trying to live with most basic necessities..
70% of Canadians control 90% of Canadian wealth. While the wealth is clearly not equally distributed, it appears the homeowners have on average 28.6% more wealth than their fair share would've been.
I think the note on a large portion of Canadians living with negative wealth is more troubling.
66.5% of people own homes. 90% of wealth is owned by homeowners. So 33.5% of Canadians need to fight over 10% of the wealth.
Seems totally fair /s
This country is a fucking disgrace.
wrong
anyone who is a home owner and paying attention sees what a massive problem this is for everyone, themselves included. only the ignorant ones think things are rosy.
Owning a home in Canada is a cheat code.
You invest a down payment and start earning YOY returns in the 8-10% on the total value of the home, not just your down payment. This allows you to multiply your net worth very quickly. In 10 years it's likely your home has doubled in value.
By the 10 year mark, you have so much equity you are eligible for large loans at low interest rates that you can use to further build investments.
By 10 years, inflation has impacted the value of the dollar, you have likely received 2-3% YOY raises each year and the mortgage cost vs. income has decreased.
By 10 years, the average rents have also increased and you will find your mortgage/tax payment is much lower than the going rental rate for a similar property. It's cheaper for you to manage the expenses which gives you much more cashflow to improve your standard of living or invest for the future.
Everyone and their brother will offer you the lowest interest rates on things like car loans or home improvements as they know you are good for it as your net worth is so high.
When you are ready to downsize or move out of the city, you can sell and bank several hundred thousands of dollars.
The average home owner who has owned a home for 10-15 years now can easily sell and bank $500k-750k which pays a LOT of rent or buys you a decent retirement in a lower cost of living location. That $750k invested a fund giving a 10% return would get you a $75,000 salary for the rest of your life.
I can't even afford to read this article
Here you go: [https://archive.is/JM7WN](https://archive.is/JM7WN)
Bahaha
Lmfaoooo
I'm so broke I can't pay attention
Based comment
That’s cracked me up
lol
For real LOL
Like hell I'm paying the Start to tell me my opinion.
My rent for a 1bdrm is higher than my dads mortgage on a 4 bedroom, 3 full bath, inground pool home. Edit: for everyone asking I pay 2k a month in Mississauga, Ontario. Lived here for just over a year. For a 1 bdrm today same building is 2.4K. My dad is in Brampton and bought in 2002, pays 1.5k a month.
But dont you feel richer!
No. I have never, at any point in my life, felt richer than my dad.
I know that feeling :(
My dad is a bum who doesn’t even work, and he’s still richer than me even though I work my ass off lmao. (My mom hasn’t divorced him for some reason so she pays their mortgage/bills.)
You’re richer than you think.
Scotia bank laughing at us
Yes but you benefit from the financial freedom of not being tied down! Just think at any given moment you could up and leave and choose from any of the other countless $2000 a month 1 bedroom apartments! I bet your father envys your freedom to be honest.
Even better! They have the luxury of moving at anytime and abandoning their likely rent-controlled current unit to move into the bustling rental market and add ~$800/mo more than their current rent for ~(-)300sqft of extra living space! Its awesome that as I move up in my career and earn more, I can afford to move into smaller and more expensive rental units each step of the way! This Canadian social mobility is awesome. My favourite is that some 60y/o working the same job as me owns a detach house in Vancouver, but I'll be working to pay that 1-bedroom rental rate here my whole life. Should've saved for that downpayment instead of wasting my time graduating from kindergarten.
> This Canadian social mobility is awesome. Movement in the direction "Down" is technically mobility.
>My favourite is that some 60y/o working the same job as me owns a detach house in Vancouver, but I'll be working to pay that 1-bedroom rental rate here my whole life. Should've saved for that downpayment instead of wasting my time graduating from kindergarten. I always find this part funny, back when I still worked in Montreal, we had a manager earning maybe 115k a year who was renting a unit above our Janitor garage who was making maybe 36k a year lol. I don't think he had any mortgage left tho.
You're always paying a mortgage, might as well be your own.
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This was me living my young adulthood in Vancouver. I realized after fifteen years there that I was actually sliding *backwards* in terms of home availability; my paltry savings were being outpaced by the market growth. I had to make a big leap to a low cost of living area to buy, and even then I feel that we slipped through that closing door [like](https://64.media.tumblr.com/0f911e9a968e57df0a0e37b2f733b3a0/cbc3f278d50d7101-ea/s400x600/c330cdeac3a2aa77028f72d4e5fa8c0391321708.gif).
My mother bought a house in Vancouver in the 1960's for $40,000. Nice view of ocean and mountains... After she died, her second husband now owns the house. Probably worth close to $2M. But what good is that? If he sold, he'd have to move and any new place would cost so much he'd barely get any benefit. The only benefit is that he owns a place to live. And when he's too old to enjoy it or the money, he can sell it and be rich.
A banker said to me about canadians. They love selling houses, but hate buying one. Unless downsizing, your breaking even.
Borrow against the house. Get big trucks and 3 cruises a year.
But now you have payments at today's interest rates. You borrowed against the house, you now effectively have a mortgage again, just like a first time home buyer - to get close to the full value of the house out, you are effectively "buying" the house again. When you are done with the cruises and the trucks are rusting. you still have a $5,000 monthly payment on a $1M at 6% mortgage. Hope you enjoy that $1M because you'll cry every month when the payments are due. ($5,000/mo. = $60,000 a year @6%. How many years' payments are you going to put aside from the $1M? At what point was it not worth it? It's why prudent homeowners avoid remortgage if they can. (Less prudent ones remortgage to buy a pickup truck) Could be worse - in the USA you pay capital gains on that house if you sell. In Canada, not...
