It may be several years yet before home prices fall back into an affordable range for the average Canadian, according to Oxford Economics.
If we devalue my apartment, why did I spend decades of sweat and toil to purchase it? Then it feels like I was playing the stock market.
I considered the price of housing to be inflated, so instead of buying a home, I rented and invested the difference in the stock market.
Why is it okay for me to lose the the hard-earned money I invested in the stock market, but it is not okay for housing prices to go down? When stocks go down I still need to pay rent every month, but when house prices go down you don’t lose your home.
Either we treat housing as an investment, in which case we need to accept the risk that prices will go down, or we treat it as a basic life necessity, in which case it must be affordable. We can’t say: “I bought a home with my hard work, so now it must pay for my retirement”.
I never wanted my house to be a stock market investment. It’s just that I want some consistency. Tell me what I’m getting into. Are we playing this game where we bid for overpriced housing as a supplemental retirement benefit? Or are we building a better future where the former doesn’t matter? I just don’t want to get fucked, that’s all.
I never wanted my house to be a stock market investment. It’s just that I want some consistency.
But earlier you also said:
And now that I have a tiny piece (on paper but owned by the bank) I am hoping (like most Canadians) to take that piece and cash out to retire on in 10-15 years time
I.e. you see your home as an investment from which you expect to see a positive return, but now you are afraid that it may lose some of that value.
I get it: I would also like my investments to grow. The reality is that investing comes with risk. People who want to minimize that risk keep their money in a savings account, a GIC, or treasuries. With low risk come low returns, though. There is no free lunch.
Here is what is different: when we overbid for housing and it becomes expensive, real people suffer from homelessness and overcrowding. The same isn’t true of stocks or other investments.
I.e. you see your home as an investment from which you expect to see a positive return, but now you are afraid that it may lose some of that value.
No, I don’t see it as an investment. The way the system works sees it as an investment. We’ve created a system whereby housing is overvalued because it’s meant to have inflationary payoffs.
My parents didn’t see our home as an investment. They just bought homes at random that were close to where they worked and seemed good for kids.
There’s no option for me to buy a place that isn’t an investment because that’s the very nature of the market.
in a way you already got fucked by buying an overpriced house and even if housing prices go down, you only get fucked more if you buy a cheaper hose relative to your current one, and only way you can really benefit from higher housing prices is also by buying a relatively cheaper house and pocketing the difference
