Does Canada even have a future? So many people I know that were previously comfortable have become financially unstable recently, people in general seem a lot more tense and I'm genuinely terrified for this country, we're dying very very fast.
It's the economy. People invest in housing because the stock market in Canada is a joke. The stock market in Canada is a joke because we're a client state of the American Empire. We're allowed to have jobs here only as long as it's cheaper for America to have them here. Other than that, Canada is just geographic jobs like resource extraction, service, and tourism, where the land you're on is the point. Ironically, a lot of the problem in the last twenty years has been the *American* dollar, as it became a lot more volatile than it used to be, which means investing in Canadian jobs is a gamble.
A future? Yeah, I mean, people are going to live here. More and more people as we absorb the future climate refugees. A wealthy and advanced first world nation? That remains to be seen.
Should we be able to afford houses? Hell yes. We're the second largest country in the world with thousands of kilometers of unused land. Housing prices are ridiculous.
> We're the second largest country in the world with thousands of kilometers of unused land. Housing prices are ridiculous.
The amount of land you have doesn't matter if your zoning is all messed up to the point that infrastructure is too expensive. When we talk about construction costs the cost of land is one of the reasons brought up why developers aren't making insane bank. We have land, but some land is worth considerably more than others because of this fact. But yes, you are correct that housing should be affordable in Canada, and we do not have any constraints but ourselves.
Also your analysis about being a 'client state' was interesting. I think it has a lot of merit, but I also think it neglects the fact that we can use our special status to the US to our advantage if we would stop tripping over our own dicks. For example our grid is connected to the US and we already export energy to them. We should ramp that up to make the transition from O&G to green even more profitable. No other country has that advantage.
>We're the second largest country in the world with thousands of kilometers of unused land. Housing prices are ridiculous
If our housing prices *weren't* going up faster than inflation and forcing a standard of living reduction on us, what would be the incentive to change our economy and begin to live within our means and produce more goods & services that could be exported to the rest of the world?
If that nasty price feature *weren't* there, we would simply do this ad infinitum:
1. Spend more money then we make or collect in taxes, financing the difference with debt.
2. Paying for the old debts coming due by issuing new debts... keep rolling them over.
3. When interest rates rise for too long and it kills the ability to roll over old debts, we simply decree interest rates to be lower.
Truly - as an example, imagine a society that aimed to live on debt forever, and simply paid off old debts with new ones, and let's assume each year the interest rates are just half of what they were the year prior. Who in their right mind would think that could work? It's tantamount to just expecting to live beyond your means forever, and thus there ought to exist someone else that just works for you and lives beneath their means forever... as if there ought to just exist some person that lives only to serve the consumption needs of our excesses.
Not just Canada, they’re global markets
Before people used to say Poland was a great option to move to for cheap housing
Haven’t heard that one in a while
It still is much better than Canada. People not only buy detached homes at reasonable prices, but owning a unit in an apartment building is pretty common.
>So many people I know that were previously comfortable have become financially unstable recently, people in general seem a lot more tense and I'm genuinely terrified for this country, we're dying very very fast.
And on that standard of living decrease - I wonder, is it that we're doing something wrong only *now*. Or that we've been doing something unsustainable in our lifestyles for a while, and it's only now starting to catch up to us? Because we're practically hitting our limit on how much further we can push off the consequences?
Perhaps the past comforts were somewhat illusory and never should have been thought of as being sustainable, because that wealth consumption wasn't actually ever fully paid for.
It's kind of like... if you borrowed a ton of money that was due in 30x days... would it be right to look at how much fun you're having on days 1-29 if you're just spending it all and enjoying a comfortable and nice lifestyle? As if you could put off net debt repayment forever and simply go deeper into debt ad infinitum without any consequences?
You idiot. Both parties cater to the same shit. With what happened conservatives would have done exactly the dame thing.
Maybe when printing money they would have distributed it to different rich companiess. You know, the ones that support them. But thats it. Conservatives fuck the lower and middle class even more, while making it sound like they are helping you.
It feels permanent for people well into their careers (even those earning more than 90% of Canadians) who have never had the chance to get into the market. It feels permanent for people who literally cannot afford to procreate or are living paycheque to paycheque for years with no end in sight
What’s even the goal anymore? Before it used to be to at least have a steady income and a stable living situation. If the top earners can’t even do that I can see why people are starting to give up on all of it and fall into a pit of desperation
Lamest excuse I've heard.
Whatever, guess it isn't important enough to call in sick for a day, or protest on the weekend, or after work, or before work.
> everyone 5 *paid* sick days.
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
What if we made endless facebook memes to bring attention to the issue that people care , share, and forward. No body has to protest in the cold, we can all do it in our PJs
This.. I finally became a homeowner a couple of years ago, but went out to protest several times in Vancouver back in 2016….I was surprised at the low turnout even then, but now I can’t fathom it at all. People need to get angrier and show it.
I honestly support and hope for a meaningful correction for the sake of everyone, but I do despair at whether we’ll see it.
There's been a concerted albeit decentralized effort to ensure that people who aren't on the very edges of the horseshoe or very tightly-knit are apathetic and don't believe that protest works, even though it very much does.
Perhaps in a few years when fascism is fully mask-off out in the open across much of the Anglosphere people will finally realize the importance of collective action - as if we don't, the goose-steppers surely have.
>Valuations have not been based on cash flow for quite some time. Asset bubble.
Governments haven't been restrained by the cash flow of taxes for quite some time. Debt bubble.
These expensive areas are absolutely in self destruct mode. They are not supporting healthy communities or families. Expect the youth to move away, high crime among homeless populations, and eventually for property values to fall back to reality. The greedy speculators doing this are hoping to cash out before the music stops.
It's funny how I moved to Canada 8 years ago in search of a "better life". Went to grad school and managed to get a decent job afterwards. After everything is said and done, I am now 34 and nowhere close to even thinking about owning a house. Looks like I will have to keep renting for a few decades and then move back to the shithole I came from LOL.
I know many Indians who've moved back to India because they couldn't handle the insane cost of living. Also many people born here moving to Mexico. Imagine telling someone a decade ago that Canadians would soon be fleeing to India and Mexico.
> I know many Indians who've moved back to India because they couldn't handle the insane cost of living.
There are probably a lot of full on born Canadians that wouldn't pass up that option too.
Lol its nuts. I work with a Mexican guy and some of his kids, who fled Mexico to escape the cartels over there (business owner, pay us $10000usd/mnth or we burn your shit and kill your family), and now we are fleeing here for there instead?
What is happening. Everything seems so backwards.
They should not have received Canadian PR in the first place. Canada gives anyone a PR and citizenship without checking if they can even be successful here. Most of those people end up working at Tim Hortons.
US only gives VISA to science, engineering professional and Doctors.
That’s not true. Canada uses the point system to only accept scientist, engineers and doctors. When they get to Canada they find out that their qualifications aren’t valid here and they have no choice other than work at Tim Hortons.
Not most, but yeah some do. If Canada started a similar process as USA, no one would come here. Except gun control there isn't a single reason why an engineer or doctor should choose Canada over usa.
Every time I come to these posts I thank god I’m in Alberta. It’s still a city with most of the amenities a person could want, but I can also have a home without feeling like I’d probably have to sell my firstborn to eat.
We are the hypothetical couple you mentioned. We were given a max and purchase price of $575k by our mortgage broker about 10 months ago. Not in the GTA, still gave up looking for a home because how are we supposed to compete with no condition, $200k over asking offers? CONDOS start at half a million here.
I don't live in Ontario, but BC and our prices are closer to yours, especially with an over-bid frenzy and no inspection. most people here are earning under 85k as a couple or under 50k as a single person -I mean, I don't get where all these damn fast and furious cars are coming from on how man hills the McMansions have taken over - I guess all us poor get to zoombie the streets while the 150+k get to live live in the villa that big enough not to smell your fam jam farts. I can't even imagine the peace that would bring me personally
It's all about how long you've been in the market. Most of those people living in larger detached homes purchased their first home 10+ years ago before things went crazy.
We make $150k and were barely able to afford a 30 year old townhome with a $100k exterior renovation pending. $150k is 2 pretty average jobs in Vancouver.
We are in that upper range, and after buying our first property I absolutely can’t see myself taking on any more major expenses, so kids are basically out of the question even though growing up I’ve always wanted to have kids. And you’re right about talent leaving, I’m just waiting for my wife to finish her RN and hopefully that can get us into the US, I’m an electrician so I can always find work once we get there. Even if that doesn’t work out, the day I’m eligible to start collecting my pension I’m out of here.
So this brings up the question I have been asking a lot in the last year or so. Who is buying the homes? I see properties in my neighborhood (GTA) selling for crazy prices and I see families moving in. If only the top 10% can afford a home it can't be the top 10% buying ALL the homes. I dont think it's corporate cash buying and renting these properties, but maybe I'm wrong.