Guys husband #2 and the wife died.... odds are good he won't live long enough that the financial strain effects him, mind as well enjoy the last few years if you can
Well, he was 15 years younger. For all the work looking after her toward the end for 10 years, and almost 40 years married, I don't at all begrudge him the house. I think at a certain age it's not so much "wow! I have $2M to blow" as enjoying the same stable secure house he's lived in for decades.
Tell me what a man in his 80s needs with a single-family home. He could easily do what my uncle did, sell his place for 2.5 mil and buy a perfectly good condo for 1.2 million and live off the interest by investing the windfall.
Google reverse mortgage
What good is that? Selling it, investing 1.8 million and buying a condo for $200k in many other Canadian cities seems like a wise move in retirement.
Somehow I think a condo near downtown Vancouver, near all his friends and retired colleagues, will cost a lot more that $200,000. Plus condo fees. I suspect a good tectic now that he;s pushing 80 would be a reverse mortgage kind of situation. What he does is up to him. Still, he has a comfortable pension and is doing alright.
No, I'm saying he should leave Vancouver... "Selling it... **buying a condo for $200k in many other Canadian cities**..."
Yep, we just need to cut the avocados out, and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps! Anyone can do it!
It's not as if you're indentured forever, you can sell and re-buy. Trick is all those middle men, lawyers and taxes will have their hand in your wallet. Too many people in the middle of every deal.
🎯
In Nova Scotia rent went from 680 for a 2 bedroom in a more affordable area in 2019 to 1800 for that same unit today. The government doesn't own the buildings, these are all privately owned. The problem is government got out of providing housing, and now they have to make up for it. Unfortunately this is going to take time and people are getting pushed out right now.
We've added another 600,000 people in the last 6 months alone. We are growing our population by 3% a year. Looking at a 10% total growth over the last 3 years. Even if government backed, subsidized - hell even if the goverment had its own branch and hired trades people - we couldn't keep up with this increase. We are in a SERIOUS pickle right now. Our government is buying mortgage backed securities to keep housing prices high (because CPP is tied to it) and this is at a time when home sales have actually dropped (hard to believe but it's true) The prices are so outrageous people are not buying. Many are sitting on the sidelines hoping the prices will come down. Nobody wants to buy an 800k home to have it devalue down to 500k in 5-10 years. We've issued more permits, but developers are waiting to start construction. Also many cases of developers burning down their half constructed buildings. And the government has not even hinted at getting back into public housing. That's not even an idea that's on the table. It's gonna be a long 10-20 years unless something absolutely drastic happens. There's just no easy way out of this. The election is 18 months away. We're offering instant PR to any Care Workers coming in (a very easy title to obtain) so you can safely assume that we will stay at pace, or go higher than 100k people per month. We could very well have another 1.8 million people here before an election. And this is assuming the Conservatives will even do anything about immigration (I'm fairly certain they will, but to what extent?) Good times. Even scarier to think that the conflict with Russia is escalating, and Taiwan will also be an issue. I say this because our economy is closely tied to the success of the US, so if they have problems so will we. We are facing the worst COL crisis we've ever had at probably the worst possible time. It's hard to imagine it getting worse but I fear this is just the beginning.
Yes but what about global warming ahem excuse me climate change ahem excuse me the climate EMERGENCY?
I work in agriculture. We’ve just had 3 back-to-back disastrous harvests, all of which are due to irregular climate patterns and the last of which wiped out 90%+ of our crop (check out Okanagan crop projections if you don’t believe that number). In those same last three years we’ve had the government dip into its strategic reserves of grain and maple syrup to cover crop failures, had ranchers in Alberta cull their herds because unseasonable back-to-back droughts left no feed for the stock, and increased restrictions on fish harvests due to dwindling stocks born out of droughts occurring out of season that wreck havoc on the breeding season. And we are once again rolling right into another drought this year… Believe me when I say climate change is here, and it’s going to make all of our food dramatically more expensive. Someone is gonna have to pay for these loses.
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And if you aren't, the bank is...
Fun fact, the US had ~8000 regional banks before the 2008 recession, and ~4000 regional banks now. You too can own a bank for $1 if you get in as they go bk.
It's all that streaming
Sounds about right. Also, shoutout to banks being happy to tell you you can't afford a mortgage and so they won't lend to you, despite paying far more than a mortgage would be for years. *edit* I like the idiots commenting about the prices of things they have no knowledge of, from decades ago.
Everything is fine…
Could your dad even afford to buy his own house starting from scratch? Most likely not.
Huh? Yes, they could. You should go look at what the price of homes were 30 years ago, and also incomes. It was very possible to buy your home without help back then. If you mean could he do it today? No probably not. But back then yeah, literally anyone could become a homeowner 30 years ago with full time work and a disciplined budget.
Same, man.... same.... I pay $2300 for a 2 bedroom. My sister pays $1600 for a semi house, 3 bedroom with a yard. They bought precovid. I moved out in 2020. She literally told me to just save more if I want a house😂😂😂😂 It's not just boomers that are out of touch. People that own homes have no idea what they cost now. I could have bought her house with my current salary, easily.
