This story headlined by Garth Turner at his blog greaterfool.ca, 19 Mar 2010 -
“I am 26, getting married in the summer, live in Vancouver basement suite rental ($1175/mo), use public transit (no car and no other large monthly expenses), and have a good job. Our monthly household income is around $4500 with the prospect of an increase to around $5000 plus or minus by the end of the year. Between my hubby-to-be and I we have been managing to save $800 a month for just under a year. This is being added to a generous gift from his grandfather who wants to see us get into a house/home/homeowner situation. We have about $22000 saved so far. We have always said we want to buy smart – not fast. So here comes the silly question… My landlord is a lovely man in his early 70’s. He recently let us in on the fact that he will want to retire sometime soon. He expects to be selling for between 800-900k. There are two other suites in our house which currently take in $3325 combined. My landlord thinks we can afford to buy our house off him! Thoughts? (Yup – that’s the silly question.) I can always tell when people DON’T read your blog and want to discuss Vancouver real estate… (Oh yes – he did use the phrase “There’s cheap money out there right now.”) Okay. One more question to add to this: Can you see any amount of money from some type of scenario (investment from family, joint purchase with my brother and his wife from Seattle who own a house that was purchased there for 380k four years ago, some type of wind-fall like my hubby getting a film contract) allowing us to purchase a HOUSE like the one we live in now by the time our landlord would be looking to sell in several months?”
You already know how to live with little money and maybe that is the part most of us can’t learn–holy cow! you even put money away! Message in a (kid) video was “never sell your capital,” while their’s was a car that they sort of rented (sold, but everyone wanted some of their money back, and they’d sell it again). Anyway, could your house pay-for-itself as a sort of commune?–rent suites, rent rooms, rent parking spots? student doctors at VGH need short-term places to stay, 5 wks or something, and how about nurses or police officers or college students or single workers? except for the $1175 you already expect to pay for accommodation. Meet a banker, they try to understand every sort of scenario you can draw (I like bankers better than realtors because it’s your story rather than their story, see …) Use bank site(s) to calculate how much you’ll need. Keep the relationship with the owner of the home–he worked hard for $1200 per year starting about 1960–he is enthusiastic about you. You can include him in your commune plan. People have, like, 3 generations of a family including working siblings, sharing costs and care, and some seem to be able to make it work (though a cab driver once said, “2 women under one roof? that won’t work!”) It’s crazy out there, if you could make your capital item pay, as well as be a centre for life, maybe it’d work for you. Good for you for recognizing the lovely landlord for being as nice as he is.