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As someone whose family had to move like 8 loving times growing up, yes there are: it loving sucks. It's exhausting, it strains all your social relationships, and no, car or not, in all likelihood his daughter won't actually be able to keep up with her friends. Also neighbors you actually get along with are very rare and incredibly valuable. So yes if I was in good financial shape and 500+K wouldn't significantly alter our situation (it's not exactly gently caress you money either), I wouldn't sell either.
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Mar 25, 2014 16:15
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Lexicon posted:Guys, Saltin clearly understands the calculus here. There are legitimate reasons to not pack up and sell, even in a crazy hot market like Toronto's 550k-999k SFH/semi/rowhouse market. Don't underestimate the wife factor as well. Talking with mine about it, is like talking to a irrational wall. Facts I get to deal with: She hates our townhouse. She hates the area we live in. She will not rent. There is no amount of money that makes renting worthwhile for her. I am almost glad we didn't buy a actual house in 2003, as I would probably be going through divorce proceedings in order to realize the gain before the market crashes.
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Mar 25, 2014 16:30
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Don't they say being on the same page about finances and housing being one of the most important things in a marriage?
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Mar 25, 2014 16:39
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Baronjutter posted:Don't they say being on the same page about finances and housing being one of the most important things in a marriage? Definitely. A huge deviation is a great source of anguish. I'm thankful that my partner refers to me as "our CFO" and is basically happy to let me steer that part of the ship.
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Mar 25, 2014 16:41
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ocrumsprug posted:Don't underestimate the wife factor as well. Talking with mine about it, is like talking to a irrational wall. What's the source of the rent-aversion? Is is a social pressure thing? Is it a belief that the accommodation quality/amenities is necessarily worse if it's rented? Canadians' ownership premium fetish is utterly stupid. Northern Europeans seem to manage quite nicely with being majority renters.
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Mar 25, 2014 16:44
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Baronjutter posted:Don't they say being on the same page about finances and housing being one of the most important things in a marriage? In relationships in general. I think that's the number one reason why relationships crash and burn. Hell, Gail Vaz-Oxlade has made a TV career out of that fact. Personally I get why Saltin doesn't want to sell. Sometimes other life factors outweigh the economic advantages, as lucrative as they might be.
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Mar 25, 2014 16:46
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Brannock posted:Isn't the market already in the process of imploding? A page or a couple pages ago someone posted that sales in March were down way low compared to February, and also compared to the March-February difference over the past 15 years. I can't imagine that selling right now would be a reliable way to get out. Is the market actually that hot right now, despite all the talk about vacant condos and stuff? The horribly cold winter we've had can't entirely be hand-waved away as a reason that sales are slower. It's certainly not the entire reason, but I know I've passed at going out to even look at a home because of the soul-crushingly frigid weather, and I've been less than enthused about making offers since I don't really want to move all my poo poo when it's still feeling like -30 outside.
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Mar 25, 2014 16:54
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Lexicon posted:Canadians' ownership premium fetish is utterly stupid. Northern Europeans seem to manage quite nicely with being majority renters.
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Mar 25, 2014 17:02
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As someone who grew up living in several overseas countries, I think you're all pathetic. Enjoy your 'community' and 'neighbours' once you start losing your jobs and start defaulting on your loans.
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Mar 25, 2014 17:03
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LemonDrizzle posted:The average home ownership rate in northern Europe is well over 50% - the only EU country in which it's below that level is Germany. I thought it was also the case in at least France, Switzerland the Netherlands also?