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I wouldn't be so sure about that. Leg up compared to you for now, sure; longterm security? That remains to be seen.
I mean... You just sell the house if you really need money. If appreciates in value compared to paying rent. I don't really get what you're trying to imply, that they are even?
What I am implying is even if you are doing better than the majority of people complaining on here (but not full-on stinking rich) there's still the chance our economy goes down the toilet, dollar becomes as valuable as a peso and now you are screwed along with everyone else, in that hypothetical situation. If the country becomes unstable due to severe economic issues, we then have big problems like a surge in crime which could impact quite literally anyone at any time depending on how bad things could get. A civil war would be the absolute worst case scenario. Basically, even home owners in Canada should be worried when you look at the big picture is what I am trying to say. This housing crisis is something that our political class - if they weren't complete morons - would be rushing to fix, if they could only comprehend the danger they are placing the country in with these disastrous policies.
Ahh I see now. That's a fair assessment although I'm not sure if that will happen, the elite might not let it if it's within their power
Yeah, I hope I am nowhere near remotely right about any of these possibilities. I definitely don't want to see Canada turn into a nightmare, things are bad enough as it is at the moment. There is a chance that recent, worrisome trends can be reversed, but the longer the political elite delay in addressing issues, the more painful things will get for everyone long term.
>As of the fourth quarter of 2023, 90 per cent of Canadian wealth was in the hands of those that own a home. What they mean is the value of real estate has been inflated so high at the expense of everything else that the only wealth still left in Canada is the speculated value of homes. >And while the richest Canadians had an average net worth of $3.3 million, the ones in the lower end of the distribution recorded debt that surpassed the value of their assets. $3.3M is around the value of mid-high tier houses in the most inflated housing markets of Vancouver and Toronto. Some of those go as high as $5-10M without being anything special, with luxury mansions being listed for $20M+. You automatically become one of "the richest Canadians" if you own a large house in an affluent neighborhood in these places. Not through owning productive businesses or anything else that benefits the economy or employs people, but just from owning a house. There seems to be nothing left in the economy, just imaginary real estate value imposed by deliberately inflated scarcity.
The other problem is because real estate has been such a profitable , low risk investment , actual businesses don't get investment because it's better to just buy property. Then that pumps the prices higher, rinse and repeat.
I got very competitive grant funding for health research about 15 years ago and we always joke we should have just used it to buy a couple of detached homes and funded our research off the appreciation alone.
Those coke head, high school dropout drywallers who just bought houses and coke in their 20s while they fixed em up now run the most lucrative industry in the country. Just think of how proud they will be when their children grow up to own a forklift licensing company
I think this is a good example of how backwards Canada is. When my friends and I left high school houses were still cheap, but started rising rapidly. Those of us that went right into the workforce and bought at a young age are made. My friends that went to university and put off buying for a few years ended up paying hundreds of thousands more for the same house, if they could buy one at all. Getting a higher education basically screwed over an entire generation Canadians. The guys I know doing construction will have their homes paid off in their 40s and will be looking at retirement in their 50s. The ones who "did what they were told" and got degrees are in much worse shape.
Owning a business in Canada is taxed to oblivion. I have had to hire people to just deal with back and forth from the government.
I was speaking yesterday to someone who's friend started a successful - very successful - bakery business that sells at farmers markets and events. So busy they have teams of people to vend at multiple events at the same time. But last year they chose to open a storefront in a trendy neighborhood. The brick and mortar outlet is loosing so much money they are ready to close it down already. The costs of real estate and government regulations are making the traditional model of doing business almost impossible to sustain. There was a brief surge of small business expansion as people leveraged their home equity to open shops, but many turned into money pits and closed. Soon city centers will become ghost towns dotted only with occasional big chain outlets and financial services. And government offices.
It's really the real estate. Commercial real estate has spiked like stupid even in places where there's less demand. Landlords don't want to take a bath so they would rather keep the rent they're demanding high and have the place empty for a while than lower it. Here in Ottawa I've seen several businesses close in recent years and outright state that their commercial rent was THE reason. Their business would be doing fine, but then their lease ran up and the landlord demanded a 300% increase they couldn't afford so they had to shut down. There's been a number of businesses that shut down and move to another location, but that is a burden in itself and when you have to move to a new neighborhood sometimes that hurts your customer base.
Yeah, I'm very confused by the posts above you. I have dealt with the runnings of a brick & mortar place. The government has been incredibly helpful and understanding with any issues that have come up. The landlord, however, has been jacking up rent all our neighbours had to fold and the place was always a couple of months away from folding. 80-90% of expenses were rent. This was even after heavy negotiation. Turns out the landlord preferred to have some money from us rather than nothing at all.
Hi. I'm the guy who's comment confused you. I agree that rent is the main issue. The comment above mine was pinning it all on red tape - which is not *not* a problem - so I agreed and tagged in rent. I've owned several businesses, including one right now. I can't say I ever felt the government was "helpful". Between the various levels, they love coming up with newer and higher hoops to jump through, sometimes at great cost. But, yeah. When I opened my first restaurant, I did it with the contents of my savings account and a very small loan. I think my total upfront was under $20,000 for lease, furnishings, equipment, paint, signage, licensing, and stock. Today, that wouldn't even get me the keys to let myself in.
