Solomon Israel, a producer with ‘The Early Edition‘ on CBC Radio 1 here in Vancouver, is preparing a piece on attitudes towards renting vs. buying in Canada. He would like to hear from people who have personally experienced any stigma regarding being renters in our city.
Sol can be reached at:
earlyed@cbc.ca
—
UPDATE: 19 Aug 2011, 4:00pm
Above post has been up for almost ten hours and had over 1200 hits.
Sol writes that he has yet to hear from any reader describing personal experience of an such stigma and he is thus understandably concluding that “maybe there’s less stigma there than we thought?” or that “such a stigma only exists among certain social groups with certain expectations”.
This is certainly possible, perhaps we have been incorrect in perceiving this to be more widespread. Numerous commenters below do not describe any such effect, so it certainly doesn’t effect all renters.
A few very definitely do describe it, so it is not entirely imagined. And there have been a good number of anecdotes regarding this effect over the years (see ‘Renter‘ sidebar).
It is possible that the effect only occurs in certain subgroups of the population, and that, overall, it is small and inconsequential. Also, it is possible that those who have experienced it prefer not to discuss it on a public forum.
I don’t ever remember experiencing stigma when renting. Am I the only one? Is it normal to have a stigma?
I thought the ‘MarkOfTheRenter’ was the stigmata? PS – thanks for prior reference to ‘navel gazing’. I’d forgotten that one and looking it up was fun!
I dont know about a stigma, but when I moved last year everyone I work with assumed I was buying because I had been working the same well paying job for over 3 years. I am still a bit young to be buying so no one was too shocked, but when I tried to explain I was going to hold off on buying for a while because I thought the market was over-priced I was met with confused looks as if I was speaking Spanish. Eventually I just started telling people that I wasnt sure what area I wanted to live in so I was trying to rent a few different placed to find out what I liked.
Same story here, but in Montreal. Of all my colleagues at my good paying job, I’m the only one renting. I’m in my early thirties. Even the younger folks who got there years after me now have at least a condo. But I don’t feel like there’s social pressure, like I hear there is in Vancouver. The pressure is more subtle. People realize in their own mind that they’re “missing out” and “just throwing money away” by renting. It’s so ingrained in the mentality you simply don’t think about it, just like to dont think about the air you breathe. My brother in law is a renter but now feels the urge to buy “before I’m priced-out forever”. I used to try to argue when I heard statements like that, but I lost my stamina long ago. It felt like standing knee deep in a river and trying to stop the salmon from swimming up.
jesse -> You always, appropriately, point out that renters should simply hold their heads high and get on with their lives. We agree that there is nothing that renters have to be ashamed of, and that your advice is good. But, one also has to acknowledge the very powerful social developments in Vancouver as a result of the speculative mania in housing.
We have previously articulated our thoughts on renting in the ‘The Stigma Of Renting In Vancouver’ post, 25 May 2010, accessible via the ‘Renter’ sidebar.
Excerpts -
“Through the 2001-2010 housing boom, the growth in net-worth of home owners has outstripped that of renters by a wide margin. Only very, very few renters would have been able to keep up with the paper-wealth gains made by owners through these years. With stock markets essentially flat through the decade, they would have had to have been remarkably talented, brave, and fortunate stock speculators to have matched REs returns. This effect is exaggerated further because the substantial leverage inherent in RE purchases works extremely well in RE bull markets. Thus it’s clear that homeowners have done far, far better than renters.”
“Even though rent-versus-purchase math has long worked strongly in favour of renters, even moreso in the last few years, renters are not looked upon as fiscally wise and prudent, but rather as disadvantaged and unfortunate. This is not to say that this is fair, or right, it simply is the truth of what has happened here through the bubble. A renter confessing to renting in company not uncommonly gets responses ranging from pained grimaces, to condolences, to pity, to thinly veiled scorn. And renters can only imagine the opinions expressed when they are out of earshot.”
“A sordid and sorry truth is that through the Vancouver bubble there has been a considerable and growing social stigma attached to being a renter. This is just one of the many perverse and far-reaching social effects at play in this RE bubble.”
@vreaa, I know there is some perceived omnipresent stigma with renting. I think a lot of it is introspective, not anything tangible. If there is social stigma, it’s probably the same crowd that questions the honesty of a couple who own a house free and clear by the age of 40. They must have had help, they say.
