Quote:
Originally Posted by Gerbs
That's very interesting, I bought in 2020 and I felt like I had to look at it from an investment and also spending perspective.
Had to be comfortable with potential appreciation as well as not too much holding costs. Outgoing costs was maybe $400-500 lower than market rent at that time? At 4% interest, close to $2,100/month for an older 1bed.
When you're soloing $500-1,000K you have to think of it as an investment imo. That's more than what most ppl make over a decade or two.
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That makes sense for the time period when you bought - housing values were going up in the same way that investments were AND the cost of it was a very non-trivial amount.
My parents bought their first home (a SFH in East Van) in 1978 on a truck driver and waitress salary with basically no savings so it was priced in a way that it was just plain old housing (I bet it was less than $50k) and there was no expectation that it was going to go up in value beyond inflation so there was no need to think of it as a big deal. Same goes for my in-laws - they bought a SFH in East Van in the mid-80s on basically a single near min wage salary. Imagine these people travelling to 2025 in a time machine! We'd tell them that they'd be renters living in Chiliwack on those salaries now!
OTOH, I think of my current house as kind of a part of my portfolio since it generates income (rent) and I have a tonne of equity in it (~$1.8m). That said, if housing prices stop appreciating like it has in the last 20-30 years (and I expect things to slow a lot and even drop) then eventually we'll go back to thinking about it as housing since you can't make money "investing" in housing.