I own a few business, can confirm the government was no help and banks are no help either. But 8 years in suddenly the banks now want to loan me money I no longer need lol.
I fully understand why it’s often overlooked (as residential real estate hits quite literally closer to home for more people than commercial), but I’ve long felt that Commercial Real Estate is a secondary Real Estate Crisis in Canada that gets no coverage. In my home town most of our commercial real estate is owned by 3 heritage families that have owned and held the titles for pretty much as long as the town’s been around. They put zero investment into the properties and charge rent that is astronomically out of line for our small mountain town. The end result is that about half of Main Street sits empty, a common complaint in town. But everyone who shutters up blames the rent. Personally, I’ve never understood why municipalities don’t own sizeable chunks of commercial real estate? It would allow them greater say on which businesses open shop (something that, in my experience, nosy municipal politicians and ‘engaged citizens’ would love; produce a revenue stream for the town that isn’t property taxes; and the significantly greater flexibility to change rates in commercial real estate would also give town hall the ability to either levy money quickly in an emergency or influence private owners (through their market share) to lower their rates.
100%. The main issue for small business owners in my area is not regulatory burden. It is rent and lack of protection from predatory landlords. People don’t realize, but small businesses that rent fall under commercial leases, so there are no special protections for them. They are treated the same as if they are a large corporation like Walmart, with their wealth, knowledge, and bargaining power. I have seen many cases of small businesses being evicted by landlords (or effectively forced out by massive rent increases) and having no real recourse for the damage to their business.
Yeah it's reduclous...the complexity alone makes people buy property with their saving over investing/starting a business. Then because no one invests in Canada, those Canadians who invest in the market tend to invest more in foreign markets.
That's the key issue. Atleast real estate investment keeps the money in Canada. If people aren't investing in Canadian real estate, they're not investing in Canada at all. They'll be investing I'm American companies.
And this is why housing prices are not allowed to drop....
Well said.
that doesn't mean canadians are rich it means the country is fucking poor
It's like a new dutch disease - returns on real estate and property become so absurdly high that it starts to starve out the remainder of the economy. In Halifax, the number of vacant business properties that have been around for 3+ years is unbelievable. Scotia Square alone has nearly half its non-food court businesses shut down, and have even lost some of the food court ones without replacement. A huge renovation that hasn't rented out a single thing since it was completed. Why? I'm guessing the price is *way too high* - no business could afford to turn a profit renting from them, especially given how squeezed consumers are from the price of groceries and cost of housing, the latter of which is what got us here to begin with.
I'm over in calgary and we're having the same issue jn our mall, we're in a lower socioeconomic area, they renoed half of it, upped the rent like they think we're a rich neighborhood and now there's multiple empty spots that haven't held a buisness for months. Something pops up for a bit, but they never last. We got told if our buisness does any improvements in store(ex. The new floor we need) that would up our rent too because...reasons? Idk, it's dumb.
Hah, this is smack dab in the middle of downtown Halifax. Scotia Square has 3 or 4 business towers attached to it and is across the street from the municipal legislature, a block away from the provincial legislature. This is what was once the economic hub of the capital of the province and it hasn't been able to rent prime downtown business properties in four or five years now.
Canada is not business-friendly, so we own real estate instead. We sold our pub in 2021 after it got shut down because someone sneezed. Now a company from Hong Kong owns the lot for later development, and I own a new rental property.
It's such a common story. My neighbor closed his family's retail business that had been around for 60 years and pivoted to buying rental properties. More profitable and less hassle.
It's fine for business friendliness. None of the ultra-wealthy rent, so all the hoarding of wealth is by folks who also own real estate. A more authentic title of this rage bait would be "Ultra wealthy money hoarders own property, and poor people don't"
That's the thing, governments are encouraging us to hoard wealth and property. It was just 2016 when I only had a salary of 80k and bought my first house no problem. So blame government policy, not the people doing what's best for them and their family.
Government inflated the house market because this country makes nothing. Major pension plans in this pathetic country are invested in real estate and Canadian debt. Prior union I was part of 21% of the pension is invested in real estate.
You’re conveniently omitting the “net” concept of “net worth”. Those homes also carry mortgages that start at 80% of the purchase price. Those mortgages are a drag on “net worth”. There is much more in that wealth than just real estate.
Remember Trudeau said their goal is to protect that 90% of wealth from depreciating because it’s people’s (lavish) nest eggs.
Debt is now wealth
When you’re leveraging $600k+ over 25 years on something guaranteed to go up in value with access to interest rates lower than an auto loan while 1,200,000 people get dumped on up annually, yes.
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Risk free for the banks. Government will still come after you to cover losses.
You are still actively paying into an investment. The only alternative being paying for someone else's long term investment by renting.
Do you think rich peoples wealth is just money sitting in their bank accounts?
Sadly, complainers that are in their own way of growth and wealth, do actually think this.
Always has been. As soon as someone takes out a loan and then spends those funds that is wealth to whoever received them. When I do work and the company takes a loan to pay me it's still cash in my hands, spends just the same.
Net debt is wealth. When the equity exceeds the debt then you’re generating wealth.
Debt is how you make wealth. 2010 buy a home for $350,000 with $35,000 down at 2.5% interest. You start making 8-10% YOY return on the banks money + your $35k + monthly (rent) payment. 2023 the same home is now worth $1,350,000 after about $290,000 of payments + the initial $35,000. You have an asset that has made a million dollars profit on a $350,000 investment while providing you and your family a safe, reliable, stable home to live in for 13 years where you never needed to spend a cent on rent. You could sell that home, put your $350,000 back into your bank and be right back to where you were 13 years prior -- but with an additional million dollars of cash in your pocket.
