this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
204 points (97.7% liked)

Canada

7196 readers
486 users here now

What's going on Canada?



Communities


🍁 Meta


πŸ—ΊοΈ Provinces / Territories


πŸ™οΈ Cities / Local Communities


πŸ’ SportsHockey

Football (NFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Football (CFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer


πŸ’» Universities


πŸ’΅ Finance / Shopping


πŸ—£οΈ Politics


🍁 Social and Culture


Rules

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage:

https://lemmy.ca


founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

According to a new report from Rentals, In July, the Canadian rental market hit a record high with an average asking rent of $2,078, marking an 8.9 per cent annual increase.

all 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] jerkface@lemmy.ca 83 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Here's your reminder that Ontario expects disabled people to live on 13k a year.

[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If they are lucky. Getting disability anything requires 90% luck and a doctor who "has the time" to sign a few documents.

[–] Kiosade@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 year ago

In the US, they assign doctors to evaluate you, only to see you literally struggling to walk/balance yourself, and be told you could β€œprobably work at least 4-8 hours a week, no disability for you, moocher”.

Nevermind that even if said mythical 4-8 hour/week, remote job existed, the pay wouldnt cover jack shit…

[–] Frederic@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

And our retirement pension is 760$/month in Canada, lol? At 65yo we will all live in the street

[–] crow@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In BC it’s 18k a year for comparison.

[–] jerkface@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 months ago

That's interesting, thanks

[–] beaubbe@lemmy.world 51 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There is such a big divide between homeowners and renters. The average mortgage is 12.5years in, meaning payments are based on home prices from 2010, when canadian homes were 300k on average. That means that homeowners probably pay on average, 1200 a month while renters are paying double that amount. Younger generations are fucked.

[–] jerkface@lemmy.ca 40 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The consequence of Boomer "I got mine" mentality

[–] VieuxQueb@lemmy.ca 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My landlord pays 1200$ for her mortgage and I pay 1000$ fir renting the mold infested basement !

[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago

In the last year my mortgage has ballooned by over 1k a month from 1600$ to 2700$. In that same period my basement tenant has seen her rent increase 0$.

Why? Because mortgage rates and affording my house are not her problem. That's the responsibility I assumed when I bought the house. I don't intend to raise her rent now or any time in the future.

Sadly, I keep being painted with the same brush as all the other quite frankly shitty people that call themselves landlords.

[–] MapleEngineer@lemmy.ca 43 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's substantially more than my mortgage payment.

[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

$2000+ a month for rent on average is crazy, but rent has always been higher than most mortgage payments, though. Often by a lot.

The biggest benefit to renting is that it doesn't require a $50,000+ down payment and $10,000+ "repair bombs" every once in a while 😡

[–] CoderKat@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, it wouldn't even make sense for renting to be cheaper than buying. Most renting is from for-profit landlords. Obviously they have a mortgage, too. They're obviously going to try to make a profit. Plus mortgage is only part of the cost of owning. There's also property taxes and maintenance, which renting includes in the rent price.

The problems are mostly that there's not enough supply (most commonly due to bad zoning), homeowners oppose anything that could help (cause that would reduce the value of the home they already own), and that most of these landlords are for-profit. Being for profit means they aren't just going to charge more, but they also have a vested interest in making sure it's more expensive and less tenant friendly.

[–] SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why wouldn’t it make sense for renting to be cheaper than buying? Would I prefer to pay $3000 in rent or $3100 in mortgage+all other fees? Even though I’d be cash flow negative by $100, I am building equity. At the end of 30 years, one person owns a home and the other doesn’t, for the difference of just $100/mo.

Renting is in fact cheaper than buying in places like Vancouver, where wages are low but real estate prices are high.

[–] moody@lemmings.world 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It wouldn't make sense for a property owner to charge less to rent out an apartment than they are paying to buy it, in the same way it makes no sense to buy high and sell low on the stock market.

You need to cover your costs which includes the mortgage and maintenance fees. In the short term, those fees could be low, but when you need to get the roof or brickwork redone, suddenly you're losing money. Why would you spend money on property only to lose money on it?

Property shouldn't be seen as a commodity, but it also shouldn't be a useless money sink. Who's going to buy anything more than a single-family home if it's just going to suck money out of you forever? There would never be any high-density housing anywhere.

The money you pay into a mortgage doesn't evaporate. Only a portion of your mortgage is considered a cost (interest and fees and the like) the rest goes into your home equity.

