This was very true until insurance costs skyrocketed... now it's just mental...

My place is actually pretty good and it's over $300 for 683 sq ft... a lot of places are $500+ for a 2 bedroom now.

There's no way anyone is spending $6-$10,000 a year on their house with any regularity unless they bought a real lemon nevermind any house is like twice the space.

It used to feel okay at $2400ish a year if there were some amenities but now it's just robbery lol

Also if you have a suite you can write off 1/3 of those maintenance costs

It depends how much you value your time. I value mine at $100+/hour, so maintaining a house on your own can add up quickly. I'm not a professional handyman, carpenter, etc, so anything I've done takes me 3 times as long (setup, trips to the big orange, Youtube/online research) and I've had to make investment in tools over the years. My father in law is over 70 and he's still climbing his roof and doing stuff. It never ends.

I'm looking forward to warmer weather over the next couple of weeks:
- deck stain
- power wash siding and driveway
- lawn repair and re-seeding
- ripping out a few dead cedars and finding new ones to plant

How are you NOT spending $6-10k a year on your house? If you figure out the yearly cost on your big ticket items - hot water heater, roof, doors, windows, landscaping, etc there's no way the house doesn't cost that much on average annually. Our metered water/sewer bill alone is $1200/year which would have been included in our strata fees.

-Mark

our water/sewage is $900 for a 2br condo in coquitlam. that's not part of strata fees. depends where you live.

I can't remember all the factors when we looked at it before but I assume that fee covers things like landscaping and snow removal and stuff? Are any amenities or utilities included too?

Bare minimum on a house (roof, windows, HVAC, hot water, fence) spread out over the lifetime is ~$1200/yr but if someone wants truly hands-off home ownership equivalent to a condo it'll get expensive fast. The quote to do everything for just my grass for the summer was $800, trimming one tree was a couple hundred, another couple hundred to fix and blow out sprinklers every year, snow removal isn't cheap either, etc. Then any utilities or amenity equivalents on top of that. I think you'd easily hit $6k/yr and you're not even getting the full convenience of having someone else handle contractor wrangling for you.

You're also getting the benefit of twice as much space if not more... 3x the space... a garage to work in etc.

Only gas is included in strata. Water and other stuff isn't for most of them.

It's electric heat in my place, baseboards, so that's not included either... and no AC. Basically the included gas goes to the stove and that's it.

All that results in is notices each winter reminding people that having your oven open and turned on is a terrible way to heat your condo unless you want to die lol

Adding the big ticket items for home maintenance is fair. But then we'll also have to consider the special assessments for the big-ticket items in a condo... elevator repairs, window replacements, etc...

I think the strata fees for a small condo are reasonable, even if it's .80/sqft. That's ~$400-500 for a 1-bed condo, but you get the benefits of the amenities too.

Once you get into one of these larger 1000sqft+ condos and end up paying $1000+/month, that's when the strata fees become asinine.

Thing about homeownership is that some of those things are somewhat optional, you certainly have more control and discretion. The lines also get blurry as to what's a "need" vs a "want" or even a hobby.

Like, the only "Emergency repairs" I've had in 12 years has been my hot water tank when it sprung a leak 8 years ago, which I fixed myself for $600.

Mowing the lawn is necessary, that's like $30 in lawnmower gas a year. Trimming the trees, can do myself (bought a $50 pole pruner when I moved in) except for the japanese plum which I've had professionally done twice at ~200 each time.

We garden quite a bit, and money goes into the soil and plants etc, but that starts falling into hobby category because we like doing it and it looks nice. We could just as easily cover over the gardens with gravel and never need to deal with it.

I've repainted and done all that shit, but it's not like the rooms were unlivable how they were, falls under want more than need.

Last summer I got the gutters and the heat pump, the old gutters were still doing their job, they were just ugly. Same thing with the furnace, it was still doing its job but with the incentives and my refrigeration buddy's availability the time was right to get it done.