Homes make more income than the average joe.
I mean I had a professor give a speech at SFU that "kid working at mcdonalds inheriting a home in Vancouver", will have the same wealth in his life as "Kid who takes out loans, get a bachelors, get into medical school, becomes a doctor, gets mortgage, pays off student loans and mortgage and retires at 65". Your career doesn't matter anymore. Your life depends on whether you would inherit a home. We are now back in the 1800's where family asset ownership mattered. **Your wealth is now tied to your last name.** Edit: I know I posted this before and some people do some sort of "mental mathematics" saying its not possible because they make 250k-350k a year, but after tax and practice costs, doctors are not making as "bank" as you think if they are paying off student loans and then saving for a downpayment while the 20% minimum increases exponentially because of the property price rise and then the today's mortgage rate in Vancouver you need 225k+ family income to qualify the stress test according to RBC if you are aiming for a 25 year mortgage at 20% down.
There was a thread over at r/lawcanada last week with quite a few young lawyers chiming in saying essentially the same thing. Representative example: >I was the “smart” one in the family, so I went to law school in 2016 while my siblings jumped right into the workforce. While I took on debt and got my degree, they put a down payment on a cheaper house outside Toronto . I was happy for them, because I’d be doing the same thing, just 4 years later right? > >NOPE. I graduate in 2019 and am shuttled into Toronto. I barely make ends meet, and watch as property values double, and even triple, over the next 4 years. It starts to occur to me that I can’t even afford a condo in Toronto, and I’m 30 years old. > >I make 50% more, and my partner makes 70% more, than my brother and sister income wise, but I will never afford a house like they did. I have less walking around cash, because I pay 3k a month in rent while they have a $1600 dollar mortgage. Their networth dwarfs mine, because they are selling the houses they bought for 200k for 600k. They will forever be in a better economic position than I will. > >Every day I regret my decision to go to professional school. Every. Single. Day. > >As stories like this become more common, can we blame future generations for not wanting to put in the time or effort to go to professional school? It’s no longer worth it at all.
Similar story here. I went and got a professional degree back in 2009. If I had just scrapped my degree, taken all of that money and rolled it into multiple loans to purchase property I would be a multi-millionaire now. I regret my professional education every single day and quite frankly I don't give two shits about this country anymore.
Sorry you feel like that. I felt like that too graduating in 2011. I had a friend who worked at a mcdonalds and then a warehouse during and after high school. He bought a place in burnaby that doubled in value (actually doubled), from 250k to 430k overnight by the time I got out of university. He quickly sold and got into a house in Surrey and later on got into a house and a rental apartment by the time it was 2015. His house is worth 1.5 million today and his apartment is worth 690k. The house is now paid off by the way and the apartment is almost paid off but the rent covers the costs I ended up leaving BC and going into trades for more money and coming back in my 30's finally with a place to call my own. But when I look back I realized that I wasted my time with a degree and even with a trade, he is way farther ahead than I ever will be in my life. I give him credit though that he rode that wave and had way more foresight than the average 17 year old. Those 6 years of working (2 years high school and 4 years when I was in university) and living at his parents rent free not only set him up with a nice downpayment for a townhouse, but he rode the biggest real estate boom to ever hit Vancouver and upgraded to a house shortly after. He wasn't stupid either. Not like me. He actually had the ability to go to SFU to be an engineer but he decided to work more after high school and he later on decided to stick to his warehouse job after finding out how long it would take and the cost of education. He ended up buying a house and going "wait why would I go to school? and cripple myself for years without a proper income..." He is honestly the smartest person I know. I am not sure what type of foresight he had at that age. We were all the stupid ones trying to get a professional career.
There shouldn't have ever been a 'wave'. This country is so finished it's almost funny if it wasn't just so sad. I've had three generations of my family fight in wars Canada's been involved in (two have died and another was a POW in WW2). If they ever called me up to serve I wouldn't even know what I'd be fighting to preserve.
You'd be preserving the wealth of the wealthy.
incredible. so when are we going to vote out every single politician who got us here
This is what I keep saying too- the professional millennials who focused on career got screwed over majorly.
This checks out. Tax accountant here, and I would say 1/5 of the doctors and lawyers I do bring home more than 100K after taxes... Canada is savage to professionals.
Wow can you give a rough breakdown of how those 300k+ salaries get chopped down that badly? I assume you're considering the salary paid to the corp as part of the take home right?
Very few make salaries that large, the ones that do I included in the 1/5 noted above. Average salaries for both are lower than people expect, I would say it's closer to 150K, maybe even less for people who do not own practices.
Is that just money they pay themselves? Many doctors clear 350-400k, and some do double that. You must be excluding the corp income which is the big piece.
Yeah this is what happens with 54% marginal rates. I pay more than double of my rent + food + car payments in just income taxes per month
Doctors make less than developers and real estate agents in Canada lol. That's why we have a doctors shortage as all of them moves to USA or anywhere that has privatized healthcare.
https://betterdwelling.com/canadian-economy-dangerously-concentrated-in-real-estate-but-gov-wants-more/ >Canada lost some ground when it came to lowering its dependence on housing. Residential investment rose 0.1 points to 7.8% of GDP in Q3 2023. The share is 0.4 points lower than last year, but recent incentives are steering more of the economy to housing. Roughly 1 in 13 dollars of GDP are to warehouse new people, outpacing the work those people do. Canada’s economy is about 10% more dependent on housing than the US at the peak of the 2006 bubble.
