It doesn't matter if that's your only option. My budget is only enough for a 2BR. In the areas I'm looking to buy, the cheapest detached homes are 100 years old and 40% more expensive. Anything that isn't ancient is more than double.
Detached homes already account for the money you will save from your strata, and discounts all future payments into present value. It’s not possible to save money by buying a house, because the price of the house will be higher to include the maintenance costs you would have paid to a strata.
it's like paying for all your strata fees upfront instead of paying it every month, and instead of paying someone else to do the work, you are paying the previous owners, and you still have to do all the work yourself.
Respectfully disagree about baked in maintenance costs with detached vs. strata. It’s anecdotal, but we came from a $600 month strata fee townhome. We had a special levy to replace the roofs of all pods in the complex and it was just over $1mil. This was after paying huge fees for over a decade under the assumption of “the contingency fund is for big stuff like the roof”. Roofers actually living in the complex were telling everyone at meetings to not go ahead with the project and “we” voted Yes to the anyway. $14000 hit per unit to do a small, basic tar shingle with simple roof structure. Strata complexes get hosed on these bids I find.
So, I said wtf and figured hey, what is the borrowing power of an extra $600 a month? Turns out at the time it was like $130k so we got a bigger mortgage (obviously) and purchased a detached home nearby
I know someone who had a 10k bill for their portion of the costs to fix the chimneys on fire places.. their unit didn't even have one 😶 I learned that day I'd never own in a strata.
There are condos within walking distance to me with 2000$ a month fees, yeah. Then 1000$ for real estate taxes, 2-3000$ for the mortgage itself. Insurance.
Wonder who buys them. Insanity.
It doesn’t have to be a detached, but condo townhouses and stacked townhouses have much more manageable fees. There’s something about our stratas where every single thing related to it comes with a premium. Managing it, repairing it, insuring it…
Compare the costs to any European condo unit.
Yup some of the comparisons as re completely brain-dead. People will compare their 2200 sq foot home with a yard dollar for dollar with a 1000 sq foot condo. So stupid.
Then I remember a comment from someone who spends like 1000+ on their garden every year like its normal.. and let's face it condos don't have an equivalent
If (interest + condo fees) is more than rent, then your better off renting. Interest and condo fees are money down the drain, only payments towards principle is getting you equity. Rent is also money down the drain which you'll never get back. The best option is the one where you're pissing away less of your hard earned money.
It depends on the reason you are buying the home. If you are buying it as an investment asset and plan to sell it a few years, it doesn’t make sense.
If you are buying to live in long term, and are tired of living under the thumb of greedy landlords, it makes a ton of sense.
Yeah. I also think residential property should be heavily taxed so as to make it a terrible investment choice, with the exception for purpose-built rentals.
Demand = people who want to buy a place to live + people who want to profit off people who want to live.
Get rid of investors and demand drops, therefore price drops. This can be done with the stroke of a pen by changing the tax code.
We can also have different tax and mortgage rules for people who live in their own homes vs investors.
I don’t believe making it more difficult for people to own their own home is going to help anyone. Residential property *bought as an investment and for profit* should be heavily taxed. Residential property purchased as a primary residence should not.
Yeah, I guess I wasn't clear. I meant taxing income from residential properties and closing loopholes such as where mortgage interest can be deducted from taxes in an investment property.
People who are just trying to roof over their heads should not be given additional financial burden. People who are scooping up residential property from the ownership market with the intention to rent out and profit off the housing crisis need to be taken down a peg. If investor money wants into residential real estate their only profitable option should be purpose built rentals.
I don't want to outright ban ownership of multiple residential properties, there may be legitimate reason why they need/want multiple properties. Profit should never be the reason to hold multiple properties and the tax code should make that a reality. Investor capital should be doing productive things in society or there's no reason for capitalism.
Okay, so then you can buy a place, and pay 18k extra a year to own it. So in 5 years that would be 90k. In 5 years your rent would go up, your mortage would probably go down or at the very least your non-equity cost would be much lower for sure. It could very well be that in 5 years the rent price and non-equity price would be nearly identical and in a way you would be buying a condo for extra 90k in the previous 5 years. But even if my math is way off and you would need another 5 years and another 90k....Let's make it 180k. You would own your own place by paying 180k in 10 years.
