Calgarians seeing value in trading car for nicer neighbourhood
October 15, 2011
When Andrew Bizon, a Calgary engineer, was looking to buy a home, he did some interesting math.
If his busy family of four could live with one car rather than two, they would have an extra $400 to $500 a month for the mortgage, he figured. To make that happen, he would have to commute in other ways, a problem solved with his bicycle.
So with the money saved by functioning as a one-car family, Bizon was able to buy a nice house in South Calgary, an older neighbourhood he loves. It has great amenities, he says, and is close enough to his downtown office that he can walk or take public transit if need be.
“The fact that we are not a two-car family allowed us to put more money into a house,” Bizon says. “Suddenly you’re not paying that extra $400 to $500 a month — that’s almost a second mortgage.”
Bizon’s arithmetic is the kind that drives the Housing and Transportation Affordability Index, a formula developed in the United States as a way of offering homeowners a different way of assessing the costs of living in their neighbourhood. At its heart, the index brings another factor into the usual income vs. housing-cost equation. That factor is transportation.
It may seem like a no-brainer — that cars cost money is a surprise to nobody — but in the U.S., the index has challenged the old mantra of “drive until you qualify,” which reflected homebuyers who would drive away from cities and stop when they reached a suburb they could afford. By taking the cost of transportation into account, that cheap suburban housing might not be as attractive as more expensive communities better suited for walking or transit...
Read more:
http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/Ca...ourhood/5553279/story.html#ixzz1atSuFUOH
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