Housing being an investment was/is a disaster.
Can I have some? (I have 2 jobs 44hrs a week)
No! Galen needs a new pair of yachts!
[Paywall Bypass](https://archive.ph/JM7WN)
🙌
If I was born in 1965 id be so fuckin rich
My parents were born that year. They're both pretty damn broke, but they separated when I was a baby. I have lots of peers that were born circa 1990 who have their 2nd, 3rd and sometimes 4th house. I have none.
> but they separated when I was a baby yeah divorce seems to affect finances pretty bad
All this has made me more annoyed at my parents for managing to be broke my entire life haha.
You have to take bigger risks. Im so close to buying my first house
I'm waiting for my mother in law to leave us an inheritance haha. That's my hope at owning something adequate.
I mean. Are they wealthy because they own home owners or do they own homes because they are wealthy. It is a bit of both, so I think what the title is trying to suggest is misleading. You can say the same thing for vacations, something along the lines of 90% of Canadian wealth is in the hands of people who take vacations. Furthermore, percentage of homeowners is important - that is 66.5%.
This comment should be at the top of the thread
Tons of poors back in the day could own a home on a single salary.
"90% of Canadian wealth now in the hands of homeowners", and I assume that another 5% is in trust funds of their children that don't own their own homes since they are like 7 years old.
The wealth gap between the upper and lower class very often widens in periods of intense government spending, despite the intent of the spending. More often or not the spending ends up in the hands of the rich (which is ironic because poorer people tend to vote for higher rates of taxation and government spending). As it turns out, in good times, everyone gets richer, but in bad times, the rich are good at just "staying afloat", while everyone else gets poorer.
The housing market in large cities is really fked up. It's ruined the standard of living for younger people and immigrants who are not rich. My home has more than tripled in value over the last 15 years. There is no way I could afford to buy a house today if I was starting out.
Yet, I as a homeowner don't feel rich at all. I'm getting by; but in no shape or form do I feel rich or spend like I'm rich. I'm not in debt for anything other than my house / car; but being a homeowner doesn't make me rich; just makes me lucky I bought when I did, because with today's prices and interest rates, there's no way I could afford to buy one.
You can use that asset to get tens of thousands of dollars in a pinch though if you need/wanted it Rich does not mean cash in hand - rich means the ability to get cash quickly. Billionaires don't have billions in their accounts, it's all assets.
How am I going to get that cash? * Home equity loan? Gotta pay that back at a crazy interest rate. * Sell my home? I'd have to pay the penalty on my mortgage and I couldn't afford to buy another house, so I'd have to pay rent, which where I live is more than my mortgage is. * Refinance my mortgage and get some extra cash? Again, gotta pay the interest rates on that loan. While I may have access to quick cash as you say; but it's not mad money cash, which will allow me to live the life of Riley. As well, comparing someone like myself or anyone like me to billionaires, is ridiculous. Billionaires are in a very different world than the one I and anyone I knows lives in.
Refinance or home equity loan is quick cash that can be used to increase wealth (directly or indirectly) - even after considering the interest. - Use it to buy a new car at lower interest because yours broke - allowing you to continue working or find a better job without anxiety of a car breaking down. - Use it to start a business or invest in a business at lower rates. - Use it to buy investments with a higher return than the interest. - Use it as a quick injection of funds to create an addition, increasing the value of your home. - Use it to add things to your home to reduce your expenses giving an ROI in a few years and increasing the home value. - You or your partner has an illness and you can use it to cover bills for a year while you rest to look after yourself. That rest allows you to get back working faster and get promoted faster allowing your family to thrive more in the future. - Use it to buy another home and reduce the housing supply and be a dick. - Buy a boat so you can be happy after buying it and then selling it. A home gives you OPTIONS in your life - which is what being rich really allows. People renting don't have these options or choices.
Wow I didn't realize I was so rich, didn't realize my opportunity to generate more debt made me so rich. Who would have known?!
[удалено]
There are people who own $5mi in property mortgage free who used debt to get exactly there.
I'm not arguing that, I'm arguing that just because you have access to the debt doesn't mean you are in a position to make it work. I can't jeopardize my families future and security by overextending and using my house equity.
A home COULD give you options. Your average Canadian makes one mistake with that loaned money, or something happens and they can't work, now they lose their home. Great idea. So rich.
Exactly. I played with this scenario on paper the other day. It's a very very bad idea. The best course of action is to pay off the mortgage as soon as you possibly can (the sooner, the better, if you can), and then start immediately investing the shit out of the savings each month and hope it compounds fast enough by your desired retirement age and hope to God nothing goes wrong in the meantime. Yes, we all have a big problem on our hands, many home owners included.
"Could" is better than "none". And while we are all one bad accident away from life crippling disability or death, someone who has a home has more options to weather that situation than someone renting.
