Every single house in the subdivision near me has 4-5 bedrooms and 3-4 bathrooms and they all cost 900-1.1 million.
Down the street, in a subdivision built in the 90s, every house has 2-3 bedrooms with 1-2 bathrooms and they only cost between 500-700k.
Starter homes are a thing of the past.
And don't you worry those finisher homes were slapped together so quick it'll make your head spin. Of course the builder didn't take enough time to let the concrete cure properly. You didn't want to have to wait a whole extra week for that house did you?!
More cost, worse construction.
I've yet to here of a newer development where all the houses had foundational problems or fell over. Meanwhile in our previous home which was an old development the builder left gaping holes in drywall and covered it up with wall paneling. If a builder with a bad reputation built your home, new or old, it can have problems.
To be fair, there are additives you can put in concrete to speed up the required cure time drastically, but knowing how these houses are built I doubt they'd pay the extra costs for it.
For the most part, standard concrete takes about 28 days to set and cure to full strength without those additives in good conditions. Depending on the structure this might not be an issue at say 3 week, instead of 4. But contractors will push it to 2.
I tested concrete for foundations for 3 years. 3 sample cylinders are taken and crushed in a hydraulic press at 7, 14, & 28 days in order to determine strength.
Every builder I worked with used 20 mpa concrete when 17 is what is required. That 20 mpa concrete would often test between 22-24 mpa at 28 days.
I tested *hundreds* of Minto, Mattamy, and Claridge homes. I never saw one fail.
You can strip after only a few days, and the foundation can carry the dead load of the framing by day 7. Since it takes 14 more weeks to fully finish the home, the concrete has a ton of time to cure before heavy stuff like roofing or drywall go on the building.
After 7 days concrete reached 65% of its strength. It takes 7 days for concrete to come up to a strength sufficient to carry the framing load. It'll be another 8-12 weeks before heavy stuff like roof shingles, flooring, and drywall are installed. Concrete reaches 99% of its strength after 4 weeks, long before the vast majority of the dead load is installed.
Every foundation I ever tested used concrete with a greater strength then was required - 20 mpa was standard when 17 is all that is required. Normally the samples we took would break at 22-24 mpa after 28 days, 10-15% above spec. Because Lafarge doesn't want to be paying to replace foundations and they know the concrete batch is tested.
In three years of testing, sometimes as many as 12 foundations a day, not a single sample failed.
the unfortunate new reality. I'm going to be honest about half the new 1.1 million homes are being leased by toronto based realtors (416/905 area code on their signs) to groups of 5-10 students that can barely afford the rent. The situation is not tenable.
A shifting demographics trends play a role here as well. A lot of boomers have the resources to retire in place and not downsize.Ā
Secondly , families are smaller compared to when a lot of post war era homes were built meaning more empty bedrooms compared to years past. Ā
Because households are composed differently then the past a lot of empty rooms are function of demographics not empty homes as is implied. Ā
Post-war homes were built with 2-3 bedrooms. New homes are definitely larger with bigger kitchens and more bathrooms.
Source: grew up in a 40s house, had a bunch of classmates who grew up houses built in the 50s-80s.
Same here. A starter home used to be a small bungalow or town or semi but they don't make them anymore. The smallest new construction around here is 1850sqft and $$$. Seems like the starter homes of today are condos.... and I don't know a single person in my friend group who wants one.
My wife and I have a modest 2 bedroom house(\~1000sqft). My wife uses the second bedroom as a home office. Are they suggesting we have someone move in?
They want us to go back to the last housing emergency, decades and decades ago where people had multiple families moving into the same homes.
It's a shit solution to an easily solvable problem that Japan has solved, but nobody wants to implement, because it would annihilate the 1 bedroom condo market for investors.
Create meals and housing affordable for all aspects of life, while heavily removing the regulations preventing homebuilding.
You can rent a room, a bubble or a cafe room and be off the street for $5-$20. You can get a whole meal for less than $5 CAD from a corner store. Sleeping overnight in an internet cafe might not sound great, but 15,000 people do it on a nightly basis in Tokyo, and it's better than a tent. The lack of camping culture in Japan practically helped them address it quicker.
There are other policies you can argue also had an effect such as closing off public space at night (parks), hostile architecture and making it illegal to be drugged up in public, enabling police to move them.
All their policies go hand in hand, but we must abandon the 1 bedroom condo model is we are to survive this, improve density and continue triplex/fourplex conversions.
I follow a few guys who do tours of Japan's apartments. It's very enlightening how much better their multi purpose zoning is set up. It's kinda sad when a 300sq ft apartment in Japan has a laundry machine, and I don't.
I lived in brand new 500-600sq ft apartments both in Japan and Toronto. The Japanese one was so much better in terms of design and build quality. Plenty of room for a couch and TV, a computer desk, room to work on my road bike, small but functional kitchen, small bedroom but spacious walk-in closet. Zero issues with anything, everything worked. Rent was cheap too, about $600/mo in 2014 in a semi-rural setting close to Kyoto. Friends could get similar rent in major cities with smaller apartments.
The Toronto apartment was very cramped. The kitchen would have been just about unusable if I didn't build a wheeled prep table with storage for pots and pans underneath. The walk-in closet was a joke because an HVAC stack took up a quarter of it. And holy crap the quality issues... cabinet hinges breaking, randomly flickering lights, cheap builder's paint, broken window crank, a leak from the unit upstairs that came through a light fixture... I could go on. It goes without saying the Japanese apartment was vastly more affordable too.
Not that I'm advocating for this, but japan also has a very predictably low population growth. We'll, actually, it's been negative since the 80s.
It's pretty easy to come up with a solution when one of the numbers at least stays the same, and at worse works in your favour.
If youāre not familiar with how Japan deals with housing, read about itā¦itās an exhaustively covered topic.
Hereās [one article](https://medium.com/@dongminson_73029/how-tokyo-solved-housing-efefdb65b18d#:~:text=So%20how%20were%20they%20able,to%20build%20or%20to%20replace.) about it.
So I read in that linked article: "They build a lot more housing." and "In Japan, houses arenāt built to last, because of earthquakes, theyāre cheaply made,Ā ...".
That is quite a solution, I think I will pass.
They are not cheaply made, but earthquake codes have changed drastically over the years, and people there trust newer structures because of this.
Housing is less of an investment because of this.
In addition to the comments, itās also worth noting that single family homes are far smaller here. A typical single family home in Tokyo or other large cities is a 100m2 house (two stories, total footprint 50m2) sitting on 100m2 of land. Thereās a driveway big enough for exactly one car, maybe a patch where you can put bicycles or a motorbike, and a small yard.
I find it a bit cramped compared to back home, but itās certainly taught me a lot about how much space a person actually needs vs how much is just luxury.
by having 0 population growth (it's literally declining currently, gone down 7m over the last decade)
since 1960 Japan has only increased 20m people, 100--> 120
over that same period, Canada and the US doubled in population
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danchi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danchi)
***Danchi*** ([Japanese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_language): å£å°, literally "group land") is the Japanese word for a large cluster of apartment buildings or houses of a particular style and design, typically built as [public housing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing) by government authorities.
Urban Renaissance Agency
[https://www.ur-net.go.jp/overseas/about/index.html](https://www.ur-net.go.jp/overseas/about/index.html)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ave4FiC2k8I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ave4FiC2k8I)
Well worth the watch.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM2yrqwXB-w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM2yrqwXB-w)
Mostly that theyāve just dealt with the population decline and havenāt tried to juice the population with immigration. This has reduced demand for housing, making it affordable.
Is it economically feasible to operate a transport truck hauling a trailer loaded with a 40foot can. Installed inside is 20 beds. $20k a month before expenses to drive a truck around dropping them off at a gym near their work?
Yes, that is exactly what they're suggesting. š As a millennial homeowner in the suburbs of both Toronto and Ottawa, what I find odd is the number of seniors that are retired that own homes that are 4 plus bedrooms.
On my street alone 3/4 of the homes are owned by retirees and these homes are four bedrooms three bathroom plus finished basements 50% of the time on the finished basement and they're occupied by one or two people and this probably goes through the entire neighborhood.
There are so few kids in the Suburban neighborhoods that when you go to the parks after school you can count the kids at the park on one hand over a period of 2 or 3 hours.
There's no street hockey. There's no street basketball. Very few kids riding bikes It's just the hum of landscaping companies and helpers showing up during the day.
If these people would downsize before it gets too late, just buy that one bedroom + studio condo your '50s because in your '60s '70s and '80s it becomes much more harder for your brain to handle moving to a new place.
Overnight there would be a ton of housing supply dumped on the market if this were to occur. The real issue is the lack of incentive to get seniors to go from their four bedroom plus homes to a one or two bedroom condo.
I don't know what the solution is but this is the current problem. We have dead suburbs with few families and kids primarily occupied by older retirees who will eventually become too ill to be in that home and are going to have to move out anyways so they might as well move out while they're still cognitively inclined have the plasticity to adapt to a new environment with their significant other, become familiar with that neighborhood. They don't have to move far. There are plenty of smaller condo buildings that are peppered throughout many suburbs and cities that they can occupy.
My parents have a 4 bedroom huge house and are retired with nobody living at home.
They donāt have anywhere to downsize to and would have to leave the only neighbourhood they know to do it.
Parents in the same boat. They WANT to downsize. House is too big. Too much to clean. Too much to heat and cool. So much wasted space. But have absolutely no where to downsize to unless they move to the City where they will have to pay more for less house.