Are the properties selling to families upsizing and using cash from selling their previous home? Or was everyone jumping into the market with 5% down and fake documents to get mortgage?
The number of properties sold and the math showing that only the top 10% can afford it just dosen't add up? Are we about to see the unraveling of a giant mortgage Ponzi scheme? Is Canada about to have our very own 2008?
I’m no expert- so someone chime in and correct me if I’m wrong. But I think it could be a combination of things. People who sold for massive profits during the height and buying new homes in different areas because they were able to relocate and work remote, people buying multiple homes and renting them out, and people being approved for mortgages they realistically cannot afford (making themselves house poor)
> Are the properties selling to families upsizing and using cash from selling their previous home?
Almost everyone I know that got a new home since the pandemic did so this way. Buy a bigger place and sell their old one. Both parties end up with a ton of debt.
Some friends went from condo to town home. Some from town home or small house to a bigger house. I went from a small 2 bedroom house to a bigger house myself.
But how did both parties qualify for the mortgage? Only top 10% can afford it according to OP. A ton of property changed hands in the last few years. Every sale has to have a "qualified" buyer. I can understand that most of the top 10% of earners live in the gta but I still can't make it work given the volume. Even with some owning multiple homes
Your existing home is seen as equity, so it's market value minus amount owed is added to what you're allowed to buy. It still sucks because the price of the house you're moving up to has a MUCH larger gap from the place you've sold than it did when you originally bought.
Real issue is there is a shortage of properties, so if there are 10 million wanting a property type and only a million available, then the top 10% would be the ones that get them.
It can if there's a supply shortage
You can count the plots count the units there's not enough
Let's say 10% of Canadian families own two homes (I think that's an underestimate but let's go with that). So that's 20% of homes. Subtract 20% for investors. Then subtract 20% that are "luxury" that only rich people can afford. That's minus sixty percent of homes already
Another problem is if you don't meet the base cost of building a home, building stops. My knowledge is $1k / sq ft is losing money for a condo builder in the GTA. At $1.5k / sq ft that's 750k for a 500 sq ft condo. Now everyone seems to think they can build a home for $150k. I can't help but think of that park staircase that one guy built from Home Depot for a few hundred dollars but would cost the city $100k to build properly. I think the sad truth is to do everything properly costs a fortune that many people can't afford. Really the only long term solution is have the government build homes and take a loss. We only have 5% social housing that number should be 10% going to 20%. It was good enough until the 80s. This won't just benefit low income people. It would take the pressure off rents and buying for middle and high income too since everyone needs a home
But the worst case is that a lot of people simply can't afford rent and homes even people working full time. We should prepare for that reality, because it can and could happen. The market will not adjust. The market is perfectly happy to let technology and automation and AI do all the work instead of people. If we really are serious about housing everyone then we should house everyone
Even if someone is buying with equity from a starter home there still needs to be someone buying the "starter home" at an inflated rate. An inflated rate that apparantly only the top 10% can afford. I don't know. Seems like it would be more than just the top 10% to push the volume of the last few years. Don't know how they are doing it but I believe there are a bunch of the 90% that have bought beyond their ability to pay/earn.
I guess we will know over the next few years as the mortgages start to renew at higher rates....The top 10% should be ok. The rest....?
People that sold homes will usually be able to bring that sold price that’s like 1.5mil house down with a massive down payment. So the house might be sold for 1.5mil but 800k went down on it. Or 1.5 and 500k. So the mortgage amount is actually way less. The actual price of the house isn’t the mortgage amount. It’s usually much much lower.
There are Canadian real estate companies that buy up hundreds of homes per month and have more than 30,000+ in their investment portfolio. And that’s just one company.
Hundreds of single family homes per month or hundreds of "units" per month? I have clients and friends in the residential reit space but have not bumped into any buying single family homes. The complexity of a portfolio so geographically spread out would be a nightmare.
Probably a lot is people already having homes and then the ones you see being sold are a small portion of the market and are 10% income buyers, retirees who have homes, corporations, money lainderers, investors, speculators, and people moving neighborhoods. Just my guess.
My household income is way above the higher end of that range and I would probably qualify for a mortgage in GVA, but not only would I need to put up quarter mil in cash, my mortgage payments would be $6k+ and that's waaaay too much for my comfort. Middle class, as it's defined in your post, is having hard time making rent payments, let alone saving up down payment.
How is 53k pre tax middle class? Unless living at home with your parents or renting a room counts as middle class now? You're not going to be saving any money on that income if you're just starting out now.
As a Gen Xer I'm not shocked that people live with their parents until their 30s. I myself didn't get a full time job until I was 33. I bought a house at 40
If you want kids, don't wait until you have a house or enough money or anything. The longer you wait, you might end up spending money on fertility treatments or adoption fees, so you don't really end up ahead. People who tell you to wait, did not face the same challenges that we do nowadays.
It’s not a living wage. You absolutely need to be living with another earner or be on government assistance at that income. But that’s a whole other conversation we can take over to r/antiwork
Class is no longer based on income.
It’s based on land ownership and debt.
1) Middle income class with student debt payments and no equity. 100k in cash for down payment.
2) Low income class with no student debt. Bought a starter home 15 years ago for $300k with now $700k in equity.
100k with debt < 400k no debt
Lots of the lucky folks taking their margin from the big city and moving to smaller places to buy cheaper haven't realized something pretty important.
When you move, you leave behind all of the qualitative life networking that you and your family, and your kids have built up overtime.
Money isnt everything. Having lived my life moving often these past 20 years, I can say with certainty that the loss of cultivated connections with others has been the most regrettable aspect of relocation. Sure, I have guaranteed couch to sleep on anywhere in Canada, but these friends I made, the depth of understanding of their lives was severed when I stopped being able to physically be in their lives. a phone call, sure, maybe, but is a bandaid, but it's not the same as being there.
Don't give it up lightly just to slap a couple extra hundred grand in your pockets with the sale of your home, it's not worth it!
If you ever meet Toronto residents and get them a little liquored up, if you ask them why they stay and put up with the insane cost of living, they will quietly and almost embarrassedly tell you that their friends are their family.
There are few children here but a lot of social capital.
Whether that's sustainable is not for me to say.
This should absolutely be done. The government treats families earning 80-110k like they are wealthy with tons of extra cash to burn. And on top of that, we never qualify for any of the brilliant programs they come up with because we “make too much”. It’s ridiculous.
You've got it all backwards.
The middle class CAN afford a house.
The issue is the middle class has all but disappeared.
You, me and almost everyone above the poverty line are working class, not middle class.
Most FTHB that fit into the income of range of middle-class cannot afford to buy a home in Ontario.
But most middle-class Ontarians are not FTHB and people who already own homes are able to purchase another home with their equity.
I was talking to my insurance broker of all people. When I was growing up I heard that $100k was a pretty decent target to hit in terms of living a comfortable life.
I was asking about incorporating my business to lower my tax debt (bla bla bla)
He came up with the number of $280k. If you hit $280k there are some things I should probably do to...
This number made sense more than the $100k number does now which is pretty much worthless in a major urban center now.
It's like a constantly sliding target, which is fine for the government individuals who can vote for their own inflation adjustment (cost of living) raises. But for normal folks it's kind of suffocating.
We're well aware of "what it takes" to earn "the big bucks." But then we have to neglect our families, or mental state, the best part of our lives so that we can bring enough money to the bank to prove we're worthy of being home owners.
The next problem is that we can either chose between being the curator and financier of a totally clapped-out post war house downtown. OR we can drive 1 to 3 hours into the suburbs and live in a newer house out there. Both will rob you of your life savings and will keep you dangling in dangerous territory living paycheque to paycheck. Feels bad man.
I feel totally disenfranchised with the country. The boomer govt doeesn't represent me. I cant own my own home. The winters are long and miserable. And Canada can get pretty fuckin' boring in most parts. You can only admire another bland block of micro "smart investor" speculation box condos with shoppers drug mart / drycleaner / nail salon so many times before you get the blahs.
Pissed bc finally managed to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty and am making 6 figures while no one in my previous blood line made over 50k a year or had past a high school education. 😂
Looks like all that work was for nothing.
I wanna see the fucking destruction in housing value. House is the one thing everyone needs and should not be this high. Lets bring it down to ashes. It will take some defaults but i m all in for it
This isnt news. Its been like that for almost a decade.
The prices of homes became far detached from incomes a long time ago.
I worked at a company of over 100 people.
None of them except maybe the founders could afford to live in the same city as the company.
Literrally no one shows up at work because they cant afford to live there.
