“If I die tomorrow, I would have lived my entire 38 years (whole life) in rentals. And if house prices here don’t revert ever, when I die at 100, I will have lived 100 years in rentals, too.”
- Ray at VREAA 12 Sep 2012 12:35pm
Most Recent Comments:
- Nemesis on “My neighbours, in their late 60s, just put their house on the market. They had said they would die in that house, but now they are worried that with the housing market going south they may be losing a lot of equity and they better sell now before it gets worse.”
- 4SlicesofCheese on “My neighbours, in their late 60s, just put their house on the market. They had said they would die in that house, but now they are worried that with the housing market going south they may be losing a lot of equity and they better sell now before it gets worse.”
- LadyInWaiting on “My neighbours, in their late 60s, just put their house on the market. They had said they would die in that house, but now they are worried that with the housing market going south they may be losing a lot of equity and they better sell now before it gets worse.”
- LadyInWaiting on “My neighbours, in their late 60s, just put their house on the market. They had said they would die in that house, but now they are worried that with the housing market going south they may be losing a lot of equity and they better sell now before it gets worse.”
- bailinginbc on “My neighbours, in their late 60s, just put their house on the market. They had said they would die in that house, but now they are worried that with the housing market going south they may be losing a lot of equity and they better sell now before it gets worse.”
- Real Estate Tsunami on “My neighbours, in their late 60s, just put their house on the market. They had said they would die in that house, but now they are worried that with the housing market going south they may be losing a lot of equity and they better sell now before it gets worse.”
- Real Estate Tsunami on “My neighbours, in their late 60s, just put their house on the market. They had said they would die in that house, but now they are worried that with the housing market going south they may be losing a lot of equity and they better sell now before it gets worse.”
- LadyInWaiting on “My neighbours, in their late 60s, just put their house on the market. They had said they would die in that house, but now they are worried that with the housing market going south they may be losing a lot of equity and they better sell now before it gets worse.”
- Nemesis on “My neighbours, in their late 60s, just put their house on the market. They had said they would die in that house, but now they are worried that with the housing market going south they may be losing a lot of equity and they better sell now before it gets worse.”
- terminalcitygirl on “My neighbours, in their late 60s, just put their house on the market. They had said they would die in that house, but now they are worried that with the housing market going south they may be losing a lot of equity and they better sell now before it gets worse.”
- Xyz on “My neighbours, in their late 60s, just put their house on the market. They had said they would die in that house, but now they are worried that with the housing market going south they may be losing a lot of equity and they better sell now before it gets worse.”
- rod_jonsson on “My neighbours, in their late 60s, just put their house on the market. They had said they would die in that house, but now they are worried that with the housing market going south they may be losing a lot of equity and they better sell now before it gets worse.”
Type of Anecdote
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- 01 Vancouver Condo Info
- 02 AmericaCanada [retired, no archive]
- 03 Housing Analysis
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Latest Anecdotes:
- “My neighbours, in their late 60s, just put their house on the market. They had said they would die in that house, but now they are worried that with the housing market going south they may be losing a lot of equity and they better sell now before it gets worse.”
- Chat Thread
- Taking A Break
- “My best guess: this property is now an ‘investment hold’ and will be built ‘when prices recover’. Good luck on that!”
- Man Loses $745,000 Vancouver Condo Deposit
- Graphic – Degrees of Housing Overvaluation in Canada
- The Rare Individual With A Negative Ownership Premium
- Advice Regarding Renting In Vancouver, Please – “Unfortunately, the Vancouver rental stock is absolutely atrocious. It just seems like every landlord is looking for someone to pay 100% of their mortgage on a crappy place through rental income.”
- “I just visited Manhattan for a week, and happened to snap some real estate ads on both the Upper West and Upper East sides of the island. Compare to Vancouver. It simply doesn’t compute.”
- Ben Rabidoux In Vancouver Next Week
- “The mortgage company told me they were calling in my 40-year, 0-down mortgage. I have paid nearly sixty thousand dollars towards it, but, nearly five years in, I have yet to touch the principal.”
- ‘Vancouver City Hall: Housing Report Card 2012′; Plus Revised Version
- “My folks find themselves at 65 still owing half the value of their home and recreation property to the bank. After almost 30 years of ownership in the BPOE and a number of boom markets, they have very little to show for it.”
- “Rent for $2,200 a month or buy and have a mortgage of $4,310 per month. Why would anyone buy?”
- “They were talking about two couples they knew who had recently bought a lot and planned to each build a house on it and live as neighbours.”
- Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association Annual First-Time Buyer Seminar Attendance Plummets
- Mom and Pop Get It Wrong In All Markets, Time And Again
- The average British Columbian homeowner is not going to pay off their mortgage by the time they retire.
- “He’s sold all his properties except his current one, which is now for sale. He explained that the market’s currently in crash mode, worst that he’s ever seen.”
- “One of my old high school buddies finally got her mother to sell the family home in Kitsilano – sold for over $1M, monies realized after debt paid off $185K.”