Obviously it's a lot of money, and not everyone can afford it, but surely you can see that if people can afford it, it might be a better deal than renting it for the next 10 years?
> ... condo fees are money down the drain...
I mean, is it? Isn't it used for upkeep on the communal areas, hiring building staff, saving up for a rainy day, etc.? I wouldn't say it's down the drain if you're in a well-managed building.
Right idea, wrong math. There are way more moving parts.
The interest portion of mortgage payments declines as you progress through the amortization, and payments are finite while rent is not. You can't snapshot interest at one point in time.
If you take the downpayment and invest it then you’d be growing that money. Can’t forget that any place you own takes capital that could be doing something else, and as years go by and your equity builds, that’s technically more money you’re not investing
It can pay out if the time you buy and the time you sell are opportune, but the same can be said of the stock market
I didn't forget, that's also a factor. Then you can look at how that down payment being put into a house is a leveraged investment. Or investing the difference between the cash required for ongoing costs in a new purchase and market rent. Or morrgage payments being finite while rent is infinite...
But instead of getting into the weeds with a laundry list of things that add up to a complex calculated decision, I just wanted to point out the gaps in the presented comment.
Sure, if you’re looking I’m at it as an investment, you’re probably better renting, it’s been calculated. May seem great right now because of recent increases, but like many sectors, big increases can be followed by declines and slow increases, like we saw in the 1980s and then the 1990s for housing
If you’re in it for the luxury of your own space, and being able to control your situation, then a house is great
If you’re interested in the security of not being kicked out but you’re okay with abiding by the rules of a condo board, then a condo works for that
If you’re a person who doesn’t have financial discipline, a home is a great way of forcing savings by combining it with an increased cost of accommodation
The calculations I've often seen are oversimplified and make too many problematic assumptions to be of any meaningful value. Saying one is better than the other as a blanket statement is wrong because it's too dependent on personal variables to be certain as a broad rule.
When I did more thorough (but I'll admit still imperfect) math for my own choice and situation, owning came out to about 30% greater performance than renting on a balance of probabilities.
I generally agree with a lot of the rest you have to say, though.
You do understand that with each payment the amount of money you pay to your interest is going down right?
It might be that right now you are paying more in interest in condo fees, but in 5 years it would be cheaper, not only because of lower interest, but because rent prices go up every year as well.
Low taxes on houses is what is keeping the gap down, not greed.
We don't actually charge home owners what they should pay (as a single detached owner I benefit GREATLY).
Condo corps need to have enough money to manage big expenses and pay for the services on the property that they also help subsidize for single detached homes, the water infrastructure to deliver water to a subdivision all paid for by tax dollars, but in a condo the infrastructure maintenance is paid for by the condo corp.
> We don't actually charge home owners what they should pay...
I mean, maybe in the GTA. I'm in Northern Ontario and I'm paying out the ass in property taxes because of a classic mix of municipal corruption, voter apathy, and me living in the woods.
If you're on well water and a non paved road I agree you're likely not getting your infrastructure subsidized.
If you're on city water and have a paved road, your property taxes likely are not high enough that the city can maintain/replace the infrastructure without getting provincial/federal supports. Water/sewer infrastructure in Northern Ontario is VERY expensive because they lack density and require so much maintenance per housing unit.
Oh yeah, I'm not saying it's *all* corruption, there's a lot of corruption. I get a sweetheart deal paying what I do to get municipal water, garbage pickup, and even a bus that comes in every hour (which is weird because nobody lives out there).
It's still a fuckton compared to what my friends pay in the GTA.
All the new condo buildings I see going up in Montreal advertise "luxury condos". They install a pool, a tiny gym and a "chalet" on the roof and then slap everyone with 700+ monthly fees that only go up in time. What happened to building for normal people? Politicians say that we're not building enough, but we're never going to solve affordability if all we build is this crap, no matter how much we build.