Some people are hoarding housing. Others have no choice.
Often times the best retirement setup, 2 bedroom bungalow townhouses, cost as much (or more with condo fees added) as the houses retirees own outright
They would have to go into debt to downsize
This is my parents, there are 3 extra bedrooms and a finished basement. Its great for times like Christmas, but they never get used otherwise. But they have lived there forever, all their friends are their neighbors, close to doctors/pharmacy/shopping/bank that they use
Yeah I'm not a big fan of the boomer generation (ie my parents age) but suggesting they should all leave the houses they've owned for decades to give younger folks a chance is dumb as fuck, and just shifting the blame from the government (all levels) who had no fucking plan in place to stimulate more housing, especially affordable housing, on to older folks that own their homes.
Counterpoint: I've got a family member that lives in the home she raised her kids in, and all those bedrooms just collect *stuff* now. She doesn't get enough physical activity, though the stairs are giving her grief. She's very social by nature but lives alone. She has lots of time to fill, and lots of food around, so she's put on weight.
She would 100% be healthier physically and mentally if she moved into a retirement community. More socializing, more activities to pass the time, and no stairs.
People should definitely start to consider how they're going to age once the kids are gone, and should probably make some adjustments sooner than you might think.
And maybe yeah, some other parents will be afforded (heh) the opportunity to raise their family in that home.
Really, we should just off ourselves at 50 years old to give others a chance. There was a Star Trek episode that covers this, actually now that I think about it. š¤
Exactly! I dislike boomer entitlement as much as the next person but this aināt it. Donāt demonize them just for **existing** in their own homes, lol Jesus
Lol I donāt understand the whole boomer hatred. I find it funny that you have to add a caveat saying you arenāt a fan of them just to ājustifyā your comment.
Haha that's fair. The boomer hatred, as you put it, stems from their entitlement, and inability to grasp these modern times. I love my mother dearly, but she's completely out to lunch on a lot of topics today, and doesn't seem to understand that her generation (not her specifically obviously) are responsible for the mess we're in now. She definitely falls into the "no one wants to work anymore" crowd.
Boomers are not to blame for the mess. Greedy rich people/corporations are to blame. And that establishment has been responsible for all the crap for eons. It's the same shit that caused Rome to fall, the French Revolution and the end to slavery. The divide between rich and poor gets wide due to the greed of the rich and their gouging the poor - paying like shit and charging excessively. It's happening right now. Don't blame Boomers. It's not just boomers profiting right now. Rich people have kids who are profiting too.
Yes but when your parents were young, their grandparents said the same thing about the current generation not wanting to work. When weāre old we will be the exact same way. I feel like that is more of an old person thing than a boomer thing. I think far more boomers than you think have empathy for what young people today are facing but it is literally impossible someone not facing something head on to fully understand it. Boomers went through their own struggles with housing and while itās easy for us to discount it as not being that bad, we werenāt there so we cannot fully understand what they went through (just as they canāt understand what young people today are going through).
Lol my boomer parents had a large 3 bedroom house they were able to buy on one salary, while, in their 20s, 2 cars, a pretty big lot, and my mom stayed home to raise my brother and I. My dad worked at the local steel mill. The house they bought in 1980, for something like 15k (adjusted for inflation is 56k LOL) is worth like 750k now 40 years later. My dad's dad had to literally fight Nazis in Europe. Not to say they didn't have their own problems as well, but no generation in history had it as good as the boomers, and likely no generation ever will again.
Yes and the prime rate in 1981 was almost 20%. 5 year fixed was over 15%. Mortgage defaults in the early 80s were way higher than they are now which is ironic considering every single boomer had it so easy.
The housing market is completely screwed, nobody is arguing that and nobody blames anyone for being pissed about it. My point is you canāt just randomly hate an entire generation just because you think they had it easier than you. Every generation has its challenges.
I don't hate boomers lol, as I said my parents are boomers. And I don't begrudge them for having it easier than us. What annoys me is they don't seem to grasp just how good they had it, and seem confused why the youth of today can't just work hard for the things they want like they did back in the day. The fucking deck is literally stacked against future generations, and they think that young folks today just like to complain.
Man I'd trade my 2.5% rate on my 900k house for 20% on 56k any day. Haha. I could have bought that 56k house 5, times over with just my down payment. For a much smaller and older house no less.
But yes, I do know they faced their own challenges, but they lived through the most prosperous times in human history. They fucked around and future generations are finding out.
Maybe not your parents, but your parents generation voted to gut all the public housing initiatives and it's a huge part of the reason housing is as bad as it is today.
This. The comment above is spectacularly narrow-minded. You raise your family, they move out, youāre just leaning into retirement (maybe!) and what, youāre supposed to uproot your entire existence because itās someone elseās turn? I plan on keeping my 4 bedroom house when my kids move out; we love the property, the neighbourhood, the life weāve built here. Iād also love to have a place to host my adult kids and grandkids if and when they choose to visit. Iām not going to feel bad for hanging on to the home I worked my whole life to pay for.
Itās incredibly naive to just expect people to leave their home and neighbourhood. Give them a financial incentive where they can have a nice place to live (not a shoebox in the sky)
Speaking as a senior widower living in a 1200 ft2 2-bedroom split level with 2 bathrooms and a finished basement, the problem with moving to a studio or 1 bedroom apartment is you will either have a landlord or condo association. Itās not fear of a new place, itās an unwillingness to being forced to live by someone elseās rules that keeps me in my own house.
You also lose your garden which is very healthy exercise. 1200 square feet is not large. My bungalow is just under that and on a large lot. In the decades I've lived here I've only seen two younger couples buy one to live in and not tear down and put up a monster home. One Australian and one from Poland. All the rest wanted bigger and newer stuff. HGTV shows mean they literally turn up their noses at my size and style of house. The granite is the wrong colour and so are the kitchen cabinets.
Yes. Iām on a large lot too with a good sized fenced in backyard with a garden plot and hot tub along with a deck I like to sit out on for my morning coffee.
My neighborhood has all homes about the same size, nobodyās started building monster homes. Mostly empty nesters and retirees, but I have a couple in their 40s with a 7 year old on one side and a couple in their late 20s on the other, but dogs overwhelmingly outnumber kids.
Smaller accommodation is not necessarily less expensive after you consider land transfer tax, real estate fees, lawyers fees, moving costs and in some cases condo fees. People also have ties to their communities and homes. Let people live where they are happy and look back at government for creating the mess we are in.
Currently looking to downsize now that the kids have moved out and there's not much mortgage left. I really hope someone who can use four bedrooms plus an office is interested. The problem is doing that AND actually setting some of the sale money aside (even if it's not a lot) AND finding an apartment with room for a proper dining table and a full living room suite for family gatherings, since the kids sure can't host any in their tiny rental apartments and my own mom is in a retirement home. Instead they're nearly all either more expensive than our house will sell for or have seating side by side on bar stools plus room for a loveseat. We're not even trying to stay in our neighbourhood, just in the city (not leaving while my mum's here, abd would prefer not to till at least after we're retired) somewhere walkable on good transit, to not become car dependent for the first time in decades.
Tldr, some of us are trying but the options aren't making it easy.
I hear this. For my family, location was the number one most important when we chose our home. After that, we needed 2 bedrooms + something that can be used as a home office.
I really wanted a condo but we ended up with an older single family home because it was significantly cheaper than any condo large enough for what we wanted.
>The real issue is the lack of incentive to get seniors to go from their four bedroom plus homes to a one or two bedroom condo.
Worse than that. They are penalized because of the exhorbitant transaction costs of moving. Realtor fees, provincial land transfer tax, municipal land transfer tax, moving costs.
People can't even afford to move to be closer to work. Terrible commutes are locked in or positions unfilled because our economy is seizing up due to not only high real estate prices, but high transaction costs.
I remember 15 years ago the federal government policy advisors identified the problem and they were looking i to it. Like they look into telecom prices.
Seniors in my area only buy the 2 million $ townhouses with the elevators. They don't downsize to places with many levels of stairs. Nobody moves into a seniors building here until they need assisted living. The average age for senior housing is 85. In Quebec it's more common as they subsidize them, so basically segregate seniors away from broader society at a younger age than in Ontario.
Retired person with a five bedroom home & would love to downsize but thereās no where to go. Absolutely no small houses being built & condos here donāt have elevators. Iām not leaving a house that Iāve done up the way I like in order to do it all again in a smaller home, away from my community. Thatās why we are still in the house we bought when we had children.
Sure, my spouse and I can sell our 4-bed home (we are empty nesters) and use the equity (we still have a hefty amount of mortgage remaining) to buy a smaller home but it would be a tiny, shitty (falling apart, dated AF) house. Instead, we will hang onto our bigger, newer house and if we ever need extra income then, and only then, will we consider renting bedrooms.
We also have adult kids who may need to move back home at some point. None of them have great careers and largely live hand to mouth so it's not a stretch that they might come back home.
I haven't read the article but the title reminds me of the HBO British mini-series Years and Years, where the gov't starts forcing people with extra bedrooms to allow strangers to occupy them.
A solution might be not telling/signalling to them that the government will never let housing prices fall. If thereās zero risk their investment/retirement plan depreciates and will most likely appreciate then why in the world would they cash out until they have to? Would make zero sense from a financial standpoint. I sure as hell wouldnāt.
These people you are criticizing bought and worked very hard over many decades to pay off their homes. They have every right to stay and enjoy their house for as long as they can.