- “I know someone who just declared bankruptcy because her condo was assessed at $150k and she bought it presale north of $250k in 2005 or 2006.”
- Sturdy, With Views – “Calling Froogle Scott!… Is Dr. Scott ‘In The House’?” [Not In This One, Certainly]
- “She said the market was dead in Victoria and that it would remain so for a very long time. I asked how she knew. Her answer was fascinating and should scare the pants off the real estate crowd.”
- Kits Notes – “I’m pretty sure that this is the first 3+ bedroom property of any type that I’ve seen in the 5 years I’ve lived here that is priced below $700K.”
- “A beautiful Belfast home, in the equivalent of 1st Shaughnessy, bought at their RE peak in 2007 for £3.5 million, has now sold for £800K, almost 80%-off. The market didn’t suffer any significant economic shocks. Rates & unemployment didn’t skyrocket. They didn’t build more land. Sentiment just changed and the prices fell and fell.”
- “Two family members of hers are trapped, underwater, in condos on the East Side.”
- “Interprovincial migration is not saying good things about BC’s economy.”
- Vancouver RE: Not As Expensive Provided You Don’t Think – “It’s clear that our perception of affordability has been coloured by living on a continent where housing is unusually inexpensive.”
- More Undisclosed RE Industry Insiders Publicized As Clients – “In 1995, Allan and Karin Hoegg were mortgage-free. But no more. Today their Vancouver home is a valuable source of income as they plan for full retirement.”
- Rumor that some OV units will be reduced by 20%.
- Downside Weights On The Vancouver RE Market – “One of the older guys (over 60) mention to the guy beside him that he and his wife were thinking about selling their family home, and renting, in order to get some of the money that was locked up in the house.”
- “My buddy was looking to upgrade to a house in the Coquitlam area. With 200k extra for a home, that’s half of lifetime saving between him and his wife.”
- “I was walking in the Fraser neighborhood yesterday, I noticed that the population, on average, seem to be composed of workers. I belong to the top 5 percent in terms of income. Nevertheless, I cannot afford any of the houses for sale in that neighbourhood.”
- “Vancouver is an urban resort whose value mostly resides in its real estate and not much else.”
- “Rogers Communications is expanding into RE; aiming to relaunch website; providing critical data that can help potential buyers assess the value of a property from the comfort of their home computer.”
- I’m only 50 and I can just about retire if I want to, all because of a single simple decision – “When prices rebounded to their former highs, then rocketed another 30% higher to what I considered to be totally unsustainable levels, I decided that only a fool would pass up a second opportunity to harvest such a massive non-taxable capital gain, and in 2011 I sold my place.”
- The Vacant Lot of Versailles, Richmond.
- “I don’t think that most people think things are going to crash, just that there is going to be a slight correction, but it was amazing to me how sentiment has changed, and the fact Vancouver RE is too high was just understood.”
- “The ‘investor’ who purchased our house put it up for sale two months later, in January 1981, but the bubble had burst.”
- For A City To Have That Kind Of Vacancy, It’s Like Cancer – “Downtown, the vacant unit rate is so high that it’s as though there were 35 towers at 20 storeys apiece – all empty.”
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Sad. Have some self-respect and buy.
Very sad.Yeah get in to the market and buy
SO WHAT? Most of the world lives in rentals, and it affords you a much better lifestyle!
Correct, nothing whatsoever wrong with renting, and particularly wise when the rent:price ratio is so out of whack.
In a society that is not long-term decent-quality rental oriented, it can at the same time be very inconvenient to rent. This has been one of the (many) pressures that have led people to overextend into buying through the spec mania.
Good point. Rentals are usually seen as just something for low income earners (read barely above the poverty line,) students, and economic transients. Hence, it’s OK if it’s crappy.
Maybe this will change.
The problem is Canadians underestimate the downside risk to real estate, otherwise they’d see the obvious value in offloading the risk to an unsuspecting landlord. Prices have been going up for so long it’s like people are collectively brainwashed into thinking renting is always a waste of money, despite fundamentals that say otherwise.
I am 52 and have rented my entire life.
There is nothing wrong with it whatsoever. I think about “shelter” this way……..you are asleep in it for 8 hours a day, so you cannot enjoy any of the benefits that all that granite, hardwood, and those ever so shiny stainless steel appliances provide……LOL !! So, that leaves about 6 additional hours in a day that you are home, usually in the shower, getting ready for work, and then cooking dinner and sitting in front of the TV or using a laptop. Finally, the rest of the time you are not even there………you’ve got a job to go to and friends to see…..etc…..etc.
Why on earth would you pay two or three times as much for the same thing, when you can’t even use it half the time anyways, and when you are there, you are awake only 25% of the time. Seems like the ultimate in stupidity to me.
Because… you may only be in the actual presence of the granite and shiny appliances for an hour or two a day, but you carry the representation of your home with the granite and shiny appliances with you, in your mind, while you’re at work, or out with friends… some people even dream about their granite. And that mental representation gives some people such warm-and-fuzzies that, for them, it makes it worth it at almost any price.