The proposed CBC story reeks of perpetuating Jones-testing.
I agree with Jesse.
Certainly you can run into this “down-the-nose” attitude from people from time to time, incredulous that “you still rent?!” For sure many friends of ours think we didn’t buy because we couldn’t afford it which wasn’t entirely true but it helped them all feel better about their half million dollar mortgages (we could have bought just not what we wanted in the area and at a price we wanted). With family we would get asked often why we hadn’t bought yet and then we would be subjected to tales of the amazing wealth of recent sellers on said family members block. I don’t know if it is renters stigma as much as social/ family pressure & expectations though. As far as stigma goes, I read some of the landlord ads on Craigslist from time to time, the ones that are crazy with restrictions and emphatically use CAPITAL LETTERS and !!!! and I get a feeling from these ads that these landlords think all tenants are irresponsible PITA who should be not seen or heard, but just fork over their cash so I wouldn’t go near them.
The stigma is people, like those we see on this blog, who talk about renters as if they are, as the kids say, “losers.” I think this is particularly hard on men, who have societal expectations to be familial providers.
Houses are status symbols, and property ownership figures largely in that sense of status and identity for North Americans. Stocks, bonds and other sorts of investments are not something that you show in public to other people. There’s no sense of public display with those sorts of investments, and most people are too modest to talk about them.
I recently rented a place in Richmond and all my friends thought I bought. When I said I rent, some of them were like oh…..not in a good way. Though some did ask about the rent price and were impressed with what we got. However most were kind of a bit surprised that we would rent rather than buy.
It’s real and it’s common. Most people who know that i can afford a house show surprise to mild incredulity that i would be so foolish as to ‘throw my money away renting’. Others politely turn the conversation assuming that home ownership is simply beyond affordability for us (polite i guess, but mildly patronizing). If conversation does broach the many reasons i feel so secure in my wager that home prices can go nowhere but down, there are several common reactions from homeowners including: 1) a defensive, slighly angry denial of the possibility; 2) sudden sympathy for the ‘idiot’ (me) who does not realize that prices always go up and RE is the safest investment of all time; More recently however there is a edge of fear in that defensive attitude. The industry has done a great job of hiding the truth about the cmhc and talking up the ‘invincible canadian banking system’, but the truth is leaking out and several of the ‘nuts’ screaming about our vulnerability are starting to be heard.
The stigma definitely exists on some level – we rent a fairly decent condo and the first question that people who don’t know us very well ask is generally ‘Wow, you own this place?’, as they assume that it’d be out of our affordability range (which it is). The assumption is that own >= comfort and one would be silly to have it any other way.
Agree with the observations that the stigma is ‘real’.
As the bubble has progressed, RE has steadly become a more and more emotionally laden issue in our town.
Regardless of whether they are owners or prospective buyers, people have a whole lot more ‘on the line’ with regard to the RE market than they would in more typical times.
Remember too that the “stigma” seems to stop short at the 49th. I haven’t been to many wine and cheese dos up in Kelowna recently but the more one travels the more one can smell the hubris. I thought it was the sea air after stepping off the plane but no. It’s evidently hubris.
Agree, jesse.
Part of all this is that this form of ‘stigma’ disappears almost completely when markets fall, and return to more normal conditions.
But, until ours does, it’s still here.
I have never experienced this kind of “stigma”, mainly because if anyone even made an attempt to go down that road with me they would be met with a cold, nasty stare and possibly a verbal beat down they would never forget.
If any of my friends ever made such a suggestion they would no longer be my friends and if any family did so they would cease to get any phone calls from me. Hence, they all know better.
I would actually suggest from my viewpoint that any stigma applies to recent owners because anyone who bought at these prices in the last few years is clearly stupid beyond belief and has no concept of what a bubble is or how they end or why Vancouver is no different from any other markets around the world that have crashed and destroyed millions of people even though their infantile minds can’t fathom that the same thing would ever happen here.
Watching these recent buyers squirm over the next few years will be a pleasure, as will the growing stigma associated with them.
I rent an original SFH on the west side. If people ask me whether I rent it, I just say “You think I’d pay $2m for that piece of sh*t?”, then everybody laughs. Because at that point it is evident that it is a piece of sh*t and it is not worth $2m.