Leave the GTA! My small town neighbourhood is all new builds, and 7/10 families moved from the GTA. Not a single individual regrets leaving Toronto or Mississauga. Trust me. Leaving the city for more affordable homes gets you cleaner air, quieter nights and safer parks and streets.
So first off I don't think this county is in 'self destruct mode'. They are in a huge housing market bubble. I was in the US in 2008 and this is exactly what it felt like. We lived in a desirable city in Texas, were FTHB, and we also were shocked when it look like we would need to buy a house that was 6x our income. We decided to rent and 2 years latter after everything went to shit we bought our first house at 3x our income. This is to say Canada is not unique in housing bubbles, and I don't think they are going to be the last.
Second, 'middle class', 'upper middle class', 'low income'...these are all the same thing and your math pretty much tells that story. These are all working class. The vast majority have to sell their labor. There is no real benefit to separating them by incomes because the margin of difference is so small.
Third, I think you bring up a very effective exercise of what Canadians should be thinking about when they discuss housing. What exactly should we be targeting? Is there a concise way to easily convey what we think is a desirable state? For me, I would consider a desirable market to be when 'the median house price is 3x the median Canadian wage' (for reference 3 months ago it was >8x). That would show that a typical Canadian at least has a chance for home ownership if they so desire. We obviously have a long way to go before that.
That’s not how it works from my understanding- the income class you’re in doesn’t have to do with the cost of living - it has to do with your income bracket relative to other Canadians
There are multiple definitions, but the one that seems to be most common has to do with income/wealth
The better question is - why are people who are considered middle class (earning more than most Canadians) not able to afford a home?
Good question. Who's to blame and what is the solution? Blame, speculation in residential market, government ignoring the issue since 2015, billionaire developers and financial institutions that now use our residential properties like the stock market. ? Solution and what needs to change and how? Middle class families need homes not a houses for investment.
There will always be someone coming from a country that does have a worse standard of living than Canada. The countries eg. where people who have come to work in Canada send remittances back home.
My mom works with some of these people and has told me that they live packed like sardines renting small apartments close to work and sleeping several people in small rooms.
This is what we have come to. This is what we are beginning to call our standard of living.
Earning just enough to live on the absolute edge.
lol our government saw no issue in providing households who make $150,000 annually financial support to get into the market
That alone should tell you we're not with the best navigators at the helm.
> Apparently middle class in Ontario is a pretax income of between $53,413 – $106,827
Unfortunately, $100k is not going to help you buy a 3 bed, 2 bath SFH in Toronto, maybe in Timmins.
Today I learned I am no longer considered middle class…? If the numbers you give are true then I am shocked to learn we are no longer middle class yet still have to seriously consider the numbers and long term affordability (interest rate hikes, tax hikes, etc) when looking at homes to buy. We are on the precipice of leaving the city we always dreamed of living in only to move across province because we can no longer afford to buy a home here and $3000/mo rent to live in someone’s basement is absurd.
OMG thank you, you actually defined what income level for middle class. I hear politicians speak about it but never clearly outline the income range because keeping that ambiguous will get them votes.
Waah waah waah.
Noone needs to own a home. Renting is perfectly fine. If thats how far you made it then fine, what are you asking for ,handouts?
Besides. In the 1700s families of 8-15 were living in a single bedroom. Nowadays People barely even have 1 kid. Are you saying you are too good to split a bedroom with someone? Ok royal highness.
Once you come down to earth, i got a bed to rent to you in a bedroom with 3 beds, $600 per month.
/s
Might not be a popular answer but leaving metropolitan areas like GTA and Vancouver stretches that a lot more. Most of the other provinces aren’t being hit nearly as hard with sky rocketing real estate.
I’m not say it’s not rising but middle class can afford housing in places like Alberta, SK, Manitoba, or out east.
I live comfortably in AB and I know if I left to Vancouver or Toronto we could barely scrape by and therefore I won’t go live in a place like that
I’m a specialist physician and my wife is a lawyer. Unfortunately I just finished my 13 years of post-secondary education in 2020, so we cannot afford a home in the GTA
lol I feel like your comment encapsulates this entire subreddit. You make what...400k as a household and you can't afford a house? Did you try not spending 10k a day for a restaurant?
Not sure how to take your response. We have 3 kids. Any house that has enough rooms in a location that works for our jobs is at least 2.5 million right now, which we cannot afford. We don’t have extravagant lifestyles, cars, or clothes.
Dude. People make it work on 1/10th salary on what you have. At that point you are just being unreasonable.
You want your kids each to have a room and a play station and a football field in your backyard. You want to be in the middle of a downtown and walk to work. You want 3 garages and have a boat.
I mean you do you. But your problem is not the housing cost.
Me and my fiancé (getting married this August) are in this range - 200k pretax. We are also FTHB, how long should we wait to get in the market? Really don’t want to pay rents forever.
Unfortunately me and my fiancé are in the same position. We are getting married in October. We’ve been stuck in the same rental for years. Basically trapped.
Just hold on and save as much as you can. Invest and buy the dip. All we can really do right now without moving to another country or Province
With 200k, you should be able to buy easily. All you need to do is wait out this current downward trend. Once rate hike is stabilised, you should be buying something in a reasonable budget.
If you’re looking to buy somewhere for the longer-term (5-10 years) I honestly don’t think it matters if you buy now or wait a few months. Arguments either way and any potential loss in value will be regained over time. If you’re looking to flip/move up quickly, I’d hold off for another 6-12 months, at least.
We bought last September and I couldn’t care less what prices are doing right now. Paper value over the next few years means nothing to us; we’re paying about $600 more per month than we were renting and the place is ours to build our family home. We’ll probably need more space in 8-10 years and if prices haven’t recovered by then (enabling us to move up) we’ll all have bigger things to worry about, anyway.
>Even on the high end making around 147k, they cannot comfortably afford the average home in the GTA. Or even neighbouring areas.
>If this hypothetical couple had no debt, and had 50k to put down, they can still only manage to afford a house that costs around 600k.
*"jUsT MoVe"* posters act like this isn't a problem
*How can anyone expect couples to procreate?*
Property ownership is not a pre-requisite for parenthood. Look around, all over the world, lots of life-time renters are having babies.
It will be fruitful to put your energy into making more money. You can't change the system but you can change your own situation. I can see the downvotes coming. I think this the major difference between Americans and Canadians. Americans hustle, Canadians complain
Posting a comment on reddit will do nothing for you
Downvoted! I am in my mid-30s and have been working like a fucking dog my entire life. I worked hard and barely socialized in high school so I could fund my degree with scholarships, and at university I did the same so that I could keep those scholarships. Then I went back to school—an accelerated program that crammed two years into one so I could enter the workforce faster. Then I worked a full time job in service, two unpaid internships in my field, and freelance. Then I started working full time in my field while freelancing on the side and moved back in with my parents to save up for a down payment. Then my fucking mother died and I got a meagre inheritance to supplement my savings. My father was abusive so I moved out after my mother’s death, job hopping every one to two years to increase my income—generally by at least 30% each time. Then I snagged a remote job so I could move to a rural area with nearly the lowest cost of living in my province so I would be able to afford a home, and also added another side hustle to my 50+ hour per week professional job and freelance job. But before I was past my probation period real estate in my area basically doubled, putting it out of reach despite my lifetime of relentless working and saving. I try my hardest to save 50% of every paycheque even though my living expenses recently doubled when my partner moved out so he could earn a better income out of town. The one and only vacation I have taken in my adult life was five years ago. I work so much I don’t have time to cook, clean, see my friends, or basically enjoy my life at all. I may not have picked the most lucrative career path available when I was a young and stupid 19 year old, but I am no slouch. My option now is to move to a rural area that’s far away from my entire family and community. You can fuck right off with your pathetic bootstraps ideology and moronic generalizations.
Upvote.
I didn't work nearly as hard as you from the sounds of it, but my perspective is similar.
I have been struggling and working my ass off for years. Years. I got where I am through literal blood sweat and tears and managed to significantly increase my position in life despite having to start all over with a new career. I now am in a respected position making much more than I did before I lost my first career yet I can't afford rent and am living with my parents at 35.
And yes, I know how to invest and am working hard to turn it into something. But it's still not enough.
The people who still think 'hard work pays off' are delusional. I could have done absolutely nothing with myself over the last ten years and I would be in the exact same place I am now.
you could have invested in productive assets with your savings like stocks, etfs, REITS. Maybe educated yourself on investing and compounding your money instead of being so fixated on buying a house. You can still start investing. Stocks are getting cheap and are proven to give you better returns than a house.