—
More important, perhaps, through the Vancouver spec mania in RE, the home has become a financial instrument, and the resultant mental construct of equating one’s home with ever-growing financial security really must have felt priceless to many homeowners.
Needless to say, when spec manias implode, the internal representation of ‘home’ turns completely sour, such that, in the resultant trough, many homeowners will be disgusted and nauseated by the thought of ‘home’.
—
The point is that homes should neither be objects of infatuation nor disgust… Spec manias take the community on that roller-coaster ride; they result in misallocated energies.
If I were to die tomorrow, I as well would have lived my entire life, 33 years, in rentals. Since at least the mid-2000′s I’ve been calling for a correction in the Vancouver market and would not have bought (not that I could afford to anyway), although at times felt despair in knowing that I may never own a modest home in the city in which I was born; recently, as the market has begun to tank, I have actually begun to feel much better, almost exuberant, knowing that not only do I not own a quickly depreciating asset that would leave me with an underwater mortgage, but I can move wherever I want anytime I want because I’m not trapped in home ownership! In the long run, it seems that your money is better off in other assets anyway, and you can’t beat the freedom of being a renter!
I also have lived my life in rentals. Owning – or setting us up so that we could own, by encouraging our education and demanding we worked hard – was always a goal for my mother.
I probably would own except that 2002 was the beginning of my saving for down payment, and that year saw some of those insane bidding wars that were like Future Shop on Boxing Day. Simply nuts.
However, I am renting a house and have never lived in one before. Wow, am I glad my first exposure to houses was not ownership! I love this place but I see all the money it should be getting… It feels like it would be another dependent. Possibly rewarding, but still a heck of a lot of work. Right now, my care-taking money and time is going into my children, community, and family! I’m pretty darn busy, actually.
I would like to own, someday, but these days mainly because I would like not to be at the mercy of a pet-scorning market. I’ve been watching three rentals sit open for three or four months in my neighbourhood all which are great, but none which allow a cat (which, I’ll point out, were in part domesticated because rodents do a lot of damage to houses…)
And I know that if they allowed a cat they’d rent, because I know two families who were looking. So, the question – do these landlords really believe a cat would do more than $5000- vacancy loss plus pet deposit amount of damage? S
I haven’t rented my whole life, only the past 4 years and I gotta say It is my preference. The only negative aspect was that I was assured that the owner would not sell when I first started renting. We signed a 1 year lease as we didn’t want to be locked in until we knew we liked the place; first month after the lease ended…they listed and wouldn’t sign another lease. We started looking and moved out a week after the place sold. The landlord offered us another bigger place they owned (in the same building) but after the realtor mentioned that we decorate very nicely and make the place look more homelike than staging, I caught on to what they were up to and offered to only move in with a 3 year lease; didn’t happen.
Anyway, we moved to a different area of town that we discovered fit us even better. Two years in and we are moving again this time to a bigger place two blocks away – our choice and with as long a lease as we like. We’re we owning this whole time we would never have discovered the part of town we are in right now without massive realtor fees!
rent for 100 years, funny.
You could write the sequel to Marquez’s “100 Years of Solitude”…call it “100 years of Sevitude” LOL
On the other hand……….
http://www.inquisitr.com/352420/homeless-billionaire-nicolas-berggruen-chooses-to-live-simply/
Here’s a story about the “homeless billionaire”……….who sold his 31st floor apartment in the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan (I’ve had lunch there and the place is spectacular) as well as his Miami home 12 years ago, and now he only lives in hotels as he doesn’t think having such possessions is worth it. Neither do I…………
So, should we call him the “billionaire renter” ?
Some of you guys here need to get out more… I mean, out of Vancouver.
Only in Van is there something wrong with renting.
You can rent all your life in New York and Paris and no one would look twice.
I’d rather inherit stocks than a moldy house.
But maybe thats just me.
I was blessed at being adept at math and throughout my mid-to-late 20s after my degree, I started to think about homeownership, but studying the numbers of price-rent showed how bad the purchase would be. But since I had so much money, ironically, this forced me into self educating in personal finance to invest it. Hitting my first $100k of course is a milestone we all remember. Then it shocks you how quickly the followon $100ks come. Getting invited to the TD President’s Account at $500k investable assets was my last milestone (albeit kind of stupid). As I was quoted in this original post I’ve always rented. 12 years renting my current digs. I’ve seen the landlord once. Never signed a lease in my life. Never asked them for a dime in maintenance though either (nothing seems to break?). With my yearly housing costs at 6% of my yearly income, it’s not even a serious expense. I’ve been married a few years now and many say my position on housing might change with a baby. We’ll see… but if so, it looks like my timing is impeccable with the crash in progress. I’ll probably rent just on principle now… certainly until homeownership is frowned upon in this city, then I might scoop one for cash by then.
I like to read about the mania and I’m fascinated with the anecdotes and vreaa’s brilliant assessment of each one. So thanks for that.