I’ve found a distinct difference in attitude between people from Vancouver and those who (like myself) moved here as adults (most are highly educated). Among the first it’s almost a given that you want to buy, and the sooner the better, whereas the latter don’t care so much. Part of the reason I think is that the latter group realize there are other places in the world one can live, plus they take the time to actually look at the numbers. And when they have bought, it’s often been with a local spouse.
One place the stigma seems especially prevalent is against renters in a strata. I have been on both sides of that one. When I owned a place in Gastown and the Chair of the Strata, a total “postal worker” wingnut felt snubbed by my very cool artist renters, he tried to get them evicted. There was definitely an anti-renter sentiment in that building. More recently we’ve been dealing with a downstairs neighbour, a longtime owner who smokes despite the fact that smoking in and around the building (including patios) has been prohibited by strata for years. When we first talked to her about the fact that her smoke fills our apartment through our bedroom windo and patio doors, she got super defensive and said all sorts of nasty things to us including dergoatory comments about being useless renters, far less important than she as an owner. When we wrote to the strata to complain they told us to refrain from any further contact with any building owners!
I just don’t associate socially with the sort of people who are concerned about home ownership. “Friends” who care about things like that sound like social-climbing assholes.
* See UPDATE appended to main post above, regarding reader response.
When Sol’s YYZ ‘handlers’ collectively realize that the denizens of YVR will only respond to “chequebook journalism” largesse, he’ll get his inputs…
Sol. A tip…. put an ad in the Straight. Display. Offer some loot. Or at least some HipsterGear… alternatively, if you’re looking for high-end renter inputs sacrifice a generous selection of this months ‘comp’ tix.
PS – There’s a reason why, “As It Happens” is restricted to aggregating content and ‘investigating’ via LD telephony (notwithstanding which, they do occasionally manage a good piece or two).
They want to know about the stigma of renting? That is cheap man bites dog journalism. How about a piece on the economics of renting? Ill talk to CBC about how my landlord subsidizes me to the tune of $1000/ but there’s no renters stigma to be found in that calculation. Maybe they should do a piece on how brain dead homeowners in this city are.
We get scorn from our family mostly. I wouldn’t call that stigma though.
Actually here’s an angle for CBC. Why not investigate the “picketers” who are conducting a buyers strike? Put it in terms of labour struggle.
The Early Edition piece, I believe, was not intended to be solely focused on this ‘stigma’, but rather, more broadly, on “attitudes towards renting vs. buying in Canada”.
No stigma, but it’s sort of sad to watch young people in the office squirm when they realize that someone whom they know makes at least ten times their salary has chosen to rent. I guess it does not compute or, worse yet, signals that they have made a terrible mistake by buying that $900,000 bungalow on a $90,000/year salary with a borrowed down-payment from dad.
No stigma as a renter here. Let’s be real, it’s not some sort of overt racism or bigotry. It’s a natural question people ask, “Are you going to buy a house? Why do you still rent?” Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked why I rent. I had a friend say once, “I forget that you rent.” But if someone making an innocent inquiry in conversation amounts to some sort of pressure or stigma then I guess I need to go to some oversensitivity training. It sucks having “contrarian” opinions on RE and feeling like I can’t really bring up the subject. What do you say, “You paid how much for that? Really? It looks cheaply built.” Can’t say that, and keeping my mouth shut is not something I do well, so it’s a bit uncomfy.
The only “discrimination” I’ve experienced was that a breeder wouldn’t sell me a beagle because I rent and then find that landlords can be okay with a dog one minute and then change their mind so the breeder preferred to be picky about that, and that seemed reasonable to me.
only this blogger makes a big deal of the status. there is no stigma existed in the city, only in this blogger’s little mind.
woah, vreaa
can you handle this dis?? he almost got his syntax correct, too.
i love our new friends.
vreaa write blog entries like chinese woman drive car. boom!
Part of the lack of response may just be that many longer-term renters are acclimatized to comments that they don’t seem emotionally worthy. I have a few friends, with parents born in Asia putting more pressure on them to buy. Often there will be offers of financial help if they cannot afford it, worse pressure to get a higher-paying job to support the carrying costs, and pressure to “ease the costs” with renting out suites and taking on students. That’s what I have seen, more family pressure. For certain cultures that pressure can get quite uncomfortable.