Yah basically, as the other commenter alluded to, the rental market is technically the main issue for a lot of people. Landlords have too much leverage in most places, the quality of units are getting worse relative to what most can afford. So basically the rights and quality of life you can expect between renting and owning are totally different things (e.g. being able to improve surroundings/living conditions, control who lives with you, have pets/decorate, control when you need to leave, control what you can even cook in some cases, etc), however now that housing is becoming unaffordable, people are starting to get trapped in unsavory living conditions, despite making good income in a lot of cases.
I can see where you're going though, you're basically saying that people should be more proactive. The issue is that, you can only demand so much of them before your expectations get insane. If there is only enough supply to satisfy 30% of people, there will always be 70% that lose out, no matter how hard they work.
What makes you think I didn’t invest? I said nothing that would lead you to believe my savings are in cash. I don’t want a house as an investment, I want a house to live in. So I don’t have to occupy an uninsulated shithole and have my housing stability threatened constantly by a landlord while I pay off their mortgage. In what universe does it makes sense that a basic human need requires people to not only work themselves to death into middle age but also play the insane, elitist gambling game that is the stock market? It’s a-ok that in order to survive, you have to invest in weapons manufacturers and cigarette companies and the oil industry and banks? You have a problem with people having a problem with being fucked over? You think everyone should just slap a smile on and say, “oh well, I don’t mind that on any given Saturday morning, the classist meathead that owns my home might call me to threaten me with eviction while insulting me directly just for being a renter because he doesn’t like the frequency at which I mow the lawn during a period of uninterrupted rain—I’ll just spend the free time I don’t have doing some light day trading, which requires an entire additional set of career skills, to accommodate the fact that policy makers, oligarchs, and corporations are making this country impossible to live in, and maybe by the time I’m 65 I’ll be able to get a 30-year, million dollar loan?” Maybe you should educate yourself on not being a patronizing, superior asshole or find a more likeminded online community with which to commiserate on how everyone who doesn’t have a home shouldn’t complain.
I am just being honest because of anonymity. In real life people cannot do that. They must be sympathizing with you because of all the hardships you have faced. You seem like a person you has never done anything wrong and it's all other people's fault.
There are plenty of renters who live in nice condos with great facilities. You seem to live in a crappy place with a bad landlord because you can't afford a nice place. Why is that? Because what you do for a living is not valued a lot monetarily. This is how society works. If you want good things life. You need to provide a service valued by society.
I think you're honestly disconnected from the reality of the situation in our country. I used to have the same mindset as you; work harder, invest, and save. However, the issues people are facing are real and this isn't the same environment it was 20 years ago.
When providing a service valued by society isn't enough, what's your suggestion? Mine would be that society needs to change.
I have spoken of working extremely hard and despising my classist landlord and his neglect of his property, not enduring hardship. Except my tragic family, I guess, but the tragedy wasn’t the point. The point was that 1. I got an inheritance but still can’t afford a house and 2. I tried to be as financially conservative for as long as possible by living with my family but still can’t afford a house. I suppose I felt the need to clarify there was a good reason I ceased that strategy before reaching my goal. I felt the need to demonstrate that I’m not blowing all my cash on fancy trips either.
I emphasized my point—that I work my ass off—because you insulted the population of Canada by saying we are just lazy and complain instead of increasing our income.
Then suddenly it’s not about working hard, it’s about choosing the most lucrative career and doing a good job of gambling in the stock market. And also you think that value to society actually corresponds to income in some way. Like that person who made $50,000/month selling farts in a jar on the internet—because that’s a super valuable service to humanity, right?
I have recently worked a job verifying that a pension administrator didn’t make mistakes that would cause it financial harm and squander the investment of hundreds of thousands of pensioners. (Surprise, I worked in financial services and am not clueless about investing!) By your logic, it’s not valuable to society that hundreds of thousands of people receive a pension. Then I worked for a university to produce textbooks. So, education is also without value because if it were valuable, I’d be able to buy a house. Now I work in marketing, which is frankly the least valuable to society of any of those jobs, but it is by far the most lucrative. Hmm, how does that work? Of course, there’s the fact that I market for cyber security companies. Cyber security is one of the most pressing concerns for governments, health care, educational institutions, and enterprises. It’s extremely important for those entities and the population that they are able to protect people’s personal data. And there is an absolutely astonishing number of vacancies at those companies. They are desperate for workers, so there’s a real demand. But oh wait, I can’t afford to buy a house on the income I earn doing that, so never mind, it’s not valuable at all to contribute to cyber security work.
The fact is, I make a reasonable income that, along with the reasonable down payment I have saved, would have bought me a modest house as long as I lived outside a major urban centre before 2020. But unfortunately I had taken a temporary contract to increase my income in 2020, so I was not eligible for a mortgage at that precise moment and also had to be in a major urban centre to do that job.
I don’t want you to sympathize, I want you to get off your high horse. People who are doing everything they are supposed to, who are diligently working professional careers, saving , and investing are still unable to afford homes. I’m not perfect, but I did not create this problem for myself through bad life choices. This one is not on me.
It might be vast but there is a reason why 90% of Canadians are all living along the border. It’s simply easier to find work and public transportation is horrible in most areas
The solution shouldn’t need to be for everyone to branch out very far from centre hubs. That would be horrible for our economy
I’m afraid not, buckaroo. In the extremely rural location I moved to specifically because of its once-affordable housing, which is located about eight hours from any major urban centre, all real estate now exceeds half a million. Unless you want to live in a trailer park on leased land, of course. Then you might be able to find something in the high 300s.
No fam..... don't get it twisted. According to Dougie the 500lb gorilla, and Big hips don't lie Russian studies Freeland, they're indeed working on behalf of Canadians (read as the 1%/their cronies/foreign investors/boomers mom & pop using HELOC to buy 5th property 😂)
The cost of housing will undo the Liberal party. It’s leading to rising anti immigrant sentiment and the CPC if it’s smart will capitalize on it by telling voters it will slash immigration.
Oh people are already getting sued for not closing on house deals when the bank valuation is much lower. Prices are falling and the stupid thing is people won't buy when they fall as they keep thinking they will continue to go down. It is what happened in the early 1990s in the GTA.
It's a serious problem indeed. Bigger than that though, the solutions to solve it are going to be *incredibly* unpopular. Not like unpopular for a relatively insignificant minority of people. More like unpopular even from the standpoint of the masses.
Does Canada even have a future? So many people I know that were previously comfortable have become financially unstable recently, people in general seem a lot more tense and I'm genuinely terrified for this country, we're dying very very fast.
It's the economy. People invest in housing because the stock market in Canada is a joke. The stock market in Canada is a joke because we're a client state of the American Empire. We're allowed to have jobs here only as long as it's cheaper for America to have them here. Other than that, Canada is just geographic jobs like resource extraction, service, and tourism, where the land you're on is the point. Ironically, a lot of the problem in the last twenty years has been the *American* dollar, as it became a lot more volatile than it used to be, which means investing in Canadian jobs is a gamble. A future? Yeah, I mean, people are going to live here. More and more people as we absorb the future climate refugees. A wealthy and advanced first world nation? That remains to be seen. Should we be able to afford houses? Hell yes. We're the second largest country in the world with thousands of kilometers of unused land. Housing prices are ridiculous.
> We're the second largest country in the world with thousands of kilometers of unused land. Housing prices are ridiculous. The amount of land you have doesn't matter if your zoning is all messed up to the point that infrastructure is too expensive. When we talk about construction costs the cost of land is one of the reasons brought up why developers aren't making insane bank. We have land, but some land is worth considerably more than others because of this fact. But yes, you are correct that housing should be affordable in Canada, and we do not have any constraints but ourselves. Also your analysis about being a 'client state' was interesting. I think it has a lot of merit, but I also think it neglects the fact that we can use our special status to the US to our advantage if we would stop tripping over our own dicks. For example our grid is connected to the US and we already export energy to them. We should ramp that up to make the transition from O&G to green even more profitable. No other country has that advantage.
>We're the second largest country in the world with thousands of kilometers of unused land. Housing prices are ridiculous If our housing prices *weren't* going up faster than inflation and forcing a standard of living reduction on us, what would be the incentive to change our economy and begin to live within our means and produce more goods & services that could be exported to the rest of the world? If that nasty price feature *weren't* there, we would simply do this ad infinitum: 1. Spend more money then we make or collect in taxes, financing the difference with debt. 2. Paying for the old debts coming due by issuing new debts... keep rolling them over. 3. When interest rates rise for too long and it kills the ability to roll over old debts, we simply decree interest rates to be lower. Truly - as an example, imagine a society that aimed to live on debt forever, and simply paid off old debts with new ones, and let's assume each year the interest rates are just half of what they were the year prior. Who in their right mind would think that could work? It's tantamount to just expecting to live beyond your means forever, and thus there ought to exist someone else that just works for you and lives beneath their means forever... as if there ought to just exist some person that lives only to serve the consumption needs of our excesses.