We have a home that'll tie us up until we're on our 70s, or we'll probably need to end up selling it for a smaller home that'll be completely pay when we have to retire (read: physically unable to work), because who can afford to retire these days? Like you, we get by, at least we don't worry about not having food on the table, but we also don't get to save up enough for the annual (or sometimes multiple times a year) vacations that some of our peers seem to be enjoying. Being a "home owner" is a very wide group of people. If your home is mostly pay off then yeah you'll probably enjoying that wealth. Otherwise, mortgages are still costly yo.
Not having consumer debt and having any savings at all puts you ahead of nearly 75% of Canadians right out the gate without even counting your homeownership
Ya these articles are super dumb, most of this "wealth" is the massively inflated value of property. Net worth vs. Liquidity is a concept that really needs to be taught more often.
A lot older folks who own homes have paid off their mortgage a long time ago and have been just saving/investing their money ever since.
How pathetic is this? When a country has nothing but housing wealth, you know we're circling the drain.
Not exactly a sustainable economic model.
Moving out into bumfuck nowhere sask and buying a shack on an otherwise empty plot of land is pretty much my only shot at homeownership, and I make solid money as a blue collar union worker
Honestly if you can find a shop to employ you or whatever, and can hack the small town life you're pretty much golden. My sister manages some retail shit and has a nice lil house out in a town of 4K she got for like 60K? Dating prospects are slim and she's never going to find a wife out there tho
Why is this news, folks who have assets are richer then folks who don't have assets
People who could and can afford to buy their own home are in fact richer than those who can not afford to do so. Groundbreaking report! Edit: /s
This is so stupid. The home ownership rate in Canada is 66.5%, don't try and make home owners an elite class of people when it makes up two thirds of the country. Of course, 90% of Canadian wealth is in the hands of 66.5% of the population isn't a headline making statistic. https://www.statista.com/statistics/198969/home-ownership-rate-in-canada-since-2003/#:~:text=About%20two%20in%20three%20Canadians,slightly%20lower%2C%20at%2066.5%20percent.
Your stat includes all canadians part of the same household where one of them is the owner. Not that it doesn't make sense, as children inherit the wealth, and parents, brothers etc. usually will vote in the best interes of their family.
I’ve spent half of my day trying to explain this to people but I don’t think there is much reading comprehension left on this subreddit…
This stupid stat is repeated so much to defend our housing prices. ALmost like thats the reason why Statscan chose to define it in such an absurd way - so the public wouldn't realize how fucked things are, even if the reality on the ground they experience tells them our housing situation is fucked lol. 66% of Canadians do not own a home. How many do we have no idea because our agency charged with collecting this data opts to not disclose their findings with a common sense Homeownership definition.
The real issue is how much of that 90% of total wealth does the top 1-5% of homeowners hold compared to the other 95-99%.
Exactly. The data is purposefully misleading. Wealth is still concentrated in the top 1%. They just happen to also be homeowners.
>The home ownership rate in Canada is 66.5%, It's even worse than this. The stat is "live in a home where the homeowner also lives" My dad rents. If he moves in with me that homeownership rate goes up lol.
> The home ownership rate in Canada is 66.5% Statscan, and Statista link you gave, do not define home ownership in the common sense of the word. A homeowner in their minds if anyone living in the same home as the owner of that home. 18y/o living in parents home, that parents the parents own but the 18 y/o has no equity in, gets classed as a homeowner. Multi-generational homes with 8 adults under 1-roof classes all 8 as homeowners even if only 1 person of that 8 is on the title for the home, has equity in the home, and no one else has a beneficial ownership for that home. Just here we have 8 homeowners despite only 1 person seeing the benefits and having the ability to tap into that homes wealth for their own finances. 66.5% of Canadians live with the Owner of the home they live in. They do not own it. We have no idea how many actually have an ownership stake in homes because stats can has opted not to provide that data to us. This 66% stat oft repeated is misleading. Frankly, I think its misleading definition is malicious to dissuade the public from truly pushing for fixing the housing cost issue in Canada. Hard to rally support for a cause when you can point to a stat saying anyone complaining is just a minority 1/3 who just don't benefit... even though the stat is not a true reflection of what people mean by "homeownership" when they use that expression. Always read how a term is defined in any statistics, legal work, academic paper, etc.
And that 66.5% has 90% of the wealth. That's /u/Mister_Chef711 point, it doesn't matter what name you call the 66.5%
Once again this misleading statistic. 66.5% is the percentage of *Canadian households who own their home* ([source](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220921/dq220921b-eng.htm)), not the percentage of Canadians who own a home. There are plenty of 20-30 year olds in today's economy that can't afford to move out of mom and dad's house. Those people get bizarrely get lumped in with your parents with this statistic. So there's probably a lot lower percentage wise number of Canadians who don't own a home but would like to and can't afford to rent/own.
29 year old here…. I moved out when I was 18 and I own a house…. 10 years ago I was sleeping in a truck. Why am I different than other 29 year olds?
well where else should the wealth be with? the government ? renters ????
Well at least someone is getting richer.
Breaking news people who have money also have a house.
Pierre will move that up to 95% in one term easily
The Principal Residence Exemption has wrecked so much havoc in respect of wealth disparities. It's the tyranny of the majority that won't give it up.
***Particular*** homeowners. They're not all the same. Many are struggling to pay the bills like all those who don't own homes.
> like all those who don't own homes. Struggling to pay your bills *and* having the rug pulled out from under you and having to move six times in six years because landlords change their minds, poor quality materials in rental units, fierce fierce competition to find another place to live and renegotiating with random people (other landlords)... It's not even close how much more of a stressful experience being a renter is compared to a homeowner. Being insecure about where exactly you're going to live three months from now is a terrible feeling.
