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Originally Posted by Hondaracer
One last point re: kids/family: times have changed so much in the last 30 years and financially, even in the last 3-5 that it's night and day from when us 30 somethings grew up.
I know plenty of people who grew up in north/west van with parents of completely modest incomes. Paying off a west Van mortgage before you were 40/50 with dual incomes as a mechanic and receptionist were completely Normal 25-30 years ago. Back then being a mechanic or a trade was a respectable job, earned an honest living that you could provide for a family on.
Fast forward to today, and you could have two university educated people earning close to 6 figures a peice, and you can't afford a townhouse in east Van.
The topic of family is completely relevant to RE discussion imo.
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The game has definitely changed and there's no going back, no matter how many people want it to. I compare buying housing today to buying a modern car: you look at the costs in terms of a monthly payment. Most new houses and apartments are built poorly anyway, just like modern cars. The difference between the two is that housing, particularly if it includes land, tends to appreciate unlike most cars. And housing allows for leverage, which allows people to accumulate more assets.
People can still afford to have kids and have a condo or townhouse, or even house (like in Maple Ridge or Abbotsford), but it all comes down to priorities. Social media and easy credit has changed perceptions around what people think they need. It's good for people in sales and marketing, but not so much for people's pocketbooks.
As I said before, the dirty secret among a lot of child-rearing millennials is at least one source of income coming from the public sector. Job security, steady salaries, parental leave top-ups, and defined benefit pensions. These are things that allow couples to secure mortgages and take more risks with respect to taking on more debt and getting a larger house than they would normally be able to afford.