Quote:
Originally Posted by whatnext
Yes, I'm not sure where those who got variable rates during Covid could have thought they were going to go anywhere but up upon renewal.
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But the wider context is that housing is so expensive that average families really struggle to buy anything in the bulk of Canada's housing market, and so they're very vulnerable to making bad decisions in an area they're not expert in. If we had reasonable housing options there wouldn't be so much make-or-break pressure on people like this.
The causes are factors like poor productivity growth, asset bubbles/inflation, red tape around building, and extreme spikes in migration. They mostly come down to government-level management decisions.
In a lot of Canada even a few years ago housing was pretty low stakes. You did the math on renting vs. owning, considered what you wanted, maybe you bought, maybe you sold with a small gain or loss. You could stretch to buy a mansion but didn't need to stretch to get a 2 or 3 BR place if you had a mid-range job. Even Vancouver was somewhat like this around the 90's and early 2000's and in those days rents were reasonable.