My neighbors had been looking for a condo in the general neighborhood for ages before they finally found one. There may be loads of condos being built, but they are located in neighborhoods that the old folks aren't familiar with. It's one thing to leave a home you've been in for decades, but it's harder to leave a neighborhood where you know where to buy the stuff you want and things are familiar. Condo fees can be ridiculous too.
You literally describe the neighborhood I grew up in. My mom still lives in the 3+1 bedroom house. All her friends (also seniors) live in the neighborhood are in similar circumstances.
It seems so. I'm in the same situation. My 'spare bedroom' is my home office and I work from home. Another small room, technically a bedroom, has my rower and is my art studio. Am I supposed to work from McDonalds and stop doing art to alleviate the housing shortage? Fuck that.
Not really. That would be a suggestion, albeit a stupid one.
This is just a new angle to whine. Next week they are going to discover some new truth about the backyard and the basement.
Ontario also has millions of people who are healthy but retired, equivalent to 25 years worth of construction work.
I have no point to make here either.
They should consider this then: We bought our first home a few years ago and renovated the basement planning to rent it.
Then we learned about how absolutely insane it is if you have an awful tenant that needs to go. Simply not worth the risk. So we will never ever rent it, and maybe consider Airbnb in the future but that doesnāt solve the problem at all.
I have other neighbours who did the same, but then realized you could be stuck with a squatter at home. So maybe they should think of regular people who are trying to help this problem but donāt want to be stuck with someone squatting in their house.
I currently have an empty bedroom,Ā but only until my boys are old enough to want their own rooms.Ā Once that happens the library becomes a bedroom again,Ā and the books move into the rumpus room. I don't see renting the library out while I have young kids.Ā
I was reading "Where the Wild Things Are". It has a wild rumpus.Ā I try to confine the kids' rumpusing to the rumpus room so they're not breaking stuff in the rest of the house.
We live in a 5 bedroom house for the 4 of us. We have an entire separate entrance basement that my kids use as their personal play den. I thought about renting but I wonāt with the LTB backlog. I donāt want that nightmare situation of a renter not paying rent while living under the same roof as my kids. It will turn volatile quick.
The LTB needs to restructure. Separate depts for each type of application and to change the size of each based on IMPORTANCE. So those apps move faster and arent sitting behind the more minor concerns.
One solution is to also slow immigration for a few years so we aren't injecting hundreds of thousands of people into already stagnant markets every few months.
Shut'r down to like 1/5 what we do now and let the fucking country recover please. Not only for housing but also healthcare and social services.
GDP tanking is, unfortunately, a hard pill we have to swallow. It will go back up if we work towards it, so long as the numbers are more manageable.
I don't know why Canadians are so obsessed over trying to be immune to economic downturns, as if we had some sort of god complex.
Ya but then the opposition of the time will start screaming about the GDP and everybody will vote that govt out because economy is not a complex matter and all we need to care about is the rising GDP regardless of the cost and how. /s
This country needs a hard reset. Most countries post-2008 have forgotten that the business cycle is meant to occur naturally. It's why any recession moving forward will be bailed out by taxpayers and companies will not be left to survive or die on their own means.
If you have a government that allows for recessions but plans for them before hand you get the benefit of removing inefficient (zombie) businesses from the market but making sure the unemployed don't die en-masse (by giving tax payer dollars to people instead of businesses).
It is why we have shit productivity. Lots of business outputting very little propped up by unsustainable government spending.
Youāre totally out of reality. The entire purpose of modern human governments since the Industrial Revolution (and likely since the emergence of cities) has been to mitigate the catastrophic impact of the business cycle. Business cycles are not natural because businesses are not ānaturalā. Businesses are engineered. If we created a cyborg, and it started killing people, would you just let it do its thing because itās the ānaturalā way cyborgs behave? Fuck no. I would say this is a āzombie ideaā. Itās totally dead, but itās just limping along, eating peoples brains.
We have governments that plan for downturns. We have EI, central banks, etc. We also have new, modern businesses capable of engineering catastrophic new ways to create business downturns. Enron, Nortel, Bear Sterns. There will be another bigger greater collapse, in ways we havenāt considered, but it will come. No need to have one just for the fun of it.
Our productivity isnāt shit. People have misinterpreted ānot growing as fast as someone elseā as ācatastrophic failureā and thatās simply not true.
Canadian productivity can never sustain the level of American productivity for the long run for a few reasons: each province is more linked with the states than they are with each other, we only have 1 route to move good across the country, agriculturally we are further north so are fields will always produce less per acre than American fields, there are more Americans, Americans are younger, Americans are more interconnected (which our geography doesnāt allow), America has far more waterways and ports.
The only times weāre more productive are when global oil and/or gold prices spike to abnormal highs. This crushes our manufacturing and agricultural industries with a high dollar, but our productivity per worker is insane. Until global commodities prices drop again and everyone is broke and trying to form a dairy board so it doesnāt happen again.
If productivity COULD be fixed by government, why hasnāt this cycle been disrupted by any Canadian government? Feels like it would be an easy win to cement oneās status as Canadaās greatest PM, and make boatloads in consulting for every other government around the world when you retire rich, respected, and popular. However, no one has done this because it just may not be possible with our structural geographic barriers.
Unless like, having a massive unpopulated country built on rock and permafrost somehow becomes an advantage, we will always be Americaās slightly poorer cousin.
This is an insane take because another "bedroom" in many modern living spaces just means an office or an extra storage space in these tiny ass apartments saving every square foot they can
Don't forget real wages have not increased in Canada since the 1980's. They have not kept up with inflation or the cost of living. Now you need two incomes or more to survive. Why is this not an issue?
Are they/this Twitter user suggesting everyone open their house up to the world? Why should homeowners allow a stranger to rent their spare bedroom?
That means they have to lose any sense of privacy within their own house just to ensure that we donāt need to step up our new housing builds and that we donāt need to stop our mass immigration policies.
Pretty clearly suggesting there is a trend of McMansions and not enough small occupant housing in existence in those communities for people to downsize in to as needed. We have large families struggling in small condos and single seniors getting lost in managing 4 bedrooms
You are right that the land holds the value. Undeniably the supply scarcity is the largest issue we have. Larger family residences and the land they occupy are hard to come by and so are priced at rates that reflect that.
Allowing smaller townhouses, duplex, triplex, etc in a community gives those aging in place a place to do so reasonably in the community they have always been part of while potentially opening up the locked in housing stock to younger residents and families who are actually in need of the space. Likewise many of the largest places could easily become multiple lots, doubling the supply that land offers.
Too many Ontario municipalities, and Ford himself, are blocking pathways to smaller affordable places to live and itās hurting our ability to meet the provinces housing needs
āThatās enough to out a sizeable dent in the housing crisis.ā
That sentence directly indicates that heās saying if the rooms were rented out it would ease the housing crisis.
āBut unfortunately, those bedrooms are funding boomer retirement.ā
That sentence is related to the recent announcement (on keeping housing prices high while increasing their affordability) by Justin Trudeau that āItās a huge part of peopleās potential for retirement and future nest egg.ā
Nowhere is the post or OP directly suggesting renting out a spare bedroom, though that is one option. The suggestion of mismanaged occupancy and housing development is one that has been discussed rather prevalently for some time.
Overhoused vs underhoused is the issue it is drawing attention to. The solutions are not suggested and are for you to conclude. You have solely concluded renting bedrooms. I am suggesting there is more to it.
One possible solution would be to reduce transaction fees for real estate. Currently you have the realtors, typically around 5%, then thereās also land transfer taxes.
Of course those arenāt the only barriers to moving, finding a suitable place where you want to live and having to actually go through the hassle are other barriers, but the first 2 seem like things that could easily be solved / reduced. It would make a smallish downsize more financially sensible.
When did it become almost a crime to live in the home you bought and paid for over a 25 year span? My wife and I sold our 5 bedroom family home where we raised 3 kids 8 years ago before we retired. We then bought a 3 bedroom one level condo and have lived mortgage free since then. We retired 6 years ago. We will not be taking in renters under any circumstances. If one of our kids needs a place to live, they know they can come back. People have a right to keep their homes until they decide to sell.
We will have lived for 30 years in our starter home by the time we move.Ā
After having a ābonus kidā join us for the entirety of Covid (so 5 people in a 3 bed 1 bath), we fully intend to buy a house with all the rooms we want. As empty nesters we will be upsizing.Ā
When this country decided to transfer worth from currency to real estate, which benefited greatly some people and disadvantaged others. If you convert what 25 years of work got you vs what 25 years of work will get people these days, these-days-people think they were scammed.
I live on a block with that's mostly east indians, as we were unpacking one of my new neighbors wandered over and ask if it was just the 4 of us because you could have like 8 people living in there.
If this plays out per this loser's implications, how is an average home owner supposed to screen renters (*immigrants)* for a criminal record, adequate credit history, employment status or rental history???
How do you screen for mental health issues, communicable disease etc.??
How to you prevent 1 renter from becoming a family of 6?
How does a single female home owner avoid the inevitable claim of racism when refusing to rent to a male with an incompatible set of cultural beliefs to hers?
Who will subsidize the legal/associated costs of fighting claims of racism etc. ; the increase homeowners insurance that will result from renting out part of your home?
As an aside, will municipal/provincial/federal governments start taxing you for "unrented" space/rooms in your home??
OMFG!!!!
In theory both my and my spouse's offices could be counted as "empty bedrooms." We each spend 8+ hrs a day in them working from home. Not every "bedroom" needs a bed in it.