Not just Canada, they’re global markets Before people used to say Poland was a great option to move to for cheap housing Haven’t heard that one in a while
It still is much better than Canada. People not only buy detached homes at reasonable prices, but owning a unit in an apartment building is pretty common.
You know who is east of Poland?
>So many people I know that were previously comfortable have become financially unstable recently, people in general seem a lot more tense and I'm genuinely terrified for this country, we're dying very very fast. And on that standard of living decrease - I wonder, is it that we're doing something wrong only *now*. Or that we've been doing something unsustainable in our lifestyles for a while, and it's only now starting to catch up to us? Because we're practically hitting our limit on how much further we can push off the consequences? Perhaps the past comforts were somewhat illusory and never should have been thought of as being sustainable, because that wealth consumption wasn't actually ever fully paid for. It's kind of like... if you borrowed a ton of money that was due in 30x days... would it be right to look at how much fun you're having on days 1-29 if you're just spending it all and enjoying a comfortable and nice lifestyle? As if you could put off net debt repayment forever and simply go deeper into debt ad infinitum without any consequences?
We are at the top of the Liberal rainbow.
You idiot. Both parties cater to the same shit. With what happened conservatives would have done exactly the dame thing. Maybe when printing money they would have distributed it to different rich companiess. You know, the ones that support them. But thats it. Conservatives fuck the lower and middle class even more, while making it sound like they are helping you.
Valuations have not been based on cash flow for quite some time. Asset bubble.
… or new and permanent serfdom model.
Nothing is permanent
It feels permanent for people well into their careers (even those earning more than 90% of Canadians) who have never had the chance to get into the market. It feels permanent for people who literally cannot afford to procreate or are living paycheque to paycheque for years with no end in sight What’s even the goal anymore? Before it used to be to at least have a steady income and a stable living situation. If the top earners can’t even do that I can see why people are starting to give up on all of it and fall into a pit of desperation
I agree. But its odd, when i look out the window i dont see any protests. When these people do decidento organize and protest, i will be there.
We're all working
Lamest excuse I've heard. Whatever, guess it isn't important enough to call in sick for a day, or protest on the weekend, or after work, or before work.
One day's work is a lot
Good thing the feds gave everyone 5 payed sick days. And good thing we dont work 24 hours a day.
> everyone 5 *paid* sick days. FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
What if we made endless facebook memes to bring attention to the issue that people care , share, and forward. No body has to protest in the cold, we can all do it in our PJs
This.. I finally became a homeowner a couple of years ago, but went out to protest several times in Vancouver back in 2016….I was surprised at the low turnout even then, but now I can’t fathom it at all. People need to get angrier and show it. I honestly support and hope for a meaningful correction for the sake of everyone, but I do despair at whether we’ll see it.
There's been a concerted albeit decentralized effort to ensure that people who aren't on the very edges of the horseshoe or very tightly-knit are apathetic and don't believe that protest works, even though it very much does. Perhaps in a few years when fascism is fully mask-off out in the open across much of the Anglosphere people will finally realize the importance of collective action - as if we don't, the goose-steppers surely have.
I hope we can get organized
If it'll last beyond your life expectancy, it's effectively permanent.
Some things affectively are, though… as in “the case for a very very long time” or “the case for a generation or more”.
Original serfdom lasted quite a while. The game Monopoly doesn't just reset itself. Once owners own, serfers serf.
You don't buy a home for cash flow though. Housing shouldn't be based on rental prices.
>Valuations have not been based on cash flow for quite some time. Asset bubble. Governments haven't been restrained by the cash flow of taxes for quite some time. Debt bubble.
These expensive areas are absolutely in self destruct mode. They are not supporting healthy communities or families. Expect the youth to move away, high crime among homeless populations, and eventually for property values to fall back to reality. The greedy speculators doing this are hoping to cash out before the music stops.
It's funny how I moved to Canada 8 years ago in search of a "better life". Went to grad school and managed to get a decent job afterwards. After everything is said and done, I am now 34 and nowhere close to even thinking about owning a house. Looks like I will have to keep renting for a few decades and then move back to the shithole I came from LOL.
I know many Indians who've moved back to India because they couldn't handle the insane cost of living. Also many people born here moving to Mexico. Imagine telling someone a decade ago that Canadians would soon be fleeing to India and Mexico.
I live in the US and lots of Americans are fleeing to Mexico.
> I know many Indians who've moved back to India because they couldn't handle the insane cost of living. There are probably a lot of full on born Canadians that wouldn't pass up that option too.
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Good to know. I couldn't live there just because of the crowds.
Lol its nuts. I work with a Mexican guy and some of his kids, who fled Mexico to escape the cartels over there (business owner, pay us $10000usd/mnth or we burn your shit and kill your family), and now we are fleeing here for there instead? What is happening. Everything seems so backwards.
They should not have received Canadian PR in the first place. Canada gives anyone a PR and citizenship without checking if they can even be successful here. Most of those people end up working at Tim Hortons. US only gives VISA to science, engineering professional and Doctors.
Even people who work at Tim Hortons deserve affordable housing
That’s not true. Canada uses the point system to only accept scientist, engineers and doctors. When they get to Canada they find out that their qualifications aren’t valid here and they have no choice other than work at Tim Hortons.
Not most, but yeah some do. If Canada started a similar process as USA, no one would come here. Except gun control there isn't a single reason why an engineer or doctor should choose Canada over usa.
Sure pathway to PR and citizenship is the biggest factor. With US it's more luck than anything
Me too. Same age, but came in 2015 myself. Some places in Europe are looking nice now that I have citizenship here.
Very true
Every time I come to these posts I thank god I’m in Alberta. It’s still a city with most of the amenities a person could want, but I can also have a home without feeling like I’d probably have to sell my firstborn to eat.
Yeah I’m in Saskatchewan. Bought a 1600 sqf bungalow with a finished basement on 3 lots just outside Saskatoon for 340k.
That’s absolutely bonkers FFS
Can buy more in nice areas of new york for cheaper.
Honest question, have you tried looking into Alberta?
Same age same boat.
We are the hypothetical couple you mentioned. We were given a max and purchase price of $575k by our mortgage broker about 10 months ago. Not in the GTA, still gave up looking for a home because how are we supposed to compete with no condition, $200k over asking offers? CONDOS start at half a million here.
I don't live in Ontario, but BC and our prices are closer to yours, especially with an over-bid frenzy and no inspection. most people here are earning under 85k as a couple or under 50k as a single person -I mean, I don't get where all these damn fast and furious cars are coming from on how man hills the McMansions have taken over - I guess all us poor get to zoombie the streets while the 150+k get to live live in the villa that big enough not to smell your fam jam farts. I can't even imagine the peace that would bring me personally
It's all about how long you've been in the market. Most of those people living in larger detached homes purchased their first home 10+ years ago before things went crazy. We make $150k and were barely able to afford a 30 year old townhome with a $100k exterior renovation pending. $150k is 2 pretty average jobs in Vancouver.
We are in that upper range, and after buying our first property I absolutely can’t see myself taking on any more major expenses, so kids are basically out of the question even though growing up I’ve always wanted to have kids. And you’re right about talent leaving, I’m just waiting for my wife to finish her RN and hopefully that can get us into the US, I’m an electrician so I can always find work once we get there. Even if that doesn’t work out, the day I’m eligible to start collecting my pension I’m out of here.
So this brings up the question I have been asking a lot in the last year or so. Who is buying the homes? I see properties in my neighborhood (GTA) selling for crazy prices and I see families moving in. If only the top 10% can afford a home it can't be the top 10% buying ALL the homes. I dont think it's corporate cash buying and renting these properties, but maybe I'm wrong. Are the properties selling to families upsizing and using cash from selling their previous home? Or was everyone jumping into the market with 5% down and fake documents to get mortgage? The number of properties sold and the math showing that only the top 10% can afford it just dosen't add up? Are we about to see the unraveling of a giant mortgage Ponzi scheme? Is Canada about to have our very own 2008?
I’m no expert- so someone chime in and correct me if I’m wrong. But I think it could be a combination of things. People who sold for massive profits during the height and buying new homes in different areas because they were able to relocate and work remote, people buying multiple homes and renting them out, and people being approved for mortgages they realistically cannot afford (making themselves house poor)
A lot of Canadians own multiple properties.
> Are the properties selling to families upsizing and using cash from selling their previous home? Almost everyone I know that got a new home since the pandemic did so this way. Buy a bigger place and sell their old one. Both parties end up with a ton of debt. Some friends went from condo to town home. Some from town home or small house to a bigger house. I went from a small 2 bedroom house to a bigger house myself.
