Saving for mortgage vs leaving Canada

[ahappycamper]

@faith916 Not true. Lots of amazing foreign countries let you buy property. Canada is expensive because the housing supply is nowhere near demand and immigration is through the roof.

A simple affordability calculator gives a necessary salary of 125k for a 500k home. That's a very high salary and a very cheap home, both of which are not common.

60% of adult Canadians own their homes because they purchased before prices went crazy. Most people i know could never afford their current home if they had to buy in todays market.

All this adds up to the near impossibility of buying something reasonable in Canada if your not being helped in some way. Buying overseas is a completely reasonable idea and should be seriously looked into. Why be completely house poor for life here? The privilege of living in Canada?

 

[faith916]

@ahappycamper DJ

I agree housing is expensive in Canada, and supply is the issue. Immigration is not, but I think we should agree to leave it aside for now as that one gets complicated.

I agree that 125k is a high salary for one person, but with a two person household that is only 62.5k per person, a reasonable salary along with all the additional tax benefit it brings. So not beyond reasonable.

The idea that all or a majority of the 60% of adults in Canada that own their home did so in some magic time before prices went crazy is just not true by the statistics. Also anecdotally most of my friends now own homes (35-38) and some of them just in the last couple of years.

Why do people think Canada is unaffordable? Because many believe that they should be able to afford their forever home as their first house. You know how my friends that bought houses recently did it? Bought houses that needed work or moved to more affordable areas. The key to not being house poor is buying something you can afford.

What’s unaffordable and unrealistic is believing you get to buy your dream single family home in the city/town you grew up in just because you want to. And yes living in Canada is very much a privileged position, why do you think so many immigrate here?

You alluded to all these cheap foreign countries that allow real estate purchases that are cheap and desirable, so I’ll bite, can you name one?

 

[ahappycamper]

@faith916 I am baffled by people that say bringing in huge amount of immigrants does not contribute to a housing shortage. We have been falling short of demand for a very long time and radically increasing immigration year over year has what effect you are thinking?

https://financialpost.com/executive...-influx-hit-home-prices-housing-affordability

It's pretty clear there was a 'magic' time when housing was affordable in Canada. I'm old enough to remember what housing prices used to be.

https://betterdwelling.com/canada-h...een-real-estate-prices-and-incomes-in-the-g7/

Sure, move somewhere else more affordable. Problem is you need to support yourself there. Some jobs don't exist in some areas or are much less common. Many jobs require working in a dense well-established system/area which generally guarantees a higher cost of living. Most higher paying jobs aren't in the middle of nowhere.

Yes, buy something you can afford. From TD a 450k mortgage is just over 3k a month. Doable with two people. But this must be somewhere very cheap with sufficient jobs to support it.

Living in Canada is great, but your a fool if you think its the only great place to live on the planet. Where to go you say?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/justin...-his-51-year-coaching-career/?sh=255b5b482fa0

https://prestigeandvilla.com/where-to-buy-cheap-property-abroad/

https://www.knightsbridgefx.com/best-countries-purchase-foreign-real-estate/

https://madeinca.ca/homeownership-statistics-canada/

Interesting takeaways:

- Millennials have the largest mortgages.

- House prices grew by 40% between 2016 and 2021 while median household

income grew by 10%. Very affordable.

If you are mobile enough to up and move to a cheap place in Canada while finding work and affording to buy a place, rock and roll, but i'm willing to bet this is a small portion of the population.

Things will not get better here, only worse. Housing prices will continue to rapidly expand as will immigration while construction will keep falling behind. There will be no crash, quite the opposite. OP should hope for the best, but plan for the worst and this includes GTFO of Canada unfortunately.

 

[faith916]

@ahappycamper Ahhh couldn’t drop the immigration thing, thanks that tells me a lot.

I’m not sure what betterdwelling.com did to ‘rebase’ their data but they have skewed that chart huge, go look at the actual OECD data: https://data.oecd.org/price/housing-prices.htm the G7 countries charts all have the same upward trajectory.

