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Originally Posted by EvoFire
Our biggest concern is the clusterfuck that is strata insurance right now. There is another hike for the 2020-2021 renew?
The problem is we aren't at the income or equity level where we can move into a house, and house comes with it's own issues. Wife is also on mat leave still and we can't make any moves until at least she's back to work, our son is in daycare, and our finances have settled down.
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Yeah, the mat leave is a big hit when you're trying to qualify. Hopefully, your wife's company doesn't fire her when she comes back (this has happened to a few of my wife's colleagues).
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We live in a 1300sqft town house. We thought it was way too much space when we moved in. Now with one kid and two cats, I was already feeling like I need another few hundred sqft. With the shift towards working from home as well, we don't have enough space. Ditto when wife is back to work next March and we'll likely be both working at home lots. We are both in very meeting heavy jobs and we'll be fighting for quiet space.
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That's exactly the same situation we're facing - meeting space is at a premium. I've set up a workstation in the kitchen and I've had to take external calls in my garage in a pinch when the kids were too disruptive.
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Our monthly house expenses average to roughly ~2200, including all the utilities and property taxes etc. But being a car enthusiast, my car payment is the same as our mortgage payment 
Getting rid of my car has been an ongoing discussion, actually from me and not my wife. She doesn't think I should get rid of it because she thinks I will get something even more expensive down the road 
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I wouldn't get rid of it. I got rid of my car when we had our first kid, but I regretted it the day I sold it. I wouldn't shut up about getting another car for 3 years until I switched jobs and needed something interesting to drive during my commute.
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We can see ourselves being able to afford 1.5m, maybe 1.8m on a stretch for an upgrade in a few years before our son starts kindergarten. However we've been talking to a friend who's a public school teacher, and she's sending her kids to private school cause she personally thinks the current school system is messed up.
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I think that if you can find a neighbourhood that is surrounded by other like-minded families, you can probably mitigate some of the shortcomings of the public school system. There's a pretty neat tool that's been developed by a local statistician called CensusMapper that basically depicts long-form census data visually.
https://censusmapper.ca/
There's lots of information on there such as median household incomes, the number of children per household, empty households, etc. After reviewing the data for my current neighbourhood, I'm finding that it would be tough to leave.