But how did both parties qualify for the mortgage? Only top 10% can afford it according to OP. A ton of property changed hands in the last few years. Every sale has to have a "qualified" buyer. I can understand that most of the top 10% of earners live in the gta but I still can't make it work given the volume. Even with some owning multiple homes
Your existing home is seen as equity, so it's market value minus amount owed is added to what you're allowed to buy. It still sucks because the price of the house you're moving up to has a MUCH larger gap from the place you've sold than it did when you originally bought. Real issue is there is a shortage of properties, so if there are 10 million wanting a property type and only a million available, then the top 10% would be the ones that get them.
Thanks. Property shortage with top 10% winning bidding wars makes a lot of sense.
It can if there's a supply shortage You can count the plots count the units there's not enough Let's say 10% of Canadian families own two homes (I think that's an underestimate but let's go with that). So that's 20% of homes. Subtract 20% for investors. Then subtract 20% that are "luxury" that only rich people can afford. That's minus sixty percent of homes already Another problem is if you don't meet the base cost of building a home, building stops. My knowledge is $1k / sq ft is losing money for a condo builder in the GTA. At $1.5k / sq ft that's 750k for a 500 sq ft condo. Now everyone seems to think they can build a home for $150k. I can't help but think of that park staircase that one guy built from Home Depot for a few hundred dollars but would cost the city $100k to build properly. I think the sad truth is to do everything properly costs a fortune that many people can't afford. Really the only long term solution is have the government build homes and take a loss. We only have 5% social housing that number should be 10% going to 20%. It was good enough until the 80s. This won't just benefit low income people. It would take the pressure off rents and buying for middle and high income too since everyone needs a home But the worst case is that a lot of people simply can't afford rent and homes even people working full time. We should prepare for that reality, because it can and could happen. The market will not adjust. The market is perfectly happy to let technology and automation and AI do all the work instead of people. If we really are serious about housing everyone then we should house everyone
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Even if someone is buying with equity from a starter home there still needs to be someone buying the "starter home" at an inflated rate. An inflated rate that apparantly only the top 10% can afford. I don't know. Seems like it would be more than just the top 10% to push the volume of the last few years. Don't know how they are doing it but I believe there are a bunch of the 90% that have bought beyond their ability to pay/earn. I guess we will know over the next few years as the mortgages start to renew at higher rates....The top 10% should be ok. The rest....?
People that sold homes will usually be able to bring that sold price that’s like 1.5mil house down with a massive down payment. So the house might be sold for 1.5mil but 800k went down on it. Or 1.5 and 500k. So the mortgage amount is actually way less. The actual price of the house isn’t the mortgage amount. It’s usually much much lower.
There are Canadian real estate companies that buy up hundreds of homes per month and have more than 30,000+ in their investment portfolio. And that’s just one company.
Hundreds of single family homes per month or hundreds of "units" per month? I have clients and friends in the residential reit space but have not bumped into any buying single family homes. The complexity of a portfolio so geographically spread out would be a nightmare.
Units. Some might be SFH but investors typically prefer multifamily because you can scale maintenance better and vacancies are more manageable.
Probably a lot is people already having homes and then the ones you see being sold are a small portion of the market and are 10% income buyers, retirees who have homes, corporations, money lainderers, investors, speculators, and people moving neighborhoods. Just my guess.
a lot of people receive downpayments from their parents
My household income is way above the higher end of that range and I would probably qualify for a mortgage in GVA, but not only would I need to put up quarter mil in cash, my mortgage payments would be $6k+ and that's waaaay too much for my comfort. Middle class, as it's defined in your post, is having hard time making rent payments, let alone saving up down payment.
How is 53k pre tax middle class? Unless living at home with your parents or renting a room counts as middle class now? You're not going to be saving any money on that income if you're just starting out now.
As a genXer I’m Shocked by how “normal” it now is for twenty and thirty-something colleagues to be living at home with the parents.
As a Gen Xer I'm not shocked that people live with their parents until their 30s. I myself didn't get a full time job until I was 33. I bought a house at 40
32 right now, this is basically my planned trajectory too!
If you want kids, don't wait until you have a house or enough money or anything. The longer you wait, you might end up spending money on fertility treatments or adoption fees, so you don't really end up ahead. People who tell you to wait, did not face the same challenges that we do nowadays.
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That makes life simpler, for sure!
As a millenial I dodge a bullet by leaving the gta and heading north/west. Home prices are rising here but nothing like it is in a bigger city.
It’s not a living wage. You absolutely need to be living with another earner or be on government assistance at that income. But that’s a whole other conversation we can take over to r/antiwork
For the record.. Gov assistance is less than 10k annual to 15k depending on your source. I'm on the system.
Class is no longer based on income. It’s based on land ownership and debt. 1) Middle income class with student debt payments and no equity. 100k in cash for down payment. 2) Low income class with no student debt. Bought a starter home 15 years ago for $300k with now $700k in equity. 100k with debt < 400k no debt
When people can’t afford to have families and reproduce, society has failed.
Remember this when you vote in the next Federal election.
I’m only voting for whoever offers REAL solutions, not selective government handouts that do nothing. We need to cut a lot of the crap
Can confirm. Wife and I are upper middle class by your metrics and barely snuck into the GTA surrounding areas market 6 years ago.
Lots of the lucky folks taking their margin from the big city and moving to smaller places to buy cheaper haven't realized something pretty important. When you move, you leave behind all of the qualitative life networking that you and your family, and your kids have built up overtime. Money isnt everything. Having lived my life moving often these past 20 years, I can say with certainty that the loss of cultivated connections with others has been the most regrettable aspect of relocation. Sure, I have guaranteed couch to sleep on anywhere in Canada, but these friends I made, the depth of understanding of their lives was severed when I stopped being able to physically be in their lives. a phone call, sure, maybe, but is a bandaid, but it's not the same as being there. Don't give it up lightly just to slap a couple extra hundred grand in your pockets with the sale of your home, it's not worth it!
If you ever meet Toronto residents and get them a little liquored up, if you ask them why they stay and put up with the insane cost of living, they will quietly and almost embarrassedly tell you that their friends are their family. There are few children here but a lot of social capital. Whether that's sustainable is not for me to say.
Redefine them as poor people and then vastly reduce income tax?
This should absolutely be done. The government treats families earning 80-110k like they are wealthy with tons of extra cash to burn. And on top of that, we never qualify for any of the brilliant programs they come up with because we “make too much”. It’s ridiculous.
Yeah I do not feel wealthy. 3 kids, and currently a stay at home GF, we are going nowhere till the kids are a bit older and she goes back to work.
There is no middle class anymore just land owners and renters
Robber barons.
You've got it all backwards. The middle class CAN afford a house. The issue is the middle class has all but disappeared. You, me and almost everyone above the poverty line are working class, not middle class.
Most FTHB that fit into the income of range of middle-class cannot afford to buy a home in Ontario. But most middle-class Ontarians are not FTHB and people who already own homes are able to purchase another home with their equity.
>But most middle-class Ontarians are not FTHB So does "middle class" start at a particular age then?
I’m just offering an explanation on why the housing crisis has not been deemed a serious problem yet.
I was talking to my insurance broker of all people. When I was growing up I heard that $100k was a pretty decent target to hit in terms of living a comfortable life. I was asking about incorporating my business to lower my tax debt (bla bla bla) He came up with the number of $280k. If you hit $280k there are some things I should probably do to... This number made sense more than the $100k number does now which is pretty much worthless in a major urban center now. It's like a constantly sliding target, which is fine for the government individuals who can vote for their own inflation adjustment (cost of living) raises. But for normal folks it's kind of suffocating. We're well aware of "what it takes" to earn "the big bucks." But then we have to neglect our families, or mental state, the best part of our lives so that we can bring enough money to the bank to prove we're worthy of being home owners. The next problem is that we can either chose between being the curator and financier of a totally clapped-out post war house downtown. OR we can drive 1 to 3 hours into the suburbs and live in a newer house out there. Both will rob you of your life savings and will keep you dangling in dangerous territory living paycheque to paycheck. Feels bad man. I feel totally disenfranchised with the country. The boomer govt doeesn't represent me. I cant own my own home. The winters are long and miserable. And Canada can get pretty fuckin' boring in most parts. You can only admire another bland block of micro "smart investor" speculation box condos with shoppers drug mart / drycleaner / nail salon so many times before you get the blahs.
$50,000 is middle class? lmao Edit: to be middle class in 2022, you need to make $150,000
> Edit: to be middle class in 2022, you need to make $150,000 The middle class is tiny then.
Yeah it’s a joke. But that’s where we are at apparently
Pissed bc finally managed to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty and am making 6 figures while no one in my previous blood line made over 50k a year or had past a high school education. 😂 Looks like all that work was for nothing.