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Mar 25, 2014 17:07
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With high housing density you can have a huge variety of housing and options all without having to leave your neighbourhood. A healthy neighbourhood should have housing options for just about every class as well as good options for both buying and renting. I keep telling my parents to cash out now for like 800k on the house they paid barely 100k on in the mid 80's and just rent something in the neighbourhood. It's two retired people, why do they need a massive 3000ish sqft 5br house with a suite they won't rent out (strangers!) ? They hate maintaining the house, they can't keep up with the gardening but can't afford a gardener, the property taxes are killing them. But they won't sell because "anything we buy would be just as expensive" and they just laugh and act like I told them to eat dog poo poo at the idea of renting. They also want to be in the same neighbourhood, which I understand because it's amazing and they know everyone but all around us are huge old mansions nicely cut up into apartments and condos and they'd do fine there. There's just some serious generational, class, and emotional reasons that will see them never ever move. If they could afford it, what ever, but they really are having trouble affording the upkeep and taxes on the house. There's absolutely an idea in certain families and specially certain generations that renting is something you do when you're a student or poor but no grown-rear end adult should be renting. If you don't own a home you're a failure. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Mar 25, 2014 |
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Mar 25, 2014 17:10
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Lexicon posted:I thought it was also the case in at least France, Switzerland the Netherlands also? Holland's housing market is undergoing a massive correction as we speak.
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Mar 25, 2014 17:12
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Lexicon posted:I thought it was also the case in at least France, Switzerland the Netherlands also?  (Switzerland does also have a <50% ownership rate, but it's not part of the EU and even if you include it, its population is too small to meaningfully affect the average)
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Mar 25, 2014 17:14
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Saltin posted:For example, in Toronto, condos are pretty much tanking and have been for a while. Tough to unload. Million dollar plus homes have cooled off and generally go for a little under asking thanks to the CMHC rule changes for mortgages of that size. I understand this had a large impact in Vancouver as well where more homes tend to be "valued" above 1 mil. However, the 500k to 999k Single Family Home market in Toronto is still red loving hot, assuming factors like walkability, subway/transit, etc are in place. Good homes in this range are really really hard to find too. Homeowners are hanging onto their places. That still doesn't change the fact that the average household in Toronto can't comfortably afford the average house right now, even at a 50% discount. Your home should go for maybe three times your income, and yet in the east end, there are stupidly expensive houses along the Danforth and in old East York, where the typical family makes $60,000-$75,000 ($74,733 is the median family income in M4K, and M4B, M4C, and M4E are all lower than that), and the average home appears to be going for 7-8 times income. ocrumsprug posted:Don't underestimate the wife factor as well. I am so glad my fiancée is in agreement with me on this issue. Some of that, I suspect, is because I talk about the Canadian housing bubble too much, and we also watched the U.S. housing bubble burst, so we know there's no point in believing you're actually richer than you think.
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Mar 25, 2014 17:17
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Yeah from knowing other couples who have had major disagreements over this poo poo I'm so glad we're absolutely on the same page. We ran through the whole rent/buy numbers, looked at a bunch of condos, talked to people who did buy condos, and read this very thread quite a bit. It made it very clear that unless our incomes went up 500% we'd be putting our selves in serious financial trouble down the road if we bought and although owning a little house would probably be pretty fun for us, a condo was a sort of worst of both worlds disaster. As much as rent/buy is a very simple mathematical thing to prove, housing is and will always remain and primarily emotional issue to most people. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Mar 25, 2014 |
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Mar 25, 2014 17:23
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Lexicon posted:What's the source of the rent-aversion? Is is a social pressure thing? Is it a belief that the accommodation quality/amenities is necessarily worse if it's rented? No idea honestly. I cannot even tell if it is a Japanese thing, or something that she adopted here though it is probably the latter. There are legitimate issues with renting, like pets and obnoxious landlords and probably needing to move every couple of years. None of those seem to be leading the pack though. The best I can tell, is that there is some sort of social stigma associated with renting. She cannot really articulate it very well, which I think is due to it being a relatively irrational thing. Luckily, townhouses and condos haven't really increased in value that much so selling our place to rent doesn't net enough to really make it worthwhile to push the issue. It's paid for (except condo fees of course) next year, and isn't going to sink us regardless of what the market does. One note about the ownership premium though: It is pretty amazing to see how self perpetuating this idea is. Since the Canadian rental market is largely served by amateur landlords, the idea that renting is chintzy is quite easily reinforced. Somehow this idea manages to co-exist equally with the thought that the best investment you can make is to become an amateur landlord. It as if the Canadian dream was to open a dollar store, but simultaneously wouldn't be caught dead shopping in one.