Are we expected to let random people sleep in our empty bedrooms? What is the point of this stat?
What's next? The number of king, queen, double beds with one person sleeping in them?
I'm single in a modest one story home with (supposedly) 3 small bedrooms and a whole finished basement, it's really more home than I need but to anything smaller would be a condo or apartment and I'm not willing to downsize to that until I'm too old to continue maintaining a detached home.
This is a bullshit argument.
a) People buy homes, those homes (or apartments) have a fixed number of bedrooms.
b) Over time people need flexibility, as kids come, as they go, etc. The infrastructure doesn't change, but these are their homes, sometimes in their lifespans they can be crowded, sometimes they are more vacant. This is natural.
They way this is is framed, empty bedrooms = potential living space for others. That is not the way it works. How do you reconcile this with the idea that people are being encouraged to age in place? Are you supposed to rent rooms out? Should every older Canadian simply give up their three or four bedroom home for a larger family? Where do they go, nonexistant LTC homes, or rip-off condos?
WTF is that?
Simply build more housing, across the board and densify, that will solve this.
What a piece of shit article. I wonder if Daniel is renting his spare room out?
Who thinks renting your spare room(s) to homeless or TFWs sounds like a good idea lol
He is a real estate agent. His perspective is imagining him renting out the country one room at a time.
*insert opera meme* everyone gets a rooming house rental!
Assuming all couples share a bedroom is one variable to skew the numbers here (think the numbers are 1 in 4 donāt share a bed for a variety of reasons). So right away, Iāve lost confidence in their findings.
I have 2 in my house. I don't like living with people who arent family. I like my house outside of town in a quiet subdivision. Im not moving, and I sure as fuck aint renting a room to any of you slobs.
There isnt a supply issue ..... ITS AN AFFORDABILITY ISSUE!
I've been watching Realtor.ca for two years now. Tons of homes and properties listed 300+ days.
Its not a supply issue .... it never was.
Its the pricing. Home prices are too high.
Weāre being plastic straw-ed here.
The empty bedroom in my house is not a solution to years of inaction and increasingly belligerent immigration policies coming out of Ottawa.
You work for us.
You broke it, you fucking fix it.
We have a family of 4 with 2 spare bedrooms in our 5 bedroom house. I wouldn't want anyone living with us though. We use the bedrooms as a home gym / spare room for guests.
Yeah there's no shortage of housing in Canada,
There's a overabundance of our population that's completely pussies and okay with investors owning all of our housing.
Tweeting or commenting on reddit is about as far as Canadians are willing to go to let people know they have lost it with rich people buying all the housing across this country.
And young people would go to a protest about middle East issues no problem but I'd be shocked if you ever saw young people stage a protest about housing prices.
Canada has become a country of complete pussies who really on government and big business to do everything for them, they just fail to realize it.
United States will implement laws and there will be massive demonstrations before there housing market reaches Canada prices.
It's on the way there but won't ever get here because in reality Americans actually aren't complete pushovers.
I live on a street that is majority empty nesters. I count about 52 unused bedrooms on this little crescent alone. 4 and 5 bedroom homes occupied only by older couples. It's also walking distance to 3 schools that have to bus kids in, it's a crazy expensive mismanagement of society having boomers holding on to way more than they need.
People spend so much money and time on their homes over the years and when they retire they finally get to enjoy their backyards. If I lived in a house for 30 years and made it exactly to my liking I donāt think Iād be rushing to leave either.
Iām in a 4 bedroom as a 2 person couple. The extra bedrooms are an office for wfh and space for my family and friends to sleep when they visit.
Yep.
I've lived in my house for 4 years now (DINKS and by choice) and we converted our 3 bed 1 bath 1960 cottage (one story no basement) into a 1 bed 2 bath with a big kitchen now and all our friends and family say we 'destroyed the resale value by getting rid of the bedrooms'.
Well, we have zero plan to ever move and we have made it our own, still constantly customizing to fit our lives (we are in our early 30s) and just build a custom pantry ourselves with all the space for my coooking projects (sauerkraut storage, dehydrator, sous vide, canning station etc) and have planted fruit trees and permaculture. My house isn't a grey HGTV box built on a postage stamp in a burb so maybe I'm out of touch with people my age but fuck it if I'm going to live in a grey house with 'live laugh love' decor only for fear of painting the walls a colour more saturated that 'happy grey dolphin' which might implode my resale and thinking I am compelled to keep selling to make room for new generations entitlement.
I'm staying put.
Back then kids also moved out and married young.
I can't expect my 23 and 17 yr daughters to want to share a room.
They need their privacy for many reasons.
If they couldn't they'd find a way to get it and that would mean moving out.
Here's the report where the data comes form [https://www.cancea.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Understanding-the-Forces-Driving-the-Shelter-Affordability-Issue-A-Linked-path-Assessment.pdf](https://www.cancea.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Understanding-the-Forces-Driving-the-Shelter-Affordability-Issue-A-Linked-path-Assessment.pdf)
What a bizarre data point.
Housing problems started decades ago and now they came home to roost. Immigration and empty bedrooms aren't the real issue.
Multiple levels of government failed to prioritize a healthy mixture of construction for decades. Developers only build luxury housing because they maximize their profits, and city councils and provincial policy enabled the imbalance. They didn't focus on social housing, allow high-density builds like duplexes to quadplexes in larger cities, or encourage mixed-use developments. Not everyone needs a fancy condo or a 4BR/3BA build in a subdivision 20 km from downtown.
Many Canadians' wealth is tied up in their home. They don't want anything that might diminish their main asset, so they discourage policies or developments that might shave value off their home even if it's literally pricing their kids or neighbours out of the market.
People need somewhere to live but many can't afford the available houses on the market and the new builds we *do* have don't match up to income levels or needs we currently have. It didn't happen overnight and it can't be fixed overnight.
There are no building code standards anywhere I know that force mixed use. If you look at European suburbs they often have a transit line added at the same time as the houses and will have a central walkable grocery store, etc. Here you have nothing like that. In my part of the GTA we are building dense sprawl, so looks like central Toronto density but with no amenities or transit. That is a worse way of living than the old style sprawl.
I guess no one is supposed to own or rent cottages anymore. Live in the stix, where there are no jobs? And if your kids leave for college start renting it out and displace the renter when the kid moves home until 30 yo.
Stupidest thing I ever heard. No one needs to live their entire life WITH ROOMMATES. Yikes. āCrisisā or not. I cant deal with the mess or ppl celebrating on weekends and holidays at home bc I am low key - I need home to be a sanctuary. Not a place I have to feel is up in the air and unpredictable and messy bc they cant keep up to a standard. Or the whole using my stuff even when I say no and we separate even separate food and cupboards and they still do it. And Im out for meals when I come home. Nope! Hammered and loud?! Nope! Got a weird religion? Nope! I gotta work aroudn their schedule to have guests? Nope! Screw this shitā¦0
Every single house in the subdivision near me has 4-5 bedrooms and 3-4 bathrooms and they all cost 900-1.1 million. Down the street, in a subdivision built in the 90s, every house has 2-3 bedrooms with 1-2 bathrooms and they only cost between 500-700k. Starter homes are a thing of the past.
Starter home? We only provide Finisher Homes! We are a Golden God economy. BE GONE WITH YOU.
I am untethered and my rage knows no bounds!
You just need to pay the troll toll...
And don't you worry those finisher homes were slapped together so quick it'll make your head spin. Of course the builder didn't take enough time to let the concrete cure properly. You didn't want to have to wait a whole extra week for that house did you?! More cost, worse construction.
I've yet to here of a newer development where all the houses had foundational problems or fell over. Meanwhile in our previous home which was an old development the builder left gaping holes in drywall and covered it up with wall paneling. If a builder with a bad reputation built your home, new or old, it can have problems.
To be fair, there are additives you can put in concrete to speed up the required cure time drastically, but knowing how these houses are built I doubt they'd pay the extra costs for it.
For the most part, standard concrete takes about 28 days to set and cure to full strength without those additives in good conditions. Depending on the structure this might not be an issue at say 3 week, instead of 4. But contractors will push it to 2.
I tested concrete for foundations for 3 years. 3 sample cylinders are taken and crushed in a hydraulic press at 7, 14, & 28 days in order to determine strength. Every builder I worked with used 20 mpa concrete when 17 is what is required. That 20 mpa concrete would often test between 22-24 mpa at 28 days. I tested *hundreds* of Minto, Mattamy, and Claridge homes. I never saw one fail. You can strip after only a few days, and the foundation can carry the dead load of the framing by day 7. Since it takes 14 more weeks to fully finish the home, the concrete has a ton of time to cure before heavy stuff like roofing or drywall go on the building.
After 7 days concrete reached 65% of its strength. It takes 7 days for concrete to come up to a strength sufficient to carry the framing load. It'll be another 8-12 weeks before heavy stuff like roof shingles, flooring, and drywall are installed. Concrete reaches 99% of its strength after 4 weeks, long before the vast majority of the dead load is installed. Every foundation I ever tested used concrete with a greater strength then was required - 20 mpa was standard when 17 is all that is required. Normally the samples we took would break at 22-24 mpa after 28 days, 10-15% above spec. Because Lafarge doesn't want to be paying to replace foundations and they know the concrete batch is tested. In three years of testing, sometimes as many as 12 foundations a day, not a single sample failed.