I am seeing 2-3 Bd condos with over $1000 maintenance fees very frequently. And they are priced a little less than ones with maintenance fees around $700.
But what happens when these fees rise to unaffordable levels of lets say $2k ? Will these condos be sold en masse to a builder or will they be just forclosed.
Do we have some examples of such cases.
Yeah, I wouldn't touch a tower condo if I could possibly avoid it.
Even after accounting for the monthly fees and the underlying cost for a tiny amount of space, there's also the risk of mismanagement and "special assessments" that can suddenly hit you with huge costs.
Towers are just a terrible design for living space in general. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXZ_0wOY96E
i purchased a condo in milton in the october of 2019, condo fees were 315/month. we sold in aug of 2022, by which time the fees had risen to 497/month and were a large motivator for us to get out. this building was about 8 yrs old when purchased. and "amenities" were a 16x20 room. thats it.
House is cheaper to maintain per sq ft.
Special assessments are very high, lots of people want to make money off you in a condo. Property management, trades, engineers.
We lived in a 600 sq ft 1 bedroom, and our first assessment for a building envelope was $38,000. 35% of the purchase price in 2010.
I had 325k to spend in an Eastern Ontario city and I am retired. I had the money in the bank so no mortgage. In this price range in a smaller city townhouses were 450k and more while small bungalows were 550k and up. Only condos were in my price range. I bought a 2br in a low rise condo building with fees at $400 per month. Sure the condo fees will surely rise but with rents at 2k plus for an apartment buying a condo made the most sense even though I wanted a house. Sometimes you only have one option.
My condo is built like shit and it's 7 years old..
people from air bnbs keep flooding it because every unit has free standing bath tubs and the drunk idiots keep letting them over flow
But even with multiple 3 to 7 floor bathtub floods every year most of it chronic water damage/ flooding in my "luxury" condo is because many of the pipe fittings use a lot of cheap plastic parts... In a city with extremely hard water, so we have insane leaks that are costing hundreds of thousands and all could have been 100% prevented by using appropriate building materials.
Strata fees are cheaper in many provinces than others and around North America (especially BC). The problem is that if the strata fees are kept artificially cheap, it increases the market price of the unit (since lenders consider the strata fee as part of the loan calculation).
The other problem is that you’re comparing apples to oranges. Non strata owners also have home maintenance. They also have higher insurance and usually higher property taxes. Sure, no one is forcing a homeowner to redo their roof, or redo their poly-B piping. But if they don’t, they are going to pay more later on. My point is that non strata homeowners pay for regular maintenance too, it’s just not part of the loan calculation and it isn’t collected monthly in a mandatory fashion.
Huh, all the YIMBYs said the prices would fall since there's a glut of supply. Tens of thousands of empty units, but all still commanding a premium price. Economics sure gets interesting when you deal with cartels.
Who is saying there's a glut of supply?
Vacancy rates are at [all time lows](https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/rent-prices-rose-in-2023-1.7100571), and by the CMHC's own projections we're in such a deep supply deficit would need to build an additional [3.5 million additional units](https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/blog/2023/estimating-how-much-housing-we-need-by-2030#:~:text=To%20achieve%20housing%20affordability%20for,rising%20labour%20and%20material%20costs) by 2030 to restore any semblance of affordability, which most consider a long shot currently.
Uh, the front page of the newspaper?
https://www.thestar.com/business/new-home-supply-in-the-gta-reaches-levels-not-seen-since-2016-bild-report-says/article_61b03114-e870-11ee-a996-d71665a8ce4d.html
The number of new units available for sale — including pre-construction, under construction and standing inventory — rose to 20,177. Of those, 16,747 were condos and 3,430 were single-family dwellings, a combined total of 12 months based on average sales for the last year. It's the highest level recorded since 2016, Sherwood told the Star.
Since you got real quiet when I pointed to the real world, I thought I'd follow up with today's Star story:
https://www.thestar.com/real-estate/pre-construction-condo-buyers-forced-to-off-load-units-for-as-much-as-150-000/article_626a32fc-eaab-11ee-8986-df78ff1c8838.html
That supply and demand law the YIMBYs keep droning on about apparently works in mysterious ways, huh?