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Mar 25, 2014 17:31
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ocrumsprug posted:One note about the ownership premium though: I think the 'line of thinking' (I use the term generously) is more along the lines of "Renters are dumb and financially irresponsible - they pay other people's mortgages. Boy, wouldn't I love to have one paying a mortgage of a thing that I own". As someone immune from the ownership premium thing, I come at it from precisely the opposite viewpoint: "There's no loving way I want to subsidize someone else to live, especially given the hassle, risk, and meagre returns". edit: it's quite amusing to imagine a Japanese person who seems no risk/downside to home ownership. I guess Canada did a collectively great job on cultural assimilation!
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Mar 25, 2014 17:47
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Lexicon posted:Definitely. A huge deviation is a great source of anguish. This is my situation too. My wife is definitely into houses and the whole Home and Garden thing, but thankfully I have demonstrated success over they years and she's happy to have me as CFO. tagesschau posted:That still doesn't change the fact that the average household in Toronto can't comfortably afford the average house right now, even at a 50% discount. Your home should go for maybe three times your income, and yet in the east end, there are stupidly expensive houses along the Danforth and in old East York, where the typical family makes $60,000-$75,000 ($74,733 is the median family income in M4K, and M4B, M4C, and M4E are all lower than that), and the average home appears to be going for 7-8 times income. I don't disagree with your analysis. I would say your income figures are from 2006 and would suggest in these neighbourhoods in particular the complexion has changed somewhat. The influx of DINKS about to work on the no kids part is flabbergasting, they all earn. Again, I am not saying a correction is not due, it is, but you won't find the biggest bargins in the inner suburbs of a big city when they come. You'll find them in places like Ajax and St Catherines and Barrie, where the houses are just as stupidly priced , but required oceans of gas to be liveable and have none of the amenities to drive demand. Saltin fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Mar 25, 2014 |
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Mar 25, 2014 17:48
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Lexicon posted:edit: it's quite amusing to imagine a Japanese person who seems no risk/downside to home ownership. I guess Canada did a collectively great job on cultural assimilation! I think the cultural assimilation bit is inaccurate as the Japanese housing market has something like 13% vacancy. (Bloomberg says 18%, with 24% planned for 2028). Living the "Buy new, sell high" life can be done here without problems. It's just unusual as people are used to buying old and cheap in Canada.
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Mar 25, 2014 18:09
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Antifreeze Head posted:The horribly cold winter we've had can't entirely be hand-waved away as a reason that sales are slower. It's certainly not the entire reason, but I know I've passed at going out to even look at a home because of the soul-crushingly frigid weather, and I've been less than enthused about making offers since I don't really want to move all my poo poo when it's still feeling like -30 outside. I didn't know the winter was a reason that sales were slower in March compared to February. Saltin posted:The market in general I suppose, but there are different climates, even within the same city. For example, in Toronto, condos are pretty much tanking and have been for a while. Tough to unload. Million dollar plus homes have cooled off and generally go for a little under asking thanks to the CMHC rule changes for mortgages of that size. I understand this had a large impact in Vancouver as well where more homes tend to be "valued" above 1 mil. However, the 500k to 999k Single Family Home market in Toronto is still red loving hot, assuming factors like walkability, subway/transit, etc are in place. Good homes in this range are really really hard to find too. Homeowners are hanging onto their places. Makes sense, I've been mostly watching the Toronto condo and housing market.
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Mar 25, 2014 18:18
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Why do you need to move every couple years if renting? According to my landlord the average tenancy period in our building is 7 years, with quite a few being here 20+. Aren't rent increases limited to like a couple percent a year? Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Mar 25, 2014 |
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Mar 25, 2014 18:25
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Baronjutter posted:Why do you need to move every couple years if renting? According to my landlord the average tenancy period in our building is 7 years, with quite a few being here 20+. Then you're pretty lucky. That's certainly not a sure thing, to say nothing of the possibility of simply being priced out (even in pro-tenant jurisdictions with some recourse for unreasonable rate hikes).