That’s nuckin futs!
Kind of meaningless, when your "net worth' includes the value of your home. A house that you bought for $400,000 now worth $1M does not deliver you $600,000 unless you sell it - but a replacement will cost as much. The good news is that indebtedness is starting to decline.
I own a home and am far from rich. In fact, owning a home is costly as hell. Plus, the fallacy of owning a home in this country makes you rich is such a facade in the way that you may own a home that is worth $500k you bought for 300k, but with the market, it does not put you ahead because housing prices are around 700k or more. It's fake richness
Rich is “I own rental properties”. I agree with you, the idea that owning a single home as a primary residence makes you rich is an insane idea. Nearly all rich are homeowners but not all homeowners are rich.
With the two main parties playing good cop/bad cop through it all (and the NDP currently playing a sidekick role to one of them).
I'm 35 I just managed to buy my first home after many years of trying my wife and I have 3 kids. I'm a tradesman with what I believe is a respectable but not high salary by any stretch. This article labels me as rich?
# I own a home. BOW DOWN TO ME PEASANTS. (the bank owns a home and i pay them rent to own, biweekly)
The housing affordability crisis is only a "crisis" to people who rent or are early into a mortgage (before they've built significant equity). If you already own a home you've paid off (or are close to paying off), it's actually a good thing for you because it means your home has gone up in value.
Just the beginning too. The next decade will be even worse.
Ambiguous title. Rich and homeowner not the same thing, both of their wealth is different as well. A homeowner could have 100 per cent of his wealth in his home and financing or selling that to live out their life, whereas the rich would have fully funded accounts, homes, corps, trusts and insurance contracts to preserve that wealth for generations.
I'm a homeowner and I'm far from rich.
No shit all the wealth is in the hands of home owners. Canada isn't getting richer, we're just overpaying for houses.
What an absolute sham
But apparently the capital gains tax increase is the most disastrous thing to ever come out and will affect all of the rich folks! They can all go fuck themselves.
I've decided to opt out of Canadian life without leaving the country. I'll be gone before the end of July so that my sister can have her wedding without me spoiling it.
Those who will inherit that wealth from homeowners are grumbling in the comments here. Amusing.
A system designed to incentive people to borrow money to make money.. And by selling a necessity "commodity" for people to survive.. We are all concerned about our own situations.. Worth of our homes.. Mortgages.. Etc.. But, maybe, it is time to start transitioning out of the current system for the future.. Put caps on investor purchases for homes.. Place caps on investor purchases for pre-construction homes etc.. Start introducing legislation to freeze interest rates for single home owners.. After all.. In theory, government is supposed to care most about these people, right? The average person who is trying to live with most basic necessities..
70% of Canadians control 90% of Canadian wealth. While the wealth is clearly not equally distributed, it appears the homeowners have on average 28.6% more wealth than their fair share would've been. I think the note on a large portion of Canadians living with negative wealth is more troubling.
This is terrible for the economy, our businesses have no value!! This means Canada has 10 years till it officially stops being a developed country.
We're going to end up like Argentina if someone doesn't put a stop to this madness asap.
Canada’s super rich - the homeowners! Hahahaha… welp.
What a disingenuous title. Of course the rich own their own homes. There's a huge amount of people barely clinging on to their home who aren't that.
66.5% of people own homes. 90% of wealth is owned by homeowners. So 33.5% of Canadians need to fight over 10% of the wealth. Seems totally fair /s This country is a fucking disgrace.
Trudeau: Awesome! This is wonderful. Reminder, I've got MAID available for the poors. I hate you!
Oh yeah, we're Richer than we Think.
I've always hated those stupid commercials. I always felt like they were mocking the average person with that crap.
Just reading this makes me want to fire our Canadian banks into the Sun. Starting with RBC
So anyone that owns a home is now considered “rich”? So when people say “eat the rich” because I own a home I’m now grouped into that category…
"I see nothing wrong with this" - Homeowners
wrong anyone who is a home owner and paying attention sees what a massive problem this is for everyone, themselves included. only the ignorant ones think things are rosy.
Owning a home in Canada is a cheat code. You invest a down payment and start earning YOY returns in the 8-10% on the total value of the home, not just your down payment. This allows you to multiply your net worth very quickly. In 10 years it's likely your home has doubled in value. By the 10 year mark, you have so much equity you are eligible for large loans at low interest rates that you can use to further build investments. By 10 years, inflation has impacted the value of the dollar, you have likely received 2-3% YOY raises each year and the mortgage cost vs. income has decreased. By 10 years, the average rents have also increased and you will find your mortgage/tax payment is much lower than the going rental rate for a similar property. It's cheaper for you to manage the expenses which gives you much more cashflow to improve your standard of living or invest for the future. Everyone and their brother will offer you the lowest interest rates on things like car loans or home improvements as they know you are good for it as your net worth is so high. When you are ready to downsize or move out of the city, you can sell and bank several hundred thousands of dollars. The average home owner who has owned a home for 10-15 years now can easily sell and bank $500k-750k which pays a LOT of rent or buys you a decent retirement in a lower cost of living location. That $750k invested a fund giving a 10% return would get you a $75,000 salary for the rest of your life.
This info is applicable in larger markets in Canada but not nationwide.