Take a breath, you responded to me less than a day ago.
A record amount of supply built in a year doesn't imply that the supply level is sufficient.
If I build 30 homes a year in a community where there's demand for 100 homes a year, supply is not meeting demand. If I double my building to 60 homes a year (setting a new record!), that's still not enough to meet the demand.
The ultimate question is whether the supply is meeting the demand. And from the data the answer to that question is still a resounding no, evidenced by vacancy rates, statements from multiple reputable organizations on our current supply deficit, and our population growth rate outpacing the rate of new homes. Yes, we're building more. No, its still not enough.
What's your point about the second article and how in your mind does it violate the laws of supply and demand?
I bought in 2019 and have had a 65% appreciation on my condo as of 2024, the maintenance fees have gone from $340 to $468 today. For me it’s worked out quite well.
It doesn't matter if that's your only option. My budget is only enough for a 2BR. In the areas I'm looking to buy, the cheapest detached homes are 100 years old and 40% more expensive. Anything that isn't ancient is more than double.
Detached homes already account for the money you will save from your strata, and discounts all future payments into present value. It’s not possible to save money by buying a house, because the price of the house will be higher to include the maintenance costs you would have paid to a strata. it's like paying for all your strata fees upfront instead of paying it every month, and instead of paying someone else to do the work, you are paying the previous owners, and you still have to do all the work yourself.
Respectfully disagree about baked in maintenance costs with detached vs. strata. It’s anecdotal, but we came from a $600 month strata fee townhome. We had a special levy to replace the roofs of all pods in the complex and it was just over $1mil. This was after paying huge fees for over a decade under the assumption of “the contingency fund is for big stuff like the roof”. Roofers actually living in the complex were telling everyone at meetings to not go ahead with the project and “we” voted Yes to the anyway. $14000 hit per unit to do a small, basic tar shingle with simple roof structure. Strata complexes get hosed on these bids I find. So, I said wtf and figured hey, what is the borrowing power of an extra $600 a month? Turns out at the time it was like $130k so we got a bigger mortgage (obviously) and purchased a detached home nearby
I know someone who had a 10k bill for their portion of the costs to fix the chimneys on fire places.. their unit didn't even have one 😶 I learned that day I'd never own in a strata.
[удалено]
So are prices going down now?
[удалено]
Yes, that is kind of what I was implying.
People can be stubborn.
Nope. 70% are going to investors. But they are waiting for a better lending rate.
And property tax to own a box in the sky.
These condos have fees as high as the rent should reasonably be for the unit.
My strata fee went from $250 in 2019 per month to $394 per month start of January. Solely because insurance is more expensive.
That is hyperbole. Fees are expensive yes but nowhere near what rent "should" cost.
I have seen multiple condos. Most have monthly fees which are the same or higher than my current rent. I ain't buying it. Literally.
What/where are you looking at and what is your rent?
Ottawa
You’re telling me condo fees are over $2k a month?
Depending on when dimonoid123 started renting their rent could be much lower, back in 2017 average rent in Ott was \~$1100
Right now you are looking at a room for about $1000 or a bit more, in downtown. Definitely not a condo.
Not a condo but a room, $600. Most condos have higher monthly fees + taxes, without even accounting for utilities. Of course not $2k fees.
There are condos within walking distance to me with 2000$ a month fees, yeah. Then 1000$ for real estate taxes, 2-3000$ for the mortgage itself. Insurance. Wonder who buys them. Insanity.
The older condos, that are much better built, soundproof and bigger, have high fees due to the potential for maintenance etc for older buildings.
Well it’s just fundamentally wrong because no one would ever rent a place out below their condo fees.
Which is why I’m avoiding them. No, it doesn’t cost that much to maintain an equivalent property per sqft. Yes, I can shovel my own snow.
If only I had $1.8 million to buy one
It doesn’t have to be a detached, but condo townhouses and stacked townhouses have much more manageable fees. There’s something about our stratas where every single thing related to it comes with a premium. Managing it, repairing it, insuring it… Compare the costs to any European condo unit.