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Mar 25, 2014 18:35
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I've been renting for the last 10 years in 3 different countries and I have never encountered any of this rental instability. At this point I have to think it's just a flimsy excuse.
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Mar 25, 2014 18:43
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Cultural Imperial posted:I've been renting for the last 10 years in 3 different countries and I have never encountered any of this rental instability. At this point I have to think it's just a flimsy excuse. My partner has had to move twice in the last year because her landlord took over the apartment. I'm lucky, I've only had to move once in the last two years for that reason.
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Mar 25, 2014 18:47
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Baronjutter posted:Why do you need to move every couple years if renting? According to my landlord the average tenancy period in our building is 7 years, with quite a few being here 20+. Demolition for McMansions is a significant source of the problem in Vancouver.
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Mar 25, 2014 18:54
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Twiin posted:My partner has had to move twice in the last year because her landlord took over the apartment. I'm lucky, I've only had to move once in the last two years for that reason.
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Mar 25, 2014 18:56
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This is why I'll only rent in specific rental buildings run by professionals. That basement suite can vanish the moment the owner sells or decides its time to move grandma in. That rental condo can kick you out the moment they decide they're selling or want to move back to Canada. Rent in a purpose-built rental building run by a large company or an experienced local landlord and you can stay there as long as you like. I would like to see more rights for tenants though. For instance my landlord is making a bunch of upgrades to our kitchens. Some are good, but some I think are downgrades style wise. I loved our old mid-century cabinet doors and the charm was part of the reason I moved in. Tenants should have the right to say "no thanks, change them after I move". Tenants should have the right to decline any changes or upgrades to a unit that they don't want. I talk to friends who rent in Germany and Austria vs here in Canada and the sense of ownership and stability there seems just as high as if you had bought. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Mar 25, 2014 |
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Mar 25, 2014 18:57
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Baronjutter posted:Aren't rent increases limited to like a couple percent a year? In some places, yes. In Alberta, no. EDIT: "Purpose-built" rental buildings around here are typically run by the worst sorts of greasy assholes, too. One of them tried to keep my buddy's deposit even though he had not signed a lease, and was explicitly told that the deposit was, until the lease was signed, fully refundable and only for the purpose of holding the apartment until the lease could be signed. This is, I fear, rather typical behaviour for them from what I've heard. Luckily, we did a stop-payment on the cheque (it was written on my account for various reasons), and told them to gently caress themselves. PT6A fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Mar 25, 2014 |
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Mar 25, 2014 19:00
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Baronjutter posted:Why do you need to move every couple years if renting? According to my landlord the average tenancy period in our building is 7 years, with quite a few being here 20+. If there are rent controls, yes, but those aren't everywhere or for everything. In Toronto there are a few different rules, the main one being that if your building was built after 1991 price protections are far fewer, if any exist at all.
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Mar 25, 2014 19:08
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Kafka Esq. posted:In the GTA, landlord personal use evictions are basically nil. Stop living in basements. I guess we should stop living in third floor apartments and two-story townhomes also.
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Mar 25, 2014 19:10
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What we need are city-managed/owned stocks of rental housing with very standardized management, rents, rent increases, and high degrees of tenant-rights. Places people can live without worry of lovely landlords trying to screw them or greedy owners kicking everyone out for a condo conversion. The ownership market is so distorted by the government already we can't possibly rely on "the market" to provide the basic and essential service of rental stock. Hell, save money by having a few standardized designs for new ones. Build them in panels or modules if that saves money.
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Mar 25, 2014 19:10
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I am in favor of a bylaw wherein any demolition & rebuild in Vancouver is required to have an accompanying laneway house of greater than 750sqft, excluding the garage. Would really cut down on the monster houses with tiny paved "yards" and go a long way towards increasing density. Once there's enough of them on the market, landlords would be unable to get away with trying to charge $2000+/month for them just because they are "cool" and "hip".