Roof is still in good shape at ~12 or so years old , but certainly something that'll need budgeting for.

RIP me FeelsBadMan

Oh there's definitely pros and cons to both, to be clear I'm only talking about the people EvoFire was referring to that don't want to deal with any of it and just have a strata manage all the upkeep and maintenance. If you're paying people to handle the same amount of stuff for a house the cost is probably going to be pretty similar and it won't be as hands off so for those people it makes sense.

For anyone willing to do even a little bit of their own upkeep they'll be paying a lot less on their house than they would be on strata fees. Hence why that $800 for the lawn was just a quote, ain't no way I'm paying someone that much to mow my lawn lol.

There's a lot of ways you can look at it. Tapioca is right in that your time is money as well, at my going work rate my time is worth about $100/h, for my own house I need to either go research how to do something, go buy the tools, or research for some one to do it and deal with whether or not they did it right. Time is money. Time is something I rather spend with family than fixing something broken at home.

The costs of owning a home is also significant.
Our townhouse in Burnaby cost us at just under 1300sqft:
$400/m on strata
$600/y on insurance
$700/y on city utilities
$1200/y on property tax
avg $700 gas a year
avg $600 hydro a year
total ~8700

Our house in Vancouver @ 3000sqft:
city utilities + property tax was ~7000
insurance $3300
misc stuff around the house was ~2000 (lawn care, new garage door openers, garden equipment, plants, exterior care and cleaning, etc)
avg $2800/y on gas (pre heatpump, will be cheaper for 2023)
avg $840/y on hydro (pre heatpump, will be higher for 2023)
Total ~16k

The townhouse cost was from 2020, whereas the house costs are from 2022, so add some for inflation and tax hikes?
Strictly per sqft speaking, the house is cheaper. But I also spend way more time dealing with things. It depends on what you are willing or not willing to do. You can live in a strata and not care about a thing, as long as there's someone who cares running it you don't have to think.

If you've worked for someone, you know what it's like when you don't give a fuck how much it costs to do something as long as it's done.

That's likely the same person looking after your largest asset. :badpokerface:

This new build is around the corner, I like it it’s a bit simple but a craftsman style like this with the, presumably master patio up top there is pretty sweet

I’ll always prefer a porch over paving stones or even grass out front though

https://i.imgur.com/ZLQ5ZdQ.jpg

TH is the best option (financially speaking) for a larger strata space. Imagine that was a condo and your strata fee was $1000/mo. The 1300sqft condo would cost as much as your 3000sqft house. That’s the issue and why I find the fees on larger condos crazy. I hope one has an amazing view if they are paying that much a month on strata fees. Don’t get me started on the 2 level townhomes at the base of a condo lol.

Those TH at the base of a condo get destroyed by strata fees, really needs to be seperated

https://www.zealty.ca/mls-R2754079/3...ET-Burnaby-BC/

Kinda bold claim here - the back of the lot is inaccessible unless they build a lane to the back which just ain't happening. Weird lot configuration - not sure how that ever was allowed to happen. It's 213' deep and the back half of it is 100' wide.

https://i.imgur.com/QaLMaIa.png

If you had $4M, why would you ever wanna live in that property.

That's an odd piece of land, why doesn't the next door get the full length?

I really like this colour on these style homes

Yeah, how in the world did this place get the neighboring house's back yard? From the front, the houses looking like copies of each other and there doesn't seem to be any fences in the back showing the separation.

Yea how does that work? The back just looks like a park, it's unfenced. Kinda cool if you can build a giant house in the back and have a long driveway up.

But yes I would not live there if I had 4 m

Me too. It's basically a modern recreation of the style and colour scheme of early 20th century (1910-1930) era houses.

When it works it works.

Looks like the owners have tried to sell this property many many times. And each time it doesn't sell, they decide to list it for even more the next time!
And yeah, very weird, I'm sure the house next door will love you if you decide to even put up a new fence there and block off their property