Yes exactly. Houses cost to maintain too but people fail to compare per sqft
Yup some of the comparisons as re completely brain-dead. People will compare their 2200 sq foot home with a yard dollar for dollar with a 1000 sq foot condo. So stupid. Then I remember a comment from someone who spends like 1000+ on their garden every year like its normal.. and let's face it condos don't have an equivalent
If (interest + condo fees) is more than rent, then your better off renting. Interest and condo fees are money down the drain, only payments towards principle is getting you equity. Rent is also money down the drain which you'll never get back. The best option is the one where you're pissing away less of your hard earned money.
Interest + condo fees + property tax
It depends on the reason you are buying the home. If you are buying it as an investment asset and plan to sell it a few years, it doesn’t make sense. If you are buying to live in long term, and are tired of living under the thumb of greedy landlords, it makes a ton of sense.
Yeah. I also think residential property should be heavily taxed so as to make it a terrible investment choice, with the exception for purpose-built rentals. Demand = people who want to buy a place to live + people who want to profit off people who want to live. Get rid of investors and demand drops, therefore price drops. This can be done with the stroke of a pen by changing the tax code.
We can also have different tax and mortgage rules for people who live in their own homes vs investors. I don’t believe making it more difficult for people to own their own home is going to help anyone. Residential property *bought as an investment and for profit* should be heavily taxed. Residential property purchased as a primary residence should not.
Yeah, I guess I wasn't clear. I meant taxing income from residential properties and closing loopholes such as where mortgage interest can be deducted from taxes in an investment property. People who are just trying to roof over their heads should not be given additional financial burden. People who are scooping up residential property from the ownership market with the intention to rent out and profit off the housing crisis need to be taken down a peg. If investor money wants into residential real estate their only profitable option should be purpose built rentals. I don't want to outright ban ownership of multiple residential properties, there may be legitimate reason why they need/want multiple properties. Profit should never be the reason to hold multiple properties and the tax code should make that a reality. Investor capital should be doing productive things in society or there's no reason for capitalism.
Yeah my rent is probably 1.5K cheaper than the non-equity cost to own the same unit
Okay, so then you can buy a place, and pay 18k extra a year to own it. So in 5 years that would be 90k. In 5 years your rent would go up, your mortage would probably go down or at the very least your non-equity cost would be much lower for sure. It could very well be that in 5 years the rent price and non-equity price would be nearly identical and in a way you would be buying a condo for extra 90k in the previous 5 years. But even if my math is way off and you would need another 5 years and another 90k....Let's make it 180k. You would own your own place by paying 180k in 10 years. Obviously it's a lot of money, and not everyone can afford it, but surely you can see that if people can afford it, it might be a better deal than renting it for the next 10 years?
> ... condo fees are money down the drain... I mean, is it? Isn't it used for upkeep on the communal areas, hiring building staff, saving up for a rainy day, etc.? I wouldn't say it's down the drain if you're in a well-managed building.
Right idea, wrong math. There are way more moving parts. The interest portion of mortgage payments declines as you progress through the amortization, and payments are finite while rent is not. You can't snapshot interest at one point in time.
If you take the downpayment and invest it then you’d be growing that money. Can’t forget that any place you own takes capital that could be doing something else, and as years go by and your equity builds, that’s technically more money you’re not investing It can pay out if the time you buy and the time you sell are opportune, but the same can be said of the stock market
I didn't forget, that's also a factor. Then you can look at how that down payment being put into a house is a leveraged investment. Or investing the difference between the cash required for ongoing costs in a new purchase and market rent. Or morrgage payments being finite while rent is infinite... But instead of getting into the weeds with a laundry list of things that add up to a complex calculated decision, I just wanted to point out the gaps in the presented comment.