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Mar 25, 2014 19:21
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Construction prices are going to remain high so long as land is so over-valued. It's not really the buildings that are over-priced it's the land. Even a state run and financed affordable housing drive would have a hard time in Vancouver now because the cost to acquire the land is ridiculously high. What would need to be done first is cool off the market. New regulations that made flipping and "investment properties" less and less desirable (tax the poo poo out of 2nd homes), and then on the banking side, make debt harder to come by. Then have a big well funded agency step in and start buying up the now much cheaper land for construction and conversion into a vast public housing network. Basically store up a ton of money by taxing the poo poo out of the housing-market behaviors you want less of, and put that money towards the things you want more of. Have the government enact a controlled-crash of the market with the plan on using the opportunity to create vast stocks of affordable rentals. Of course that could never happen because any government that oversees even a minor crash will be blamed by a screaming mob of idiots crying that their investments are worthless and they were banking their retirement on the market always going up forever and the government just needs to lower interest rates or allow 200 year mortgages or fly in more rich chinese. Also any sort of government involvement in rental housing is basically communism and we need to leave housing to the free market so long as the free market is also propped up by massive subsidized risk and a billion other factors from interests rates to zoning bylaws to transport spending that all massively favour single family home ownership and construction. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Mar 25, 2014 |
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Mar 25, 2014 19:38
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Good luck increasing land transfer taxes. No government is ever going to do this.
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Mar 25, 2014 19:51
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SCultural Imperial posted:Good luck increasing land transfer taxes. No government is ever going to do this. Except the Toronto city government a few years ago. The comments above about state-run housing make me laugh. Since when has the state ever been better at doing anything (barring perhaps our healthcare system) than private industry? Here are some examples of government housing:   I'm making a point, in sure there are counter-examples of non-lovely places, but expecting the government to come in and implement some magical housing program which solves all the problems is laughable.
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Mar 25, 2014 20:13
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Let's face it, government-provided housing has a really, really bad reputation pretty much everywhere. Whether it's the projects in the US, council flats in the UK, Khruschyovkas throughout the Eastern Bloc, or pretty much any other example I can think of, they're all pretty bad. It could be done right, in theory, but all available evidence and history suggests that it won't be. EDIT: It's also worth noting that, even when housing is provided by the government and everyone is "supposed" to be equal, there's still a lot of money and trading of favours involved. Look at the convoluted system of switching residences (and some of the associated black-market costs) in Cuba, as an example.
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Mar 25, 2014 20:21
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I have to agree with PT6A. The historical precedent for public housing in NA & the UK is that it serves as a way for the government to house undesirables with a lower cost than prison, and without the callous appearances that come with letting them die on the street. We really just don't give a poo poo about human life.
Rime fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Mar 25, 2014 |
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Mar 25, 2014 20:23
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Kalenn Istarion posted:Here are some examples of government housing: That's cool, here's some others:      The Vienna model is pretty awesome. quote:
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Mar 25, 2014 20:27
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That's a very misleading way of characterising British council housing. A lot of the stock was of quite high quality and in nice places; it isn't/wasn't all ugly towering concrete abominations full of junkies. The problem is that when Thatcher introduced her Right to Buy policy in the 80s, which gave council tenants the right to buy their council houses at a very steep discount on their market value, almost all of the nice stuff very quickly got transferred into the private sector, leaving only the worse stuff on the state's books.
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Mar 25, 2014 20:35
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Rime posted:I have to agree with PT6A. The historical precedent for public housing in NA & the UK is that it serves as a way for the government to house undesirables with a lower cost than prison, and without the callous appearances that come with letting them die on the street. We really just don't give a poo poo about human life. One distinction that's worth making is that public housing is generally provided to people who really, really need because they have no money and/or no way of ever earning money. A theoretical government-owned rental building could charge normal rents (perhaps below market value, but not massively subsidized) and thus avoid ending up with the sort of concentrated poverty that's such a problem in US housing projects. Mind you, even without the concentration of poverty, section 8 housing and council houses in the UK have a pretty big stigma attached.
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Mar 25, 2014 20:36
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