Ahhh yes Ecuador, Columbia and Brazil are very comparable countries to Canada to buy houses in, and the European countries definitely just let you in with no application process right?

I’m a millennial, my friend are millennials, and we all own houses.

You sound like you are bitter about Canada, and I’m sure you have your reasons, but telling people that there is a plethora of countries you can go to have it better is laughable. If that was the case people would be going there, and it’s not happening.

 

[inception]

@cankosker

I just don't want to end up buying the exact same product that I can get for cheaper elsewhere

Not good reasoning.

only to see a crash as well

Definitely in the cards, but it’ll recover in time. Can’t time it.

 

[onevoiceunified]

@cankosker The thing is us young people need to start moving out of the big cities. We absolutely have to. I hope more of us make the move. Better for our health and awesome lifestyle. Cheaper cost of living etc.

 

[cankosker]

@onevoiceunified I wish it were easier to get programming jobs in software companies in smaller cities. People say remote; a lot of the ones that are posted around are kinda low pay. I'm hoping a few years into working at a big software company would help build connections for remote jobs though. If I could land that 100% I'd move into a smaller town, probably a township near cottage country or something.

 

[steebin]

@cankosker It sure is viable. If you are young and no string attached, why not give it a try. Canada will treat foreigners better anyways lol

 

[garry777]

@cankosker Equating purchasing a house in Canada to an NFT is, no hyperbole, one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read.

The market isn’t going to crash, so don’t bank on that. The correction happened in 2022/23 against rates that reached their highest in decades - we’re heading towards another uptick in pricing.

Leaving the country while in software dev aka a massively disrupted industry that’s getting completely gutted seems unwise on a risk-adjusted basis.

Just breathe. Budget. Get a job that pays you more. Start small in real estate, like everyone, and don’t look at housing as a speculative investment.

 

[cankosker]

@garry777 I'm kinda joking, but also kinda not. I'm referring to how 50% of housing in the area is owned by foreign speculative investors; very NFT like.

If it doesn't crash, I'm probably out of luck. The line is going up so fast. I don't think I can afford a million. I wish I could turn back the clock 10 years lol.

I don't think that software dev is massively disrupted and completely gutted. If it were, I'm kinda skewed by that no matter where I live, no?

I might buy somewhere here if it's my only option. Or maybe not. I'd like to shop around though and see if there's anywhere cheaper you know?

 

[intertraveler]

@cankosker Here you go. Looks like a decent freehold townhome (no condo fees) for under $500k in Ottawa's western suburbs, not too far from where most tech companies are located: https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/26380423/594-meadowcreek-circle-kanata-emerald-meadows#view=calc Not huge, but not a bad place to start. The market isn't ludicrous everywhere.

 

[cankosker]

@intertraveler yeah, i'll keep ottowa in mind if i decide to try to buy in canada, some of the places seem a bit more reasonable.

 

[ipreachchrist]

@cankosker “I feel like buying a house in Canada is a lot like buying an NFT; not worth it's cost, and mostly speculative”

This is a beyond ridiculous thing to say

 

[crates]

@cankosker Immigrating to the States is really, really difficult. I’m also a Canadian who’s been looking into leaving and honestly the chances of you getting there in anywhere under 5 years are extremely thin. You can try to find an employer to sponsor you, but even then, that Visa is a lottery and you could be denied multiple times before you’re given one. Moving away from Canada really isn’t that easy.

Are you below 30? Because if so, you can apply for a working visa in the UK. Sadly, this only gives you two years and then you have to go back to Canada, unless you’ve married into permanent residency by then or found a job to sponsor you.

Edit: mind you, the UK is in a similar (if not worse) financial spot than Canada. But if you’re looking to save money, you won’t do that by immigrating anyway, it’s insanely expensive.

 

[shaw299]

@cankosker Buying doesn't mean a house at 1m+

Buy any condo you can afford. That way you'll be in a boat if the water keeps rising, you'll be afloat.

Trading up to a house is the only way.