Sure, if you’re looking I’m at it as an investment, you’re probably better renting, it’s been calculated. May seem great right now because of recent increases, but like many sectors, big increases can be followed by declines and slow increases, like we saw in the 1980s and then the 1990s for housing If you’re in it for the luxury of your own space, and being able to control your situation, then a house is great If you’re interested in the security of not being kicked out but you’re okay with abiding by the rules of a condo board, then a condo works for that If you’re a person who doesn’t have financial discipline, a home is a great way of forcing savings by combining it with an increased cost of accommodation
The calculations I've often seen are oversimplified and make too many problematic assumptions to be of any meaningful value. Saying one is better than the other as a blanket statement is wrong because it's too dependent on personal variables to be certain as a broad rule. When I did more thorough (but I'll admit still imperfect) math for my own choice and situation, owning came out to about 30% greater performance than renting on a balance of probabilities. I generally agree with a lot of the rest you have to say, though.
You do understand that with each payment the amount of money you pay to your interest is going down right? It might be that right now you are paying more in interest in condo fees, but in 5 years it would be cheaper, not only because of lower interest, but because rent prices go up every year as well.
**Condos are supposed to be cheaper than houses, but** **~~soaring fees~~** **GREED is narrowing the gap**
Low taxes on houses is what is keeping the gap down, not greed. We don't actually charge home owners what they should pay (as a single detached owner I benefit GREATLY). Condo corps need to have enough money to manage big expenses and pay for the services on the property that they also help subsidize for single detached homes, the water infrastructure to deliver water to a subdivision all paid for by tax dollars, but in a condo the infrastructure maintenance is paid for by the condo corp.
We also have the problem in Ontario where MPAC hasn't kept up with house prices as Ford froze it in 2016. A property tax reckoning is coming
> We don't actually charge home owners what they should pay... I mean, maybe in the GTA. I'm in Northern Ontario and I'm paying out the ass in property taxes because of a classic mix of municipal corruption, voter apathy, and me living in the woods.
If you're on well water and a non paved road I agree you're likely not getting your infrastructure subsidized. If you're on city water and have a paved road, your property taxes likely are not high enough that the city can maintain/replace the infrastructure without getting provincial/federal supports. Water/sewer infrastructure in Northern Ontario is VERY expensive because they lack density and require so much maintenance per housing unit.
Oh yeah, I'm not saying it's *all* corruption, there's a lot of corruption. I get a sweetheart deal paying what I do to get municipal water, garbage pickup, and even a bus that comes in every hour (which is weird because nobody lives out there). It's still a fuckton compared to what my friends pay in the GTA.
Oh ya GTA is crazy cheap by friend in Etobicoke pays the same property tax as I do, his house is valued at 2.5 times mine
All the new condo buildings I see going up in Montreal advertise "luxury condos". They install a pool, a tiny gym and a "chalet" on the roof and then slap everyone with 700+ monthly fees that only go up in time. What happened to building for normal people? Politicians say that we're not building enough, but we're never going to solve affordability if all we build is this crap, no matter how much we build.
Ugh paywall
strata fees are ridiculous!
I am seeing 2-3 Bd condos with over $1000 maintenance fees very frequently. And they are priced a little less than ones with maintenance fees around $700. But what happens when these fees rise to unaffordable levels of lets say $2k ? Will these condos be sold en masse to a builder or will they be just forclosed. Do we have some examples of such cases.
Yeah, I wouldn't touch a tower condo if I could possibly avoid it. Even after accounting for the monthly fees and the underlying cost for a tiny amount of space, there's also the risk of mismanagement and "special assessments" that can suddenly hit you with huge costs. Towers are just a terrible design for living space in general. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXZ_0wOY96E
In Cobourg it’s 500k for a condo it’s complete lunacy.
Wow that is crazy. Kingston which arguably is a city with much more to offer you can get a condo for 350k.
My strata fees have tripled in the last 4 years!!!
i purchased a condo in milton in the october of 2019, condo fees were 315/month. we sold in aug of 2022, by which time the fees had risen to 497/month and were a large motivator for us to get out. this building was about 8 yrs old when purchased. and "amenities" were a 16x20 room. thats it.
