New home sales across the GTA hit their lowest level on record for May as average prices were pushed to new highs of $644,427, according to RealNet Canada.That's the only honest sentence in the entire article, but what do you expect from a real estate 'reporter'? The rest of the article spins so fast in hope common sense will be sent into orbit; the comments to the article show that only the most indentured to their mortgages are buying it anymore.
High prices and a drop in sales means a price apex, which in Canadian and American markets has meant that four to five years out will be the nadir. Anyone who's bought in the past five years is a spectacular idiot and deserves to live under a bridge when interest rates go back to historical averages and they cannot make their payments: it's made no financial sense to buy over rent for over a decade, there's been a history of two of these cycles spaced fifteen years apart in just my lifetime, and we had the recent American example FFS. When someone tells you 'it's different here' get your money out of any market they are in.
I just hope we do not bail out banks or buyers with public money. Greed I can comprehend, but fuck'em for stupidity.
People stuck in their ways, insisting that owning is better when statistically, renting is smarter. I get hassled by the older folk to invest in a home about once every 3 months. *sigh*
ReplyDeleteI have no desire to purchase a home for the simple fact that I like the ability to uproot and move at the drop of a hat. I am marginally paying slightly more than my sister's mortgage payment. But she has an HOA fee that she has to pay... also has to budget for things like busted water heaters, new roofs and other non-sense that I don't. If my fridge blows, the management company replaces it.
Property tax also, and there is depreciation as a building ages, and repair as you've noted, and more...
DeleteYou can make money in housing, but only if you do not think of the property as home, and will drop it when opportunity strikes. Hell of a way to live. For the rest of us, if you buy at the bottom and sell in the middle, you might come out even after other costs are factored in; true also of buying middle and selling high. The ideal is to buy low and sell high, but that means entering the market low, and selling your last house high after retirement. Good luck with the timing.
The reality is most people enter a market late and leave when they have to...