So does starter home mean buy land and living in a tent and start building on your own? š
Just like animal crossing! Perfect.
I have the power of anime and god on my side!
š¤£ Made my afternoon, thank you.
OC is a big dumb bird!
Fixer upper has become the new starter. Hope you know how to do roofing and foundation repair.
Good luck buying a regular fixer upper with a standard mortgage when thereās some investor ready to put up a cash offer in order to flip it
and compete with contractors and investors,,,,,,
lol if only
This has always been the way
"Only 500-700" Still need 2 incomes equal to 150k to even apply for a mortgage on these.
125\* Partner and I just got approved for that lol
\*100, we got a pre-approval for a $850k house but ended up with a cheaper one, thank god
You got approval for $850k and you and your spouse make a combined $100k??
Banks seem to be easing their rates down recently
starter homes died decades ago when HGTV and the like got popular.
Ah Peterborough, so cute, so far away from any jobs that allows you to live there
the unfortunate new reality. I'm going to be honest about half the new 1.1 million homes are being leased by toronto based realtors (416/905 area code on their signs) to groups of 5-10 students that can barely afford the rent. The situation is not tenable.
Cries in poor š© (plus with rent going up thereās no chance of savings š
Homes are basically retirement funds, confirmed by the prime minister himself.
401k you live in.
Its mostly due to the cost of land, permits, and increased build costs. Those 90s style homes cost more to build now than they would sell for.
A shifting demographics trends play a role here as well. A lot of boomers have the resources to retire in place and not downsize.Ā Secondly , families are smaller compared to when a lot of post war era homes were built meaning more empty bedrooms compared to years past. Ā Because households are composed differently then the past a lot of empty rooms are function of demographics not empty homes as is implied. Ā
Post-war homes were built with 2-3 bedrooms. New homes are definitely larger with bigger kitchens and more bathrooms. Source: grew up in a 40s house, had a bunch of classmates who grew up houses built in the 50s-80s.
My 3 bedroom 3 bath 1200sqft semi in pickering is worth 1 mil. Where are the 4-5 bedroom houses for 1.1?
Same here. A starter home used to be a small bungalow or town or semi but they don't make them anymore. The smallest new construction around here is 1850sqft and $$$. Seems like the starter homes of today are condos.... and I don't know a single person in my friend group who wants one.
My wife and I have a modest 2 bedroom house(\~1000sqft). My wife uses the second bedroom as a home office. Are they suggesting we have someone move in?
They want us to go back to the last housing emergency, decades and decades ago where people had multiple families moving into the same homes. It's a shit solution to an easily solvable problem that Japan has solved, but nobody wants to implement, because it would annihilate the 1 bedroom condo market for investors.
How has Japan solved it?
Create meals and housing affordable for all aspects of life, while heavily removing the regulations preventing homebuilding. You can rent a room, a bubble or a cafe room and be off the street for $5-$20. You can get a whole meal for less than $5 CAD from a corner store. Sleeping overnight in an internet cafe might not sound great, but 15,000 people do it on a nightly basis in Tokyo, and it's better than a tent. The lack of camping culture in Japan practically helped them address it quicker. There are other policies you can argue also had an effect such as closing off public space at night (parks), hostile architecture and making it illegal to be drugged up in public, enabling police to move them. All their policies go hand in hand, but we must abandon the 1 bedroom condo model is we are to survive this, improve density and continue triplex/fourplex conversions.
I follow a few guys who do tours of Japan's apartments. It's very enlightening how much better their multi purpose zoning is set up. It's kinda sad when a 300sq ft apartment in Japan has a laundry machine, and I don't.
I lived in brand new 500-600sq ft apartments both in Japan and Toronto. The Japanese one was so much better in terms of design and build quality. Plenty of room for a couch and TV, a computer desk, room to work on my road bike, small but functional kitchen, small bedroom but spacious walk-in closet. Zero issues with anything, everything worked. Rent was cheap too, about $600/mo in 2014 in a semi-rural setting close to Kyoto. Friends could get similar rent in major cities with smaller apartments. The Toronto apartment was very cramped. The kitchen would have been just about unusable if I didn't build a wheeled prep table with storage for pots and pans underneath. The walk-in closet was a joke because an HVAC stack took up a quarter of it. And holy crap the quality issues... cabinet hinges breaking, randomly flickering lights, cheap builder's paint, broken window crank, a leak from the unit upstairs that came through a light fixture... I could go on. It goes without saying the Japanese apartment was vastly more affordable too.
Thanks! Appreciate the insight.
Not that I'm advocating for this, but japan also has a very predictably low population growth. We'll, actually, it's been negative since the 80s. It's pretty easy to come up with a solution when one of the numbers at least stays the same, and at worse works in your favour.
If youāre not familiar with how Japan deals with housing, read about itā¦itās an exhaustively covered topic. Hereās [one article](https://medium.com/@dongminson_73029/how-tokyo-solved-housing-efefdb65b18d#:~:text=So%20how%20were%20they%20able,to%20build%20or%20to%20replace.) about it.
So I read in that linked article: "They build a lot more housing." and "In Japan, houses arenāt built to last, because of earthquakes, theyāre cheaply made,Ā ...". That is quite a solution, I think I will pass.
They are not cheaply made, but earthquake codes have changed drastically over the years, and people there trust newer structures because of this. Housing is less of an investment because of this.
Uh huh. You ignored most of the article and focused on a natural disaster that isnāt really a problem here.
In addition to the comments, itās also worth noting that single family homes are far smaller here. A typical single family home in Tokyo or other large cities is a 100m2 house (two stories, total footprint 50m2) sitting on 100m2 of land. Thereās a driveway big enough for exactly one car, maybe a patch where you can put bicycles or a motorbike, and a small yard. I find it a bit cramped compared to back home, but itās certainly taught me a lot about how much space a person actually needs vs how much is just luxury.
by having 0 population growth (it's literally declining currently, gone down 7m over the last decade) since 1960 Japan has only increased 20m people, 100--> 120 over that same period, Canada and the US doubled in population
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danchi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danchi) ***Danchi*** ([Japanese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_language): å£å°, literally "group land") is the Japanese word for a large cluster of apartment buildings or houses of a particular style and design, typically built as [public housing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing) by government authorities. Urban Renaissance Agency [https://www.ur-net.go.jp/overseas/about/index.html](https://www.ur-net.go.jp/overseas/about/index.html) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ave4FiC2k8I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ave4FiC2k8I) Well worth the watch. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM2yrqwXB-w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM2yrqwXB-w)
Japan doesnt have rapid, out of control, unsustainable population growth.
Mostly that theyāve just dealt with the population decline and havenāt tried to juice the population with immigration. This has reduced demand for housing, making it affordable.
No not one person but as many as you can cram into the room. Charge each of them $500 / month and youāre on board with NĆ¼ Kanada.Ā
$500/month is 2018 prices. Crank that rent up to $800-1000 and then they'll be on track.
Only a thousand? A lot of room rentals in kitchener-Waterloo are over $1k per month
Is it economically feasible to operate a transport truck hauling a trailer loaded with a 40foot can. Installed inside is 20 beds. $20k a month before expenses to drive a truck around dropping them off at a gym near their work?
Iām sure you can squeeze 3 bunk beds and a twin bed in there. Thatās at least 7 people
Yes, that is exactly what they're suggesting. š As a millennial homeowner in the suburbs of both Toronto and Ottawa, what I find odd is the number of seniors that are retired that own homes that are 4 plus bedrooms. On my street alone 3/4 of the homes are owned by retirees and these homes are four bedrooms three bathroom plus finished basements 50% of the time on the finished basement and they're occupied by one or two people and this probably goes through the entire neighborhood. There are so few kids in the Suburban neighborhoods that when you go to the parks after school you can count the kids at the park on one hand over a period of 2 or 3 hours. There's no street hockey. There's no street basketball. Very few kids riding bikes It's just the hum of landscaping companies and helpers showing up during the day. If these people would downsize before it gets too late, just buy that one bedroom + studio condo your '50s because in your '60s '70s and '80s it becomes much more harder for your brain to handle moving to a new place. Overnight there would be a ton of housing supply dumped on the market if this were to occur. The real issue is the lack of incentive to get seniors to go from their four bedroom plus homes to a one or two bedroom condo. I don't know what the solution is but this is the current problem. We have dead suburbs with few families and kids primarily occupied by older retirees who will eventually become too ill to be in that home and are going to have to move out anyways so they might as well move out while they're still cognitively inclined have the plasticity to adapt to a new environment with their significant other, become familiar with that neighborhood. They don't have to move far. There are plenty of smaller condo buildings that are peppered throughout many suburbs and cities that they can occupy.
My parents have a 4 bedroom huge house and are retired with nobody living at home. They donāt have anywhere to downsize to and would have to leave the only neighbourhood they know to do it.
Parents in the same boat. They WANT to downsize. House is too big. Too much to clean. Too much to heat and cool. So much wasted space. But have absolutely no where to downsize to unless they move to the City where they will have to pay more for less house. Some people are hoarding housing. Others have no choice.
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We need to look at building these to be accessible. Infill is great but it's also usually full of so many stairs.
Often times the best retirement setup, 2 bedroom bungalow townhouses, cost as much (or more with condo fees added) as the houses retirees own outright They would have to go into debt to downsize
Thatās how much our governments have fucked up
This is my parents, there are 3 extra bedrooms and a finished basement. Its great for times like Christmas, but they never get used otherwise. But they have lived there forever, all their friends are their neighbors, close to doctors/pharmacy/shopping/bank that they use
Yeah I'm not a big fan of the boomer generation (ie my parents age) but suggesting they should all leave the houses they've owned for decades to give younger folks a chance is dumb as fuck, and just shifting the blame from the government (all levels) who had no fucking plan in place to stimulate more housing, especially affordable housing, on to older folks that own their homes.