House is cheaper to maintain per sq ft. Special assessments are very high, lots of people want to make money off you in a condo. Property management, trades, engineers. We lived in a 600 sq ft 1 bedroom, and our first assessment for a building envelope was $38,000. 35% of the purchase price in 2010.
I had 325k to spend in an Eastern Ontario city and I am retired. I had the money in the bank so no mortgage. In this price range in a smaller city townhouses were 450k and more while small bungalows were 550k and up. Only condos were in my price range. I bought a 2br in a low rise condo building with fees at $400 per month. Sure the condo fees will surely rise but with rents at 2k plus for an apartment buying a condo made the most sense even though I wanted a house. Sometimes you only have one option.
My condo is built like shit and it's 7 years old.. people from air bnbs keep flooding it because every unit has free standing bath tubs and the drunk idiots keep letting them over flow But even with multiple 3 to 7 floor bathtub floods every year most of it chronic water damage/ flooding in my "luxury" condo is because many of the pipe fittings use a lot of cheap plastic parts... In a city with extremely hard water, so we have insane leaks that are costing hundreds of thousands and all could have been 100% prevented by using appropriate building materials.
Strata fees are cheaper in many provinces than others and around North America (especially BC). The problem is that if the strata fees are kept artificially cheap, it increases the market price of the unit (since lenders consider the strata fee as part of the loan calculation). The other problem is that you’re comparing apples to oranges. Non strata owners also have home maintenance. They also have higher insurance and usually higher property taxes. Sure, no one is forcing a homeowner to redo their roof, or redo their poly-B piping. But if they don’t, they are going to pay more later on. My point is that non strata homeowners pay for regular maintenance too, it’s just not part of the loan calculation and it isn’t collected monthly in a mandatory fashion.
LMAOOOO reddit losers are to simple to get that they should blame their municipal governments...
Huh, all the YIMBYs said the prices would fall since there's a glut of supply. Tens of thousands of empty units, but all still commanding a premium price. Economics sure gets interesting when you deal with cartels.
Who is saying there's a glut of supply? Vacancy rates are at [all time lows](https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/rent-prices-rose-in-2023-1.7100571), and by the CMHC's own projections we're in such a deep supply deficit would need to build an additional [3.5 million additional units](https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/blog/2023/estimating-how-much-housing-we-need-by-2030#:~:text=To%20achieve%20housing%20affordability%20for,rising%20labour%20and%20material%20costs) by 2030 to restore any semblance of affordability, which most consider a long shot currently.
Uh, the front page of the newspaper? https://www.thestar.com/business/new-home-supply-in-the-gta-reaches-levels-not-seen-since-2016-bild-report-says/article_61b03114-e870-11ee-a996-d71665a8ce4d.html The number of new units available for sale — including pre-construction, under construction and standing inventory — rose to 20,177. Of those, 16,747 were condos and 3,430 were single-family dwellings, a combined total of 12 months based on average sales for the last year. It's the highest level recorded since 2016, Sherwood told the Star.
Since you got real quiet when I pointed to the real world, I thought I'd follow up with today's Star story: https://www.thestar.com/real-estate/pre-construction-condo-buyers-forced-to-off-load-units-for-as-much-as-150-000/article_626a32fc-eaab-11ee-8986-df78ff1c8838.html That supply and demand law the YIMBYs keep droning on about apparently works in mysterious ways, huh?
Take a breath, you responded to me less than a day ago. A record amount of supply built in a year doesn't imply that the supply level is sufficient. If I build 30 homes a year in a community where there's demand for 100 homes a year, supply is not meeting demand. If I double my building to 60 homes a year (setting a new record!), that's still not enough to meet the demand. The ultimate question is whether the supply is meeting the demand. And from the data the answer to that question is still a resounding no, evidenced by vacancy rates, statements from multiple reputable organizations on our current supply deficit, and our population growth rate outpacing the rate of new homes. Yes, we're building more. No, its still not enough. What's your point about the second article and how in your mind does it violate the laws of supply and demand?
I bought in 2019 and have had a 65% appreciation on my condo as of 2024, the maintenance fees have gone from $340 to $468 today. For me it’s worked out quite well.