“Some of them are investors who now just want to walk away from their units because they can’t afford it,”
Quite honestly, fuck them.
Houses shouldn’t be primarily thought of as an investment. A house shouldn’t be an investment in any way for someone who isn’t actually living there.
And for the person who does live there, the investment value of their home should be a much lower priority than the house’s value as a place to live.
Houses shouldn’t be primarily thought of as an investment
Not only should they not be thought of as investments, they shouldn’t go up in value like investments. A house should slowly depreciate over time. Because of inflation, the dollar-value of the house should maybe go up, but adjusting for inflation it should go down. If you do repairs, maintenance, etc. then maybe it should more or less hold value. If you do a renovation, maybe it should go up in value. But as a structure that gets slowly damaged by the passage of time, it should slowly go down in value.
What’s ridiculous is that someone who made a solid $200k investment 25 years ago and then lived in a small apartment is worse off than someone who simply bought a $200k house and lived there.
If housing keeps going up in value then pretty soon the only people able to live in a house will be the ones inheriting one.
From what I understand, it’s not the building that increases in value, but the property it’s on.
That’s why developers have no problem leveling homes to build something else. The land is what they paid for.
But, I could be wrong. 😬
What’s ridiculous is that someone who made a solid $200k investment 25 years ago and then lived in a small apartment is worse off than someone who simply bought a $200k house and lived there.
I’d like to see the math on this, please. A family friend who works in investments does claim the exact diametric opposite, and I’ve seen things from time to time that rather support that. If you know otherwise I’d love to read what you’ve read.
I’m only eyeballing graphs, but from this one, a Toronto detached house in 1999 was roughly $300k, and today it’s roughly $1.7m. That matches about a 7% annualized rate of return. A document from S&P Global says the TSX index has grown at an 8% annualized rate.
A house you buy as an investment might slightly lag behind an investment in an index fund. But, if you have to pay rent because you’re not living in your investment house-purchasing seems to win by a long shot.
You are ignoring maintenance, tax and other “running” costs that have to be paid to own and live in your own house.
I am a homeowner and while I intially agreed with you out of instinct, if you figure that monthly rent should be thr equivalent to property taxes, maintenance and whatever utilities are included in the rent the big push I’m favour of home ownership is the fact that you don’t pay capital gains on a primary residence. In the above example, an investment gaining $1.4M in value would have (Ontario) taxes of around $350k… So it really depends on whether the house being considered is a primary residence or not.
At the same time, many are also reluctant to lower asking prices and book losses on their investment, he said, at least for now.
“There’s just limited willingness to lose money,” said Daniel Foch, director of economic research at RARE Real Estate. “It seems like nobody has really adjusted their expectations to a market in which they aren’t going to make a profit,” he said.
Oh no, won’t they think of those poor investors!
I’m a dual citizen with a lot of family in Canada. When I lived there, there was tons of homes owned by foreign investors especially the Chinese. Has Canada done anything yet about that?
Butbutbut muh jackpot?!
Lets supposed instead of real estate one fancies themself a world-renowned collector of antique radiator caps, as many of us dreamed of being when we were kids.
Two years ago you were able to acquire a radiator cap signed by Edward Jones Miscellania, a respected local automobile mechanic, for $300,000. Two years later, an appraisal places the true value at a disappointing $75,000.
Then a fellow collector offers you $150,000. Okay, now you have a choice. You can say “Don’t be ridiculous! I already have $300,000 invested in this radiator cap.”; Or you can correctly reason: What I have personally invested does not matter. The only thing I should consider is whether the $150,000 is a good price for my radiator cap.
If you opt for the second choice and pocket the $150,000, you’ve learned a key secret to life:
What you personally have invested never matters
It’s the sunk cost fallacy.