If a tenants rent payment doesn't cover all of your mortgage, taxes and maintenance it does not mean your not making a profit.

No, cash flow negative does NOT mean unprofitable!

Imagine you are a landlord that owns a $500k unit. You are renting it out for $2000, but it costs you $2001 after your mortgage, taxes, maintenance and fees. Is that worth it? Think about it this way: it costs you $1 a month to own a $500k appreciating asset. That’s a ridiculously good deal.

The reason why it can make sense that renting is cheaper (as a monthly ongoing expense) than buying is because you get less when you rent than when you buy: when you rent you merely get the right to use the property, whereas when you buy you get the right to use the property as well as the value of the asset itself.

[–] Kichae@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Almost double mine. Meanwhile, my home's value has increased by like 50% since 2019. It's insane, untenable, and unjust.

[–] Killing_Spark@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago

Right? Basically everything you buy to actually use does not appreciate in value over time. I get that mortgage is lower than rent because every problem with the house is your problem which also cost money. But it's insane to me that after you payed your mortgage you basically have more value than you paid for.

But honestly, good on you.

[–] blazera@kbin.social 36 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Landlords should be outlawed. They provide no service to society, only harm

[–] phx@lemmy.ca 27 points 1 year ago (4 children)

They're supposed to fill the gap for people who can't afford to buy, or for whom it doesn't make sense to do so (i.e. people in town on a temporary job).

The problem is that "landlords" these days are more towards the class of "investors" who expect rents to cover the cost of their mortgage plus additional profit

[–] jerkface@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are lots of ways that gap could be filled. Landlords exist to make profit by filling that gap. They have a financial incentive to maximize returns and minimize expenses, and have the leverage to do so to an exploitative degree.

Another way to accomplish that would be through cooperatives, which are non-profit corporations that exist to provide housing. They have a mandate to maximize utility to their tenants, and have no profit incentive leading them to exploit their tenants.

[–] phx@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

I wouldn't mind seeing more of those, but I do also remember a day when there were a lot more landlords who charged reasonable rates without becoming overpriced slumlords.

There's always incentive to "make a profit" but often enough it was just somebody who had extra space after the kids moved out etc and got a little extra pocket money or even just a slightly less "empty nest" feeling. Some lived in half the house (usually upstairs with a basement suite rented) and a smaller few did get another, smaller place while keeping the "family home" for their kids' return after university or whatever.

Then people started buying second, third, etc places as investments, and it became about "maximizing investment". These kinds act like sharks, while serial bad-tenants similarly preyed on the more nieve "good" landlords causing more of them to get out of renting.

Co-ops can definitely be part of the solution, but having better controls and adequate staffing at rental regulatory boards etc would be beneficial to both sides, as well as removing pure-profit incentives.

I've got a house currently but I'd be ok with seeing the so-called "market values" drop to something people can afford. I'd welcome better regulation on both sides so that my kids don't end up paying in gold for mold, but also so that I could potentially find somebody decent/trustworthy farther into the future that I could rent space to (in my home) even the kids move out - for a reasonable rate - without having to worry that they'll destroy the place and steal the plumbing the moment they move in while I wait on 12mo for arbitration.

Looking at the current rents people are asking, I'd say a "reasonable" rate would be Β½ or even β…“ of what most are asking, but at the same time advertising low rents seems to attract a lot of sketchy people. It's crazy.

[–] grte@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago

Public housing in the Viennese style is the proper way to handle this.

[–] blazera@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

They are the reason why people cant afford to buy. Thats a looot of buildings going for sale if you get rid of landlords. Plummeted prices and mortgage payments. Then we should be focusing from the bottom up afterwards, make sure everyone has some place to live with public housing.

[–] Frederic@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

Always has been.

If you buy a 4plex for 2 million now, you have no choice to charge a high rent. But all the 8plex or 16plex from the 80s that are paid in full for years, there is no reason to go from 500$/month to 2000$/month just because

[–] cooljacob204@kbin.social 21 points 1 year ago (3 children)

While I don't completely agree with an outright ban imo there should be strict limits to the amount of residential property a person or corporation can own.

No one should be making significant profit off of something so essential.

[–] isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Make property ownership a shit investment.

Cap revenue from rent to 5-10%. Tax the living fuck out of empty properties so they'll take someone, anyone. Tax higher the more properties they own.

