this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
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Canadian real estate prices have surged in almost every market, with a typical home price doubling in many regions. A median household in major cities like Toronto and Vancouver would need to save over 20 years for just the down payment, more than 3x the historic average. Seems absurd? The outlandish scenario was apparently a […]

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[–] lautan@lemmy.ca 38 points 5 months ago (3 children)

If you need to have a home to afford to retire;

And most young people will never own a home;

How do we expect this to play out?

[–] karlhungus@lemmy.ca 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think what's being said is: if housing prices lower, you are going to ruin some people's retirement plan -- at least some of those people will have worked hard their entire life to purchase and pay off that house. There's been some incentive to save in this way as well (first time home buyer plan, tax deductions for more ecologically sound houses, that kind of thing).

I suspect he's probably right, that letting house prices drop would over all make things worse in Canada. My goto solution would be to subsidize housing by increasing taxes on corporations and people/corporations that own more than one house. but i'm not any kind of expert

[–] Mkengine@feddit.de 11 points 5 months ago (3 children)

If I stay in my house for my retirement, why would I care how much it is worth? I would only care about monthly costs like energy or insurance, what am I missing?

[–] lhookham@mastodon.social 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

@Mkengine @karlhungus You are missing the high cost of aging in a retirement home/long term care facility. Because you retire in a home that you worked decades to pay off does not mean that will be your last β€œhome” before death. Some retirement β€œhomes” are charging $60,000 year.

[–] anachronist@midwest.social 1 points 5 months ago

This is true. The idea that housing-as-asset is a gift to middle-class elderly is a false promise. The middle class elderly will have all their assets stripped by the old-age industry regardless of how their home appreciated while they owned it.

[–] Someone@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 months ago

Assuming you're talking about a full service retirement home and not just a 55+ building $5000/mo seems like a good deal to me, at least from a BC perspective. You'd be looking at almost $2000 just to rent anywhere, you'd be lucky to have a meal cooked for you for $10, $20 if it's decent quality, that's another $900-1800/month. Once you consider utilities you're pretty close to what a new renter would be paying if they refused to cook for themselves.

[–] karlhungus@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 months ago

Sometimes home owners will sell their house after retirement for something smaller, live off the difference, then sell that house and use the money from that for long term care, or inheritance.

There's also the obvious: they worked for something, possibly quite hard, why do they have to pay the price for others? Presumably they've been paying taxes all along, and have already been contributing to the greater good.

I guess my feeling is, it's not so simple to just wreck housing prices. I absolutely feel like corporations, and probably some ultra wealthy don't work that hard and get most of the rewards (or aren't even people), like if the money has to come from somewhere there is a clear set of people who could afford to lose some wealth, and not materially effect their life; and that's not necessarily single dwelling home owners.

[–] Chuymatt 1 points 5 months ago

Investment property

[–] zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com 11 points 5 months ago

Govment folks don't care. They'll be dead by then

[–] psvrh@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 months ago

Not their problem. They, and especially their backers, expect to be well out of it by that point. The rich don't really think about the future; they think about how things were in the past, and how to keep it going, but they don't really plan or fret about the future because they don't have to.

If you want this problem to be fixed sooner, the government and their backers need to start being afraid enough for their bank accounts, if not their lives, to do something now.

That's how we got the modern welfare state: the rich and their pets in government were afraid they'd get Russia-in-1917'ed and begrudgingly put in the supports needed to prevent people from being that pissed off. After all, we'd just had a world war and there were millions of vets returning with PTSD and training and an informal support network, and they weren't going to put up with a repeat of the 1930s.

Every action since then is the rich trying to claw back the New Deal and it's equivalents in other countries.