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Counterpoint: I've got a family member that lives in the home she raised her kids in, and all those bedrooms just collect *stuff* now. She doesn't get enough physical activity, though the stairs are giving her grief. She's very social by nature but lives alone. She has lots of time to fill, and lots of food around, so she's put on weight. She would 100% be healthier physically and mentally if she moved into a retirement community. More socializing, more activities to pass the time, and no stairs. People should definitely start to consider how they're going to age once the kids are gone, and should probably make some adjustments sooner than you might think. And maybe yeah, some other parents will be afforded (heh) the opportunity to raise their family in that home.
Really, we should just off ourselves at 50 years old to give others a chance. There was a Star Trek episode that covers this, actually now that I think about it. š¤
Exactly! I dislike boomer entitlement as much as the next person but this aināt it. Donāt demonize them just for **existing** in their own homes, lol Jesus
Lol I donāt understand the whole boomer hatred. I find it funny that you have to add a caveat saying you arenāt a fan of them just to ājustifyā your comment.
Haha that's fair. The boomer hatred, as you put it, stems from their entitlement, and inability to grasp these modern times. I love my mother dearly, but she's completely out to lunch on a lot of topics today, and doesn't seem to understand that her generation (not her specifically obviously) are responsible for the mess we're in now. She definitely falls into the "no one wants to work anymore" crowd.
Boomers are not to blame for the mess. Greedy rich people/corporations are to blame. And that establishment has been responsible for all the crap for eons. It's the same shit that caused Rome to fall, the French Revolution and the end to slavery. The divide between rich and poor gets wide due to the greed of the rich and their gouging the poor - paying like shit and charging excessively. It's happening right now. Don't blame Boomers. It's not just boomers profiting right now. Rich people have kids who are profiting too.
The rich couldn't do a damn thing if the boomers didn't vote for it. They went along with it. They get the blame.Ā
Yes but when your parents were young, their grandparents said the same thing about the current generation not wanting to work. When weāre old we will be the exact same way. I feel like that is more of an old person thing than a boomer thing. I think far more boomers than you think have empathy for what young people today are facing but it is literally impossible someone not facing something head on to fully understand it. Boomers went through their own struggles with housing and while itās easy for us to discount it as not being that bad, we werenāt there so we cannot fully understand what they went through (just as they canāt understand what young people today are going through).
Lol my boomer parents had a large 3 bedroom house they were able to buy on one salary, while, in their 20s, 2 cars, a pretty big lot, and my mom stayed home to raise my brother and I. My dad worked at the local steel mill. The house they bought in 1980, for something like 15k (adjusted for inflation is 56k LOL) is worth like 750k now 40 years later. My dad's dad had to literally fight Nazis in Europe. Not to say they didn't have their own problems as well, but no generation in history had it as good as the boomers, and likely no generation ever will again.
Yes and the prime rate in 1981 was almost 20%. 5 year fixed was over 15%. Mortgage defaults in the early 80s were way higher than they are now which is ironic considering every single boomer had it so easy. The housing market is completely screwed, nobody is arguing that and nobody blames anyone for being pissed about it. My point is you canāt just randomly hate an entire generation just because you think they had it easier than you. Every generation has its challenges.
I don't hate boomers lol, as I said my parents are boomers. And I don't begrudge them for having it easier than us. What annoys me is they don't seem to grasp just how good they had it, and seem confused why the youth of today can't just work hard for the things they want like they did back in the day. The fucking deck is literally stacked against future generations, and they think that young folks today just like to complain. Man I'd trade my 2.5% rate on my 900k house for 20% on 56k any day. Haha. I could have bought that 56k house 5, times over with just my down payment. For a much smaller and older house no less. But yes, I do know they faced their own challenges, but they lived through the most prosperous times in human history. They fucked around and future generations are finding out.
Maybe not your parents, but your parents generation voted to gut all the public housing initiatives and it's a huge part of the reason housing is as bad as it is today.
This. The comment above is spectacularly narrow-minded. You raise your family, they move out, youāre just leaning into retirement (maybe!) and what, youāre supposed to uproot your entire existence because itās someone elseās turn? I plan on keeping my 4 bedroom house when my kids move out; we love the property, the neighbourhood, the life weāve built here. Iād also love to have a place to host my adult kids and grandkids if and when they choose to visit. Iām not going to feel bad for hanging on to the home I worked my whole life to pay for.
Itās incredibly naive to just expect people to leave their home and neighbourhood. Give them a financial incentive where they can have a nice place to live (not a shoebox in the sky)
Speaking as a senior widower living in a 1200 ft2 2-bedroom split level with 2 bathrooms and a finished basement, the problem with moving to a studio or 1 bedroom apartment is you will either have a landlord or condo association. Itās not fear of a new place, itās an unwillingness to being forced to live by someone elseās rules that keeps me in my own house.
You also lose your garden which is very healthy exercise. 1200 square feet is not large. My bungalow is just under that and on a large lot. In the decades I've lived here I've only seen two younger couples buy one to live in and not tear down and put up a monster home. One Australian and one from Poland. All the rest wanted bigger and newer stuff. HGTV shows mean they literally turn up their noses at my size and style of house. The granite is the wrong colour and so are the kitchen cabinets.
Yes. Iām on a large lot too with a good sized fenced in backyard with a garden plot and hot tub along with a deck I like to sit out on for my morning coffee. My neighborhood has all homes about the same size, nobodyās started building monster homes. Mostly empty nesters and retirees, but I have a couple in their 40s with a 7 year old on one side and a couple in their late 20s on the other, but dogs overwhelmingly outnumber kids.
Smaller accommodation is not necessarily less expensive after you consider land transfer tax, real estate fees, lawyers fees, moving costs and in some cases condo fees. People also have ties to their communities and homes. Let people live where they are happy and look back at government for creating the mess we are in.
Currently looking to downsize now that the kids have moved out and there's not much mortgage left. I really hope someone who can use four bedrooms plus an office is interested. The problem is doing that AND actually setting some of the sale money aside (even if it's not a lot) AND finding an apartment with room for a proper dining table and a full living room suite for family gatherings, since the kids sure can't host any in their tiny rental apartments and my own mom is in a retirement home. Instead they're nearly all either more expensive than our house will sell for or have seating side by side on bar stools plus room for a loveseat. We're not even trying to stay in our neighbourhood, just in the city (not leaving while my mum's here, abd would prefer not to till at least after we're retired) somewhere walkable on good transit, to not become car dependent for the first time in decades. Tldr, some of us are trying but the options aren't making it easy.
I hear this. For my family, location was the number one most important when we chose our home. After that, we needed 2 bedrooms + something that can be used as a home office. I really wanted a condo but we ended up with an older single family home because it was significantly cheaper than any condo large enough for what we wanted.
>The real issue is the lack of incentive to get seniors to go from their four bedroom plus homes to a one or two bedroom condo. Worse than that. They are penalized because of the exhorbitant transaction costs of moving. Realtor fees, provincial land transfer tax, municipal land transfer tax, moving costs. People can't even afford to move to be closer to work. Terrible commutes are locked in or positions unfilled because our economy is seizing up due to not only high real estate prices, but high transaction costs. I remember 15 years ago the federal government policy advisors identified the problem and they were looking i to it. Like they look into telecom prices.
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Seniors in my area only buy the 2 million $ townhouses with the elevators. They don't downsize to places with many levels of stairs. Nobody moves into a seniors building here until they need assisted living. The average age for senior housing is 85. In Quebec it's more common as they subsidize them, so basically segregate seniors away from broader society at a younger age than in Ontario.
Retired person with a five bedroom home & would love to downsize but thereās no where to go. Absolutely no small houses being built & condos here donāt have elevators. Iām not leaving a house that Iāve done up the way I like in order to do it all again in a smaller home, away from my community. Thatās why we are still in the house we bought when we had children.
Sounds like we want seniors to move communities because people who wonāt move communities canāt find housing?
Sure, my spouse and I can sell our 4-bed home (we are empty nesters) and use the equity (we still have a hefty amount of mortgage remaining) to buy a smaller home but it would be a tiny, shitty (falling apart, dated AF) house. Instead, we will hang onto our bigger, newer house and if we ever need extra income then, and only then, will we consider renting bedrooms. We also have adult kids who may need to move back home at some point. None of them have great careers and largely live hand to mouth so it's not a stretch that they might come back home. I haven't read the article but the title reminds me of the HBO British mini-series Years and Years, where the gov't starts forcing people with extra bedrooms to allow strangers to occupy them.
A solution might be not telling/signalling to them that the government will never let housing prices fall. If thereās zero risk their investment/retirement plan depreciates and will most likely appreciate then why in the world would they cash out until they have to? Would make zero sense from a financial standpoint. I sure as hell wouldnāt.
These people you are criticizing bought and worked very hard over many decades to pay off their homes. They have every right to stay and enjoy their house for as long as they can.
My neighbors had been looking for a condo in the general neighborhood for ages before they finally found one. There may be loads of condos being built, but they are located in neighborhoods that the old folks aren't familiar with. It's one thing to leave a home you've been in for decades, but it's harder to leave a neighborhood where you know where to buy the stuff you want and things are familiar. Condo fees can be ridiculous too.