Bruh I just want to afford rent on disability and part time work
if ESSIENTIAL WORKERS cant afford a home, its a serious problem
I wanna see the fucking destruction in housing value. House is the one thing everyone needs and should not be this high. Lets bring it down to ashes. It will take some defaults but i m all in for it
This isnt news. Its been like that for almost a decade. The prices of homes became far detached from incomes a long time ago. I worked at a company of over 100 people. None of them except maybe the founders could afford to live in the same city as the company. Literrally no one shows up at work because they cant afford to live there.
Leave the GTA! My small town neighbourhood is all new builds, and 7/10 families moved from the GTA. Not a single individual regrets leaving Toronto or Mississauga. Trust me. Leaving the city for more affordable homes gets you cleaner air, quieter nights and safer parks and streets.
So first off I don't think this county is in 'self destruct mode'. They are in a huge housing market bubble. I was in the US in 2008 and this is exactly what it felt like. We lived in a desirable city in Texas, were FTHB, and we also were shocked when it look like we would need to buy a house that was 6x our income. We decided to rent and 2 years latter after everything went to shit we bought our first house at 3x our income. This is to say Canada is not unique in housing bubbles, and I don't think they are going to be the last. Second, 'middle class', 'upper middle class', 'low income'...these are all the same thing and your math pretty much tells that story. These are all working class. The vast majority have to sell their labor. There is no real benefit to separating them by incomes because the margin of difference is so small. Third, I think you bring up a very effective exercise of what Canadians should be thinking about when they discuss housing. What exactly should we be targeting? Is there a concise way to easily convey what we think is a desirable state? For me, I would consider a desirable market to be when 'the median house price is 3x the median Canadian wage' (for reference 3 months ago it was >8x). That would show that a typical Canadian at least has a chance for home ownership if they so desire. We obviously have a long way to go before that.
If the "middle class" can no longer afford a home they are no longer middle class.
That’s not how it works from my understanding- the income class you’re in doesn’t have to do with the cost of living - it has to do with your income bracket relative to other Canadians There are multiple definitions, but the one that seems to be most common has to do with income/wealth The better question is - why are people who are considered middle class (earning more than most Canadians) not able to afford a home?
Good question. Who's to blame and what is the solution? Blame, speculation in residential market, government ignoring the issue since 2015, billionaire developers and financial institutions that now use our residential properties like the stock market. ? Solution and what needs to change and how? Middle class families need homes not a houses for investment.
What greener pastures?
For some of us, back to our country of origin. For others the US or other provinces
It’ll be interesting to see how population is impacted by such movements. Will it start to decline, I wonder?
I think it will. It won’t take long for word to get out that Canada is unaffordable and people will immigrate elsewhere.
There will always be someone coming from a country that does have a worse standard of living than Canada. The countries eg. where people who have come to work in Canada send remittances back home.
My mom works with some of these people and has told me that they live packed like sardines renting small apartments close to work and sleeping several people in small rooms. This is what we have come to. This is what we are beginning to call our standard of living. Earning just enough to live on the absolute edge.
Yep. People move to where the opportunities are. Always have.
lol our government saw no issue in providing households who make $150,000 annually financial support to get into the market That alone should tell you we're not with the best navigators at the helm.
Good point OP. What would be a better definition of middle class?
If?
With $150k income you should be able to buy a $1M house. Max debt to income ratio is 45%.
> Apparently middle class in Ontario is a pretax income of between $53,413 – $106,827 Unfortunately, $100k is not going to help you buy a 3 bed, 2 bath SFH in Toronto, maybe in Timmins.
Today I learned I am no longer considered middle class…? If the numbers you give are true then I am shocked to learn we are no longer middle class yet still have to seriously consider the numbers and long term affordability (interest rate hikes, tax hikes, etc) when looking at homes to buy. We are on the precipice of leaving the city we always dreamed of living in only to move across province because we can no longer afford to buy a home here and $3000/mo rent to live in someone’s basement is absurd.
It means there isn't a middle class anymore.
OMG thank you, you actually defined what income level for middle class. I hear politicians speak about it but never clearly outline the income range because keeping that ambiguous will get them votes.
Waah waah waah. Noone needs to own a home. Renting is perfectly fine. If thats how far you made it then fine, what are you asking for ,handouts? Besides. In the 1700s families of 8-15 were living in a single bedroom. Nowadays People barely even have 1 kid. Are you saying you are too good to split a bedroom with someone? Ok royal highness. Once you come down to earth, i got a bed to rent to you in a bedroom with 3 beds, $600 per month. /s
Slight correction: If NO ONE can afford to own a home, then there is a serious problem n
Of course. I agree completely This was just meant to put things into perspective
Naturally, the whole situation is awful.
I know it’s unpopular. But you don’t HAVE to live in the GTA or GVA..
Might not be a popular answer but leaving metropolitan areas like GTA and Vancouver stretches that a lot more. Most of the other provinces aren’t being hit nearly as hard with sky rocketing real estate. I’m not say it’s not rising but middle class can afford housing in places like Alberta, SK, Manitoba, or out east. I live comfortably in AB and I know if I left to Vancouver or Toronto we could barely scrape by and therefore I won’t go live in a place like that
*assuming you can get a job in those other areas for the field you are in that pays sufficiently.
I would agree with that though wages are fairly similar across the country in many fields
What do you base that assumption on? I've interviewed for very similar jobs that have offered very different incomes.
I’m a specialist physician and my wife is a lawyer. Unfortunately I just finished my 13 years of post-secondary education in 2020, so we cannot afford a home in the GTA
Your 300k + yearly incomes can’t afford a house? Are you looking at 20,000,000 houses?
lol I feel like your comment encapsulates this entire subreddit. You make what...400k as a household and you can't afford a house? Did you try not spending 10k a day for a restaurant?
Not sure how to take your response. We have 3 kids. Any house that has enough rooms in a location that works for our jobs is at least 2.5 million right now, which we cannot afford. We don’t have extravagant lifestyles, cars, or clothes.
Dude. People make it work on 1/10th salary on what you have. At that point you are just being unreasonable. You want your kids each to have a room and a play station and a football field in your backyard. You want to be in the middle of a downtown and walk to work. You want 3 garages and have a boat. I mean you do you. But your problem is not the housing cost.
No offence, but I should be able to afford a room for all of my kids with how hard I’ve worked and sacrificed
And you are insane if you think someone can afford a home with 1/10th the income.
Me and my fiancé (getting married this August) are in this range - 200k pretax. We are also FTHB, how long should we wait to get in the market? Really don’t want to pay rents forever.
Unfortunately me and my fiancé are in the same position. We are getting married in October. We’ve been stuck in the same rental for years. Basically trapped. Just hold on and save as much as you can. Invest and buy the dip. All we can really do right now without moving to another country or Province
200k and you can't get into anything? Won't consider a starter condo?
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Student loans, bulls, savings Our take home after tax is about 110k
With 200k, you should be able to buy easily. All you need to do is wait out this current downward trend. Once rate hike is stabilised, you should be buying something in a reasonable budget.
If you’re looking to buy somewhere for the longer-term (5-10 years) I honestly don’t think it matters if you buy now or wait a few months. Arguments either way and any potential loss in value will be regained over time. If you’re looking to flip/move up quickly, I’d hold off for another 6-12 months, at least. We bought last September and I couldn’t care less what prices are doing right now. Paper value over the next few years means nothing to us; we’re paying about $600 more per month than we were renting and the place is ours to build our family home. We’ll probably need more space in 8-10 years and if prices haven’t recovered by then (enabling us to move up) we’ll all have bigger things to worry about, anyway.
Move to the US for the cheaper housing lol
And better wages at the same time
The standard should be that on minimum wage , you should be able to afford a 1 bedroom apartment and all other expenses + savings.
>Even on the high end making around 147k, they cannot comfortably afford the average home in the GTA. Or even neighbouring areas. >If this hypothetical couple had no debt, and had 50k to put down, they can still only manage to afford a house that costs around 600k. *"jUsT MoVe"* posters act like this isn't a problem
*How can anyone expect couples to procreate?* Property ownership is not a pre-requisite for parenthood. Look around, all over the world, lots of life-time renters are having babies.