[–] Skyline969@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also outright ban AirBnB and make it so corporations are not allowed to own houses.

[–] isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes please, houses are for people, corporations have no business (heh) owning houses.

AirBnB is exacerbating the problem, they need to be regulated to hell or outright banned.

[–] Pandemanium@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

We should really crack down on Airbnbs. Why make $2000 a month by providing a place for someone to live when you can make $500 in one night from a tourist?

[–] blazera@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Landlords only buy property as an investment vehicle. You cant keep landlords and not have housing being a money making scheme.

[–] Newstart@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s crazy how most of my friends are paying more for their 3 bedrooms apartment than I pay for my 5 bedrooms plus basement single home. That includes all expenses for a home owner except renovations budget. The landlords are probably abusing with skyrocket profits.

[–] dfc09@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I tried explaining that a little bit back, that my house is cheaper for me to own and live in, including ALL expenses, than current apartments of much smaller size, and some person (probably a landlord) engaged in a back and forth with me basically calling me a dirty liar over and over.

[–] CMLVI@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I bought a house (since sold, moved cross-country) literally because it was cheaper to do so. You get the asset of the house, and cheaper mortgage payment. Went from a "2" bedroom house (the spare bedroom was slanted) house from the 1930s with windows just as old, dirt foundation, no AC, and holes in the floor for plumbing (very effective for keeping mice out.......) into a 3 bedroom house for $400/month cheaper. Housing market is fucking insane over the last 5 years, if not longer.

It's like people/companies are buying houses because "it's the smart thing to do" against high interest rates, so they need to charge more for rent, which drives people to buy houses on higher interest rates, which pushes rent higher, and it just cycles infinitely upwards.

[–] Hyacathusarullistad@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What we need to do is de-incentivize the commodification of housing entirely. Really make it unprofitable to deal in homes while passing the risk for your "investment" on to the people you're exploiting.

I'm talking about an outright ban on all corporations, foreign and domestic, from owning single family homes β€” corporations need offices, not homes, and shell corporations and LLCs don't even need those. Give a one year grace period, then tax all rental income collected from single-family homes at 100%. Maybe fine them each year too until they shape up.

I'm talking about regulating rental prices on short-term rentals, and capping the annual income allowed from short-term rental units to a value indexed against minimum wage (or preferably the area's living wage, determined not by any level of government itself but by valid third party organizations).

I'm talking an annual federal tax on properties not occupied full time by the owner or their immediate blood relative. Parent, sibling, or child. Something insane, maybe 400-800% of the home's property tax. Multiply it exponentially for each hoarded home. Throw in an exception for a second home if it's far enough from the first (people who own cottages aren't the problem, and shouldn't be penalised). But only for the second home β€” nobody needs two or three or four "vacation homes".

That's how we force land-rich boomers out of the housing "market" and get homes into the hands of people who need them, who should have a right to stable housing, who are currently being blocked from the market by vampiric land leeches.

[–] toadster@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

But then how would we generate GDP?

[–] Ryan213@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

BoC keeps raising rates so it's obvious that home owners have to raise their rental prices too. How else are they going to get more money out of their investments? Everyone's fucked unless you're rich.

[–] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Same thing happening here in Oregon. Homeless people are everywhere.

[–] sadreality@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

These homeless just lacking enough personal responsibility to do the boot strap pulling

[–] Dearche@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Gotta buy those boot straps first though.

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 3 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


This coincides with a 1.8 per cent rise in average asking rents in Canada from June, representing the most substantial month-over-month growth observed in the past eight months.

These include post-secondary students rushing to secure leases before the fall term, a notable increase in the population, and a slowdown in home-buying activities, largely attributed to the Bank of Canada's decision to raise interest rates.

Data shows that in July, the average asking rents for purpose-built and condominium apartments broke the $2,000 threshold for the first time, settling at $2,008.

Analyzing the data regionally, Alberta continued to lead the provinces in annual rent growth for purpose-built and condominium apartments for the third consecutive month in July.

The report shows that Quebec maintained its position as the second-highest province for annual rent growth in the country for the second consecutive month, with an increase of 13.7 per cent.

recorded average asking rents for purpose-built and condominiums at $3,114, achieving the fastest annual growth rate in the country at an impressive 32.1 per cent in July.


The original article contains 1,006 words, the summary contains 173 words. Saved 83%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] Echo71Niner@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Millenials and GenX are going to live on the street in their old age.