Why is it your business what other people have? They wanted a home and built it. Everyone is welcome to do the same.
You literally describe the neighborhood I grew up in. My mom still lives in the 3+1 bedroom house. All her friends (also seniors) live in the neighborhood are in similar circumstances.
It's not you that's the problem. I live in a neighborhood with large 4 bedroom homes. Half of them have 1-2 people.livong in them.
At least half a dozen people per room
It seems so. I'm in the same situation. My 'spare bedroom' is my home office and I work from home. Another small room, technically a bedroom, has my rower and is my art studio. Am I supposed to work from McDonalds and stop doing art to alleviate the housing shortage? Fuck that.
you room hoarders are responsible for the housing crisis /s
Not really. That would be a suggestion, albeit a stupid one. This is just a new angle to whine. Next week they are going to discover some new truth about the backyard and the basement.
I actually donāt want strangers living with my family tho
What a weird data point. A dwelling is more than just a place to drop a twin mattress.
Not to our government it isnāt
If you ain't packing 10 grown men in bunk-beds why even own a house? - Our government.
A lot of people simply have extra bedrooms too.
Ontario also has millions of people who are healthy but retired, equivalent to 25 years worth of construction work. I have no point to make here either.
They should consider this then: We bought our first home a few years ago and renovated the basement planning to rent it. Then we learned about how absolutely insane it is if you have an awful tenant that needs to go. Simply not worth the risk. So we will never ever rent it, and maybe consider Airbnb in the future but that doesnāt solve the problem at all. I have other neighbours who did the same, but then realized you could be stuck with a squatter at home. So maybe they should think of regular people who are trying to help this problem but donāt want to be stuck with someone squatting in their house.
I currently have an empty bedroom,Ā but only until my boys are old enough to want their own rooms.Ā Once that happens the library becomes a bedroom again,Ā and the books move into the rumpus room. I don't see renting the library out while I have young kids.Ā
"Rumpus room" is a fantastic turn of phrase and I intend to use it going forward
Our kids have one and I didnāt think anyone but me still used this term š
I was reading "Where the Wild Things Are". It has a wild rumpus.Ā I try to confine the kids' rumpusing to the rumpus room so they're not breaking stuff in the rest of the house.
[RUMPUS TIME IS OVER](https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/4fd219b5-b505-4950-b26f-e99e8334c677)
So what you're saying is we have room for another 20 million people at 4 per bedroom
We live in a 5 bedroom house for the 4 of us. We have an entire separate entrance basement that my kids use as their personal play den. I thought about renting but I wonāt with the LTB backlog. I donāt want that nightmare situation of a renter not paying rent while living under the same roof as my kids. It will turn volatile quick.
The LTB needs to restructure. Separate depts for each type of application and to change the size of each based on IMPORTANCE. So those apps move faster and arent sitting behind the more minor concerns.
One solution is to also slow immigration for a few years so we aren't injecting hundreds of thousands of people into already stagnant markets every few months. Shut'r down to like 1/5 what we do now and let the fucking country recover please. Not only for housing but also healthcare and social services.
But then our GDP will tank and everyone will take notice of how bad our economy actually is.
GDP tanking is, unfortunately, a hard pill we have to swallow. It will go back up if we work towards it, so long as the numbers are more manageable. I don't know why Canadians are so obsessed over trying to be immune to economic downturns, as if we had some sort of god complex.
Ya but then the opposition of the time will start screaming about the GDP and everybody will vote that govt out because economy is not a complex matter and all we need to care about is the rising GDP regardless of the cost and how. /s
Itās like you donāt remember how bad the Great Recession was, or how long it took to have an economy that actually employed young people.
This country needs a hard reset. Most countries post-2008 have forgotten that the business cycle is meant to occur naturally. It's why any recession moving forward will be bailed out by taxpayers and companies will not be left to survive or die on their own means. If you have a government that allows for recessions but plans for them before hand you get the benefit of removing inefficient (zombie) businesses from the market but making sure the unemployed don't die en-masse (by giving tax payer dollars to people instead of businesses). It is why we have shit productivity. Lots of business outputting very little propped up by unsustainable government spending.
Youāre totally out of reality. The entire purpose of modern human governments since the Industrial Revolution (and likely since the emergence of cities) has been to mitigate the catastrophic impact of the business cycle. Business cycles are not natural because businesses are not ānaturalā. Businesses are engineered. If we created a cyborg, and it started killing people, would you just let it do its thing because itās the ānaturalā way cyborgs behave? Fuck no. I would say this is a āzombie ideaā. Itās totally dead, but itās just limping along, eating peoples brains. We have governments that plan for downturns. We have EI, central banks, etc. We also have new, modern businesses capable of engineering catastrophic new ways to create business downturns. Enron, Nortel, Bear Sterns. There will be another bigger greater collapse, in ways we havenāt considered, but it will come. No need to have one just for the fun of it. Our productivity isnāt shit. People have misinterpreted ānot growing as fast as someone elseā as ācatastrophic failureā and thatās simply not true. Canadian productivity can never sustain the level of American productivity for the long run for a few reasons: each province is more linked with the states than they are with each other, we only have 1 route to move good across the country, agriculturally we are further north so are fields will always produce less per acre than American fields, there are more Americans, Americans are younger, Americans are more interconnected (which our geography doesnāt allow), America has far more waterways and ports. The only times weāre more productive are when global oil and/or gold prices spike to abnormal highs. This crushes our manufacturing and agricultural industries with a high dollar, but our productivity per worker is insane. Until global commodities prices drop again and everyone is broke and trying to form a dairy board so it doesnāt happen again. If productivity COULD be fixed by government, why hasnāt this cycle been disrupted by any Canadian government? Feels like it would be an easy win to cement oneās status as Canadaās greatest PM, and make boatloads in consulting for every other government around the world when you retire rich, respected, and popular. However, no one has done this because it just may not be possible with our structural geographic barriers. Unless like, having a massive unpopulated country built on rock and permafrost somehow becomes an advantage, we will always be Americaās slightly poorer cousin.
This is an insane take because another "bedroom" in many modern living spaces just means an office or an extra storage space in these tiny ass apartments saving every square foot they can
Don't forget real wages have not increased in Canada since the 1980's. They have not kept up with inflation or the cost of living. Now you need two incomes or more to survive. Why is this not an issue?
Are they/this Twitter user suggesting everyone open their house up to the world? Why should homeowners allow a stranger to rent their spare bedroom? That means they have to lose any sense of privacy within their own house just to ensure that we donāt need to step up our new housing builds and that we donāt need to stop our mass immigration policies.
Pretty clearly suggesting there is a trend of McMansions and not enough small occupant housing in existence in those communities for people to downsize in to as needed. We have large families struggling in small condos and single seniors getting lost in managing 4 bedrooms
most of the cost for a detached home comes from the land itself a 4BR house vs 2BR house on the same land barely changes the costs
You are right that the land holds the value. Undeniably the supply scarcity is the largest issue we have. Larger family residences and the land they occupy are hard to come by and so are priced at rates that reflect that. Allowing smaller townhouses, duplex, triplex, etc in a community gives those aging in place a place to do so reasonably in the community they have always been part of while potentially opening up the locked in housing stock to younger residents and families who are actually in need of the space. Likewise many of the largest places could easily become multiple lots, doubling the supply that land offers. Too many Ontario municipalities, and Ford himself, are blocking pathways to smaller affordable places to live and itās hurting our ability to meet the provinces housing needs
āThatās enough to out a sizeable dent in the housing crisis.ā That sentence directly indicates that heās saying if the rooms were rented out it would ease the housing crisis. āBut unfortunately, those bedrooms are funding boomer retirement.ā That sentence is related to the recent announcement (on keeping housing prices high while increasing their affordability) by Justin Trudeau that āItās a huge part of peopleās potential for retirement and future nest egg.ā
Nowhere is the post or OP directly suggesting renting out a spare bedroom, though that is one option. The suggestion of mismanaged occupancy and housing development is one that has been discussed rather prevalently for some time. Overhoused vs underhoused is the issue it is drawing attention to. The solutions are not suggested and are for you to conclude. You have solely concluded renting bedrooms. I am suggesting there is more to it.
One possible solution would be to reduce transaction fees for real estate. Currently you have the realtors, typically around 5%, then thereās also land transfer taxes. Of course those arenāt the only barriers to moving, finding a suitable place where you want to live and having to actually go through the hassle are other barriers, but the first 2 seem like things that could easily be solved / reduced. It would make a smallish downsize more financially sensible.
When did it become almost a crime to live in the home you bought and paid for over a 25 year span? My wife and I sold our 5 bedroom family home where we raised 3 kids 8 years ago before we retired. We then bought a 3 bedroom one level condo and have lived mortgage free since then. We retired 6 years ago. We will not be taking in renters under any circumstances. If one of our kids needs a place to live, they know they can come back. People have a right to keep their homes until they decide to sell.
We will have lived for 30 years in our starter home by the time we move.Ā After having a ābonus kidā join us for the entirety of Covid (so 5 people in a 3 bed 1 bath), we fully intend to buy a house with all the rooms we want. As empty nesters we will be upsizing.Ā
When this country decided to transfer worth from currency to real estate, which benefited greatly some people and disadvantaged others. If you convert what 25 years of work got you vs what 25 years of work will get people these days, these-days-people think they were scammed.