As for stigma in peer groups, well certain peer groups are caustic enough maybe there are off-hand comments about ownership superiority but I think most readers here, obviously, have either self-selected away from people like this. Also, recently, there may be a bit of unease amongst the ownership cohort that prices are actually getting a bit “too” high…
I’m trying to rack my brain for a good angle for a story on Vancouver real estate; based on comments here, I’d obviously concentrate on the other side, showing how happy people are whether renting or owning. Make it a fun story on a Friday’s show or something!
A more interesting story would be the extremely easy credit availability to youth today. When I was nineteen, you couldn’t get a $1,000 loan without a co-signer. And even then I had to get the loan from a finance company, not a bank.
Today, my friend’s twenty year old son was able to get a $30,000 loan to buy a car, even though he’s only been employed as a welder for just over a year.
Easy credit availability is a distortion right now. Any young person who borrows today, will be shocked in five years, when the realities of borrowing become apparent. Ultra low interest rates won’t last forever.
“A few very definitely do describe it, so it is not entirely imagined. And there have been a good number of anecdotes regarding this effect over the years (see ‘Renter‘ sidebar).”
yeah – I’m fairly confused by the comments. I’d consider some comments on this blog to be a good example of the type of stigma associated with renting: “you don’t have two dimes to rub together.” etc., etc.
Perhaps people are expecting “stigma” to be more dramatic? In general, it’s going to manifest as a subtle social pressure. For example, I have heard people in Vancouver mention house ownership as a part of the dating scene.
Essentially there are three rites of passage to adulthood these days:
1) Successful career
2) Keeping a long-term relationship (and maybe have children)
3) Home ownership
If you fail at the first two, just about anybody can go get a mortgage. As a born and raised Vancouverite, I think this is the cultural – non-speculative – attraction of home ownership. You will get the approval and status you seek by just signing on the dotted line.
That said, I don’t think a stigma is held over people who are otherwise truly successful in their lives but rent for some reason. People will be puzzled, but won’t view them as lesser mortals.
Those who can afford their homes tend not to judge us for renting, and usually understand our rationale once we explain it to them. The ones who give us the, “Oh, you’re just/only renting?” surprised/disgusted questions are those who bought high with little down, and somehow think that renting from the bank (with interest) is somehow superior to renting from a landlord, headache-free.
I lived in Hong Kong for a few years and frankly, nobody cared if I rented or bought. Real estate, in my social circles, didn’t equate to wealth or status as much as education did.
In the GVA, however, it seems that there are many who are caught up in the belief that wealth and success are defined by the purchase of a home. We tend not to associate with those people though. Not our style.
The stigma generally shows as subtle, sometimes backhanded comments or jabs. Certainly nothing to write home about. I find that people try and disguise their feelings by sounding inquisitive. Plus it’s a stigma and like most stigmas, people in this PC country feel like they’re not supposed to talk about it –eg, “They’re probably poor. Better not rub salt in their wounds.”
Things that make you go, “Hmmm?…”
[CBC] – 9th fire linked to string of Vancouver arsons
“Police say they’ve linked a ninth fire to a string of arsons that have put an upscale Vancouver neighbourhood on edge. Police have concluded a hedge fire in early August is likely linked to the work of one or more people who have been setting blazes in the Shaughnessy neighbourhood since June, said police spokeswoman Const. Jana McGuinness.”…
http://tinyurl.com/3ruqw34
So… the Perp is either:
a) just your basic ‘Pyro’
b) a ‘Bitter WestSide Renter’/Troglodyte
c) someone with an historical grudge against CanadianPacific
d) a very careless chain-smoker
e) the vanguard of a new anarchist movement dedicated to eradicating topiary from the face of the earth
f) a substance abuser convinced that all it will take to attract the ‘MotherShip’ are some Shaughnessy ‘navigation beacons’ to demarcate the glide path.
g) all of the above?
How about
h) Someone you can pay to set your house on fire to get out of a financial pickle.
At least two readers of this later post saw it as definite evidence of stigmatization of renting:
“North Delta – “People used to have pride in their homes, yards and gardens, but that’s not the case any longer. Drive down any given street and they should be renamed either Crack House Alley, Grow Op Lane, or Renters Avenue.”
see
http://wp.me/pcq1o-2MW