The truth is that homes deliver enormous non‑financial value — stability, community, belonging. Those are reasons to buy. But as financial assets, they come with structural constraints: They are expensive to maintain, difficult to trade, impossible to diversify, and usually purchased with significant leverage. The investment component is real but volatile, and its return path can be long and uneven. For home buyers now facing losses, this is not an individualized failure. It is the predictable outcome of society promoting an undiversified, illiquid, highly leveraged asset as if it were the ultimate life goal.
You need shelter. You can pay money and have nothing at the end, or you can put it into equity. Owning a home is the best investment you’ll make in your life. The maintenance costs are trivial. Beg, borrow or steal whatever you need to afford the shittiest little thing you can afford and upgrade later.
House prices going down in Toronto are not a reason to ignore the value of home ownership. They’re an opportunity to get yourself out of rentals. This author is on drugs.
We need shelter, but our governments have stopped ensuring it’s attainable.
Tax policy encourages people to treat their home as an investment by exempting it from capital gains. Other tax policy has made the construction of rental units less attractive to developers. Our federal, provincial, and municipal governments stopped building affordable and low income housing. (There’s also the zoning/NIMBY crap, but that’s been discussed to death)
You need shelter. You can pay money and have nothing at the end, or you can put it into equity.
I generally agree, a home should not be primarily thought of as an investment.
It’s a roof over your head that you have more control over than if you were living in a rental.
And after a period of time, you actually own it and no longer have to keep paying someone else for the privilege of having a place to live.
Pass a law that corporations or businesses cannot own family dwellings and BOOM!..rent decreases and purchase opportunities throughout the land.
I haven’t seen stats showing businesses own a large amount of single family dwellings or apartments in Canada. Individuals seem to own a lot of condos for investment (with businesses owning a bit less).
Do you have stats showing corporations owning a significant portion of Canadian real estate?
This article is 4 years old chances are it’s in full swing by now.
Like, then don’t buy it as an asset, buy it as home? Its not like people can just wait for some 20 years without home for crash to happen, and crash would likely be tied to some event where everyone loses their jobs or banks fall of whatever.
Which is why I like the Japanese home loses value over time approach.
Japan had the same problem as Canada before they rezoned housing federally for density, wiping out hundreds of miles of single family homes to build highrises.
If you see a aerial view of Toronto there really is no city, relative to most metropolis in the world. The problem is entirely government created.
https://www.stockaerialphotos.com/media/08759b93-8ae3-4841-bbd1-cd2886594e0a-toronto-skyline-2016
The run up on housing prices forces most Canadians to put too much cash into rent or home ownership. I think the piece is more pointing out there’s a problem. The fix has to come from policy makers, not individual buyers.
The myth of homosexuality as an extension is wreaking untold damage
Right… And rent prices are stable? Jesus fuck. At least try to draw a comparison.
OMG three pieces from the Globe about Canada’s fucked up housing policy and how it’s screwing us.
If they are done boosting it, you know the housing crash/long winter is incoming.
I’m pretty sure the Globe has had thick pieces about the housing crisis since the run up before COVID. And they’ve been calling out our shit productivity for decades.
The Federal government is currently buying half of all mortgage bonds to inflate prices with cheap debt and printed money, as new housing minister who ruined Vancouvers housing market Gregor Robinson says housing is an investment.
Don’t elect liberals if you don’t want the poor to be destroyed by a regressive home prices.