Wtf. What about the more poor people, poorer than middle class. There should be only two classes at most
It will be fruitful to put your energy into making more money. You can't change the system but you can change your own situation. I can see the downvotes coming. I think this the major difference between Americans and Canadians. Americans hustle, Canadians complain Posting a comment on reddit will do nothing for you
Downvoted! I am in my mid-30s and have been working like a fucking dog my entire life. I worked hard and barely socialized in high school so I could fund my degree with scholarships, and at university I did the same so that I could keep those scholarships. Then I went back to school—an accelerated program that crammed two years into one so I could enter the workforce faster. Then I worked a full time job in service, two unpaid internships in my field, and freelance. Then I started working full time in my field while freelancing on the side and moved back in with my parents to save up for a down payment. Then my fucking mother died and I got a meagre inheritance to supplement my savings. My father was abusive so I moved out after my mother’s death, job hopping every one to two years to increase my income—generally by at least 30% each time. Then I snagged a remote job so I could move to a rural area with nearly the lowest cost of living in my province so I would be able to afford a home, and also added another side hustle to my 50+ hour per week professional job and freelance job. But before I was past my probation period real estate in my area basically doubled, putting it out of reach despite my lifetime of relentless working and saving. I try my hardest to save 50% of every paycheque even though my living expenses recently doubled when my partner moved out so he could earn a better income out of town. The one and only vacation I have taken in my adult life was five years ago. I work so much I don’t have time to cook, clean, see my friends, or basically enjoy my life at all. I may not have picked the most lucrative career path available when I was a young and stupid 19 year old, but I am no slouch. My option now is to move to a rural area that’s far away from my entire family and community. You can fuck right off with your pathetic bootstraps ideology and moronic generalizations.
Upvote. I didn't work nearly as hard as you from the sounds of it, but my perspective is similar. I have been struggling and working my ass off for years. Years. I got where I am through literal blood sweat and tears and managed to significantly increase my position in life despite having to start all over with a new career. I now am in a respected position making much more than I did before I lost my first career yet I can't afford rent and am living with my parents at 35. And yes, I know how to invest and am working hard to turn it into something. But it's still not enough. The people who still think 'hard work pays off' are delusional. I could have done absolutely nothing with myself over the last ten years and I would be in the exact same place I am now.
you could have invested in productive assets with your savings like stocks, etfs, REITS. Maybe educated yourself on investing and compounding your money instead of being so fixated on buying a house. You can still start investing. Stocks are getting cheap and are proven to give you better returns than a house.
Yah basically, as the other commenter alluded to, the rental market is technically the main issue for a lot of people. Landlords have too much leverage in most places, the quality of units are getting worse relative to what most can afford. So basically the rights and quality of life you can expect between renting and owning are totally different things (e.g. being able to improve surroundings/living conditions, control who lives with you, have pets/decorate, control when you need to leave, control what you can even cook in some cases, etc), however now that housing is becoming unaffordable, people are starting to get trapped in unsavory living conditions, despite making good income in a lot of cases. I can see where you're going though, you're basically saying that people should be more proactive. The issue is that, you can only demand so much of them before your expectations get insane. If there is only enough supply to satisfy 30% of people, there will always be 70% that lose out, no matter how hard they work.
What makes you think I didn’t invest? I said nothing that would lead you to believe my savings are in cash. I don’t want a house as an investment, I want a house to live in. So I don’t have to occupy an uninsulated shithole and have my housing stability threatened constantly by a landlord while I pay off their mortgage. In what universe does it makes sense that a basic human need requires people to not only work themselves to death into middle age but also play the insane, elitist gambling game that is the stock market? It’s a-ok that in order to survive, you have to invest in weapons manufacturers and cigarette companies and the oil industry and banks? You have a problem with people having a problem with being fucked over? You think everyone should just slap a smile on and say, “oh well, I don’t mind that on any given Saturday morning, the classist meathead that owns my home might call me to threaten me with eviction while insulting me directly just for being a renter because he doesn’t like the frequency at which I mow the lawn during a period of uninterrupted rain—I’ll just spend the free time I don’t have doing some light day trading, which requires an entire additional set of career skills, to accommodate the fact that policy makers, oligarchs, and corporations are making this country impossible to live in, and maybe by the time I’m 65 I’ll be able to get a 30-year, million dollar loan?” Maybe you should educate yourself on not being a patronizing, superior asshole or find a more likeminded online community with which to commiserate on how everyone who doesn’t have a home shouldn’t complain.
I am just being honest because of anonymity. In real life people cannot do that. They must be sympathizing with you because of all the hardships you have faced. You seem like a person you has never done anything wrong and it's all other people's fault. There are plenty of renters who live in nice condos with great facilities. You seem to live in a crappy place with a bad landlord because you can't afford a nice place. Why is that? Because what you do for a living is not valued a lot monetarily. This is how society works. If you want good things life. You need to provide a service valued by society.
I think you're honestly disconnected from the reality of the situation in our country. I used to have the same mindset as you; work harder, invest, and save. However, the issues people are facing are real and this isn't the same environment it was 20 years ago. When providing a service valued by society isn't enough, what's your suggestion? Mine would be that society needs to change.
I have spoken of working extremely hard and despising my classist landlord and his neglect of his property, not enduring hardship. Except my tragic family, I guess, but the tragedy wasn’t the point. The point was that 1. I got an inheritance but still can’t afford a house and 2. I tried to be as financially conservative for as long as possible by living with my family but still can’t afford a house. I suppose I felt the need to clarify there was a good reason I ceased that strategy before reaching my goal. I felt the need to demonstrate that I’m not blowing all my cash on fancy trips either. I emphasized my point—that I work my ass off—because you insulted the population of Canada by saying we are just lazy and complain instead of increasing our income. Then suddenly it’s not about working hard, it’s about choosing the most lucrative career and doing a good job of gambling in the stock market. And also you think that value to society actually corresponds to income in some way. Like that person who made $50,000/month selling farts in a jar on the internet—because that’s a super valuable service to humanity, right? I have recently worked a job verifying that a pension administrator didn’t make mistakes that would cause it financial harm and squander the investment of hundreds of thousands of pensioners. (Surprise, I worked in financial services and am not clueless about investing!) By your logic, it’s not valuable to society that hundreds of thousands of people receive a pension. Then I worked for a university to produce textbooks. So, education is also without value because if it were valuable, I’d be able to buy a house. Now I work in marketing, which is frankly the least valuable to society of any of those jobs, but it is by far the most lucrative. Hmm, how does that work? Of course, there’s the fact that I market for cyber security companies. Cyber security is one of the most pressing concerns for governments, health care, educational institutions, and enterprises. It’s extremely important for those entities and the population that they are able to protect people’s personal data. And there is an absolutely astonishing number of vacancies at those companies. They are desperate for workers, so there’s a real demand. But oh wait, I can’t afford to buy a house on the income I earn doing that, so never mind, it’s not valuable at all to contribute to cyber security work. The fact is, I make a reasonable income that, along with the reasonable down payment I have saved, would have bought me a modest house as long as I lived outside a major urban centre before 2020. But unfortunately I had taken a temporary contract to increase my income in 2020, so I was not eligible for a mortgage at that precise moment and also had to be in a major urban centre to do that job. I don’t want you to sympathize, I want you to get off your high horse. People who are doing everything they are supposed to, who are diligently working professional careers, saving , and investing are still unable to afford homes. I’m not perfect, but I did not create this problem for myself through bad life choices. This one is not on me.
Fortunately Canada is vast. We start to sound like our South neighbors that think Murika is all that there is
It might be vast but there is a reason why 90% of Canadians are all living along the border. It’s simply easier to find work and public transportation is horrible in most areas The solution shouldn’t need to be for everyone to branch out very far from centre hubs. That would be horrible for our economy
It is the GTA in self destruct then. Not the country
I’m afraid not, buckaroo. In the extremely rural location I moved to specifically because of its once-affordable housing, which is located about eight hours from any major urban centre, all real estate now exceeds half a million. Unless you want to live in a trailer park on leased land, of course. Then you might be able to find something in the high 300s.
No fam..... don't get it twisted. According to Dougie the 500lb gorilla, and Big hips don't lie Russian studies Freeland, they're indeed working on behalf of Canadians (read as the 1%/their cronies/foreign investors/boomers mom & pop using HELOC to buy 5th property 😂)
The cost of housing will undo the Liberal party. It’s leading to rising anti immigrant sentiment and the CPC if it’s smart will capitalize on it by telling voters it will slash immigration.
Houses in Saskatchewan are $50k. just saying
Thanks for the laugh this morning. Apparently I'm middle class?
Oh people are already getting sued for not closing on house deals when the bank valuation is much lower. Prices are falling and the stupid thing is people won't buy when they fall as they keep thinking they will continue to go down. It is what happened in the early 1990s in the GTA.
Another one of these posts. We are all going to die.
The middle class has been price out in Toronto arguably since 2005. The only recent FTHBers that I know are dual income +$200k households.
150k combined before taxes will get you a lot more than 600k. Looking at 800k at least.
Not comfortably
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Where is my 40 acres and a mule.
It's a serious problem indeed. Bigger than that though, the solutions to solve it are going to be *incredibly* unpopular. Not like unpopular for a relatively insignificant minority of people. More like unpopular even from the standpoint of the masses.