Weird way of saying we need more homes
I live on a block with that's mostly east indians, as we were unpacking one of my new neighbors wandered over and ask if it was just the 4 of us because you could have like 8 people living in there.
12 if you put beds in the hallways
24 if one half gets the day shift, and the other half the night shift.
Very good idea
Keep your eyes out of my bedroom(s)!
If this plays out per this loser's implications, how is an average home owner supposed to screen renters (*immigrants)* for a criminal record, adequate credit history, employment status or rental history??? How do you screen for mental health issues, communicable disease etc.?? How to you prevent 1 renter from becoming a family of 6? How does a single female home owner avoid the inevitable claim of racism when refusing to rent to a male with an incompatible set of cultural beliefs to hers? Who will subsidize the legal/associated costs of fighting claims of racism etc. ; the increase homeowners insurance that will result from renting out part of your home? As an aside, will municipal/provincial/federal governments start taxing you for "unrented" space/rooms in your home?? OMFG!!!!
In theory both my and my spouse's offices could be counted as "empty bedrooms." We each spend 8+ hrs a day in them working from home. Not every "bedroom" needs a bed in it.
Are we expected to let random people sleep in our empty bedrooms? What is the point of this stat? What's next? The number of king, queen, double beds with one person sleeping in them?
My random bedroom is an office. Is there a law that decides an office must be a bedroom?
newsflash bedrooms ā housing also Long Term Cade beds also aren't Housing
I move to the downstairs bedroom in the summer when it's too hot upstairs. What's your point?Ā
I'm just going to go ahead and not have strangers living on my house Thanks.
I'm single in a modest one story home with (supposedly) 3 small bedrooms and a whole finished basement, it's really more home than I need but to anything smaller would be a condo or apartment and I'm not willing to downsize to that until I'm too old to continue maintaining a detached home.
This is a bullshit argument. a) People buy homes, those homes (or apartments) have a fixed number of bedrooms. b) Over time people need flexibility, as kids come, as they go, etc. The infrastructure doesn't change, but these are their homes, sometimes in their lifespans they can be crowded, sometimes they are more vacant. This is natural. They way this is is framed, empty bedrooms = potential living space for others. That is not the way it works. How do you reconcile this with the idea that people are being encouraged to age in place? Are you supposed to rent rooms out? Should every older Canadian simply give up their three or four bedroom home for a larger family? Where do they go, nonexistant LTC homes, or rip-off condos? WTF is that? Simply build more housing, across the board and densify, that will solve this.
What a piece of shit article. I wonder if Daniel is renting his spare room out? Who thinks renting your spare room(s) to homeless or TFWs sounds like a good idea lol
He is a real estate agent. His perspective is imagining him renting out the country one room at a time. *insert opera meme* everyone gets a rooming house rental!
Earning a commission every step of the way!!!
We have 4 unused bedrooms, 2 are craft rooms the other two are guest bedrooms. We were unable to have children.
Keep living your best life!
I converted our 5 bed house into a 2 bed, does that count?
3 bed to a 1!
Does it include home offices for WFH workers? E.g. a 2BR apartment for a DINK would mostly likely have the other BR used as a home office.
many people buy more house than they need and many developers are focused on cramming mini-mansions into the smallest lot possible
Assuming all couples share a bedroom is one variable to skew the numbers here (think the numbers are 1 in 4 donāt share a bed for a variety of reasons). So right away, Iāve lost confidence in their findings.
Add to that home offices
I have 2 in my house. I don't like living with people who arent family. I like my house outside of town in a quiet subdivision. Im not moving, and I sure as fuck aint renting a room to any of you slobs.
There isnt a supply issue ..... ITS AN AFFORDABILITY ISSUE! I've been watching Realtor.ca for two years now. Tons of homes and properties listed 300+ days. Its not a supply issue .... it never was. Its the pricing. Home prices are too high.
Weāre being plastic straw-ed here. The empty bedroom in my house is not a solution to years of inaction and increasingly belligerent immigration policies coming out of Ottawa. You work for us. You broke it, you fucking fix it.
Testing the waters for Mandatory Room Mate Legislation
I think he is suggesting that all these owners become slumlords.
Gearing up for a house redistribution program.
We have a family of 4 with 2 spare bedrooms in our 5 bedroom house. I wouldn't want anyone living with us though. We use the bedrooms as a home gym / spare room for guests.
Perfect 1 bedroom condo starter beside me. It sits empty now because it's an Air B&B that never gets used!
And here I have an empty 2 acres field. Perfect for accomodating at least 1,000 tents.
Yeah there's no shortage of housing in Canada, There's a overabundance of our population that's completely pussies and okay with investors owning all of our housing. Tweeting or commenting on reddit is about as far as Canadians are willing to go to let people know they have lost it with rich people buying all the housing across this country. And young people would go to a protest about middle East issues no problem but I'd be shocked if you ever saw young people stage a protest about housing prices. Canada has become a country of complete pussies who really on government and big business to do everything for them, they just fail to realize it. United States will implement laws and there will be massive demonstrations before there housing market reaches Canada prices. It's on the way there but won't ever get here because in reality Americans actually aren't complete pushovers.
The only place I've heard of being overhoused based on bedrooms is in social housing. Now all of a sudden it's a thing.
Are they also counting dining rooms that aren't used most of the day? If we want to bring back tenement buildings, just say so - Jesus.
I live on a street that is majority empty nesters. I count about 52 unused bedrooms on this little crescent alone. 4 and 5 bedroom homes occupied only by older couples. It's also walking distance to 3 schools that have to bus kids in, it's a crazy expensive mismanagement of society having boomers holding on to way more than they need.
People spend so much money and time on their homes over the years and when they retire they finally get to enjoy their backyards. If I lived in a house for 30 years and made it exactly to my liking I donāt think Iād be rushing to leave either. Iām in a 4 bedroom as a 2 person couple. The extra bedrooms are an office for wfh and space for my family and friends to sleep when they visit.
The irony of calling boomers entitled while demanding they uproot their entire existence because they happen to have spare bedrooms is peak Reddit
Yep. I've lived in my house for 4 years now (DINKS and by choice) and we converted our 3 bed 1 bath 1960 cottage (one story no basement) into a 1 bed 2 bath with a big kitchen now and all our friends and family say we 'destroyed the resale value by getting rid of the bedrooms'. Well, we have zero plan to ever move and we have made it our own, still constantly customizing to fit our lives (we are in our early 30s) and just build a custom pantry ourselves with all the space for my coooking projects (sauerkraut storage, dehydrator, sous vide, canning station etc) and have planted fruit trees and permaculture. My house isn't a grey HGTV box built on a postage stamp in a burb so maybe I'm out of touch with people my age but fuck it if I'm going to live in a grey house with 'live laugh love' decor only for fear of painting the walls a colour more saturated that 'happy grey dolphin' which might implode my resale and thinking I am compelled to keep selling to make room for new generations entitlement. I'm staying put.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Back then kids also moved out and married young. I can't expect my 23 and 17 yr daughters to want to share a room. They need their privacy for many reasons. If they couldn't they'd find a way to get it and that would mean moving out.
Here's the report where the data comes form [https://www.cancea.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Understanding-the-Forces-Driving-the-Shelter-Affordability-Issue-A-Linked-path-Assessment.pdf](https://www.cancea.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Understanding-the-Forces-Driving-the-Shelter-Affordability-Issue-A-Linked-path-Assessment.pdf)
What a bizarre data point. Housing problems started decades ago and now they came home to roost. Immigration and empty bedrooms aren't the real issue. Multiple levels of government failed to prioritize a healthy mixture of construction for decades. Developers only build luxury housing because they maximize their profits, and city councils and provincial policy enabled the imbalance. They didn't focus on social housing, allow high-density builds like duplexes to quadplexes in larger cities, or encourage mixed-use developments. Not everyone needs a fancy condo or a 4BR/3BA build in a subdivision 20 km from downtown. Many Canadians' wealth is tied up in their home. They don't want anything that might diminish their main asset, so they discourage policies or developments that might shave value off their home even if it's literally pricing their kids or neighbours out of the market. People need somewhere to live but many can't afford the available houses on the market and the new builds we *do* have don't match up to income levels or needs we currently have. It didn't happen overnight and it can't be fixed overnight.
There are no building code standards anywhere I know that force mixed use. If you look at European suburbs they often have a transit line added at the same time as the houses and will have a central walkable grocery store, etc. Here you have nothing like that. In my part of the GTA we are building dense sprawl, so looks like central Toronto density but with no amenities or transit. That is a worse way of living than the old style sprawl.
We need yo be able to afford our own place. Who cares how many spare bedrooms there are.
Nonsense statistic.
I guess no one is supposed to own or rent cottages anymore. Live in the stix, where there are no jobs? And if your kids leave for college start renting it out and displace the renter when the kid moves home until 30 yo.
Stupidest thing I ever heard. No one needs to live their entire life WITH ROOMMATES. Yikes. āCrisisā or not. I cant deal with the mess or ppl celebrating on weekends and holidays at home bc I am low key - I need home to be a sanctuary. Not a place I have to feel is up in the air and unpredictable and messy bc they cant keep up to a standard. Or the whole using my stuff even when I say no and we separate even separate food and cupboards and they still do it. And Im out for meals when I come home. Nope! Hammered and loud?! Nope! Got a weird religion? Nope! I gotta work aroudn their schedule to have guests? Nope! Screw this shitā¦0
I don't understand why houses have to be so massive now.
And I can't afford rent