4444 the resident doomsday moderator of this thread.

Hes got a lot of great points and all true but reaming it down our throats every page gets redundant.

There's no right or wrong. Everyone has their own reasons to buy. Why cant we be neutral. Roll with the punches and make more than you can spend.

The whole buy vs. rent thing all boils down to preference priority. I think this video shows you exactly how up for debate things really are.

Video: Drawing Conclusions: Is renting really a waste of money? - The Globe and Mail

As a life long renter, I'd say I rent because:


1. Parents sold the house when they divorced, put a bad taste in my mouth for ownership

2. Enjoy moving every few years and having no responsibility / not tied down

3. Still don't know really where I want to live


Could have I made money on real estate? Sure but I have no idea how it would have changed or shaped me as a person. Having NOT owned property I've also been able to feel more like a rolling stone than someone tied to land or feeling like I need to be "a part" of Vancouver through paying property taxes and such.

A large part of not buying is definitely related to how my parents divorced, I've always assumed that if I had a long term girlfriend/wife she'd just try and take the house I paid for anyways.

wow, like did you not read this thread at all? 4444 has his reasons for not owning, and they have strong merit. He may not have house attach to his name, but a portfolio of liquid assets etc etc. under his name. Technically speaking, if he were to own REITS in his diversified portfolio, he would have A class office towers, shopping malls and those type of properties as well.

I really don't want 4444 to post the same stuff over and over again, as a previous member started above, it gets redundant.

go read the thread again.

This thread is up here.....









your head is somewhere down here.

While I don't always agree with 4444 and his delivery, you are sorely mistaken to believe that because he rents he has nothing. I'd rather have a 100k (or I'm sure lots more in 4444's case) invested in higher amassing investments and rent than have a place than have all of that tied up in my home in a dangerous market with all the costs associated with having a home. I pay nothing when something breaks, I pay no condo fees, no taxes, no hundreds of thousands of interest over the years, etc. I've been on both sides and this is what is right for me right now. If you think owning a home (which 99% of people say they own, but the bank actually owns it) equates to success then you are blind. As said by most intelligent people in this thread, renting or owning are both options that can be the right one financially for people depending on lifestyle and understanding of their finances.

The whole argument is not about owning vs renting but rather owning vs renting at the right time.

Can we all agree that prices are quite ridiculous right now?

I'd like to ask the average 20-something with a girlfriend what kind of ability they'd have to get a house and support their wife for a year off work while raising a child


Like... how possible is this in Vancouver for someone with 6 years of post-secondary and, say, 4 years of experience in their career, and say a maximum of borrowing 10k from relatives?

That's why it's pretty rare to see someone raising a kid in Vancouver in their 20s, unless they are powered by parents.

All my friends with babies in Vancouver are in their 30s. Most mid to late 30s.

^I don't think many local people in their 20s or early 30s are going to be buying Real Estate in Van without some financial assistance from Team Mom and Dad.....or Team Grandpa and Grandma. That's just the way it is going to be when entry level condos are $500K.

Re: raising families in Vancouver

It's not only about the cost of housing for many second-generation immigrant families. Many families get support through babysitting from relatives so they don't have to pay for daycare. Also, a lot of people on this forum love to hate on public sector workers, but there are lots of women who fight over these jobs because they can get full top-ups while on leave and don't face the prospect of being labeled as "a woman of a child-bearing age" in their organizations. Most of the women I know from high school, university, etc are in the public sector in some capacity (the closest woman to me isn't, ironically.)

But, it often doesn't work this way in WASP-y families.

Not in City of Vancouver for sure. But doable in the suburbs. Of course, you need dual income. But that's why I see all the young families going east (Maple Ridge, Pitt Meadows) and south (surrey, Langley). Sadly, you usually still need dual income to afford even a townhouse in some of those areas.

in response to your question I think it'll be pretty tough for a guy in this 20's to keep a wife with a child and a girlfriend going at the same time and have a house...he'd also need a condo for the girlfriend after all :troll:

mmmhmm, want a riped banana sprinkled with alpha1's good stuff on it?

if you don't want to in my opinion stop getting with starbucks male baristas and get with real men

mi$$ionaire milk:jizz:

Another good example of being tied down.

Me and couple business partners needed credit for business. We tried a mass as much as possible because we need a ridiculous amount of cash flow.

I have 0 mortgage = 0 debt, the bank instantly gave me 100k limit on my credit card and thats from 1 bank.

1 guy who owns a house was only able to get a 10k limit on a card because his mortgage maxed out his lending limit.

next guy has no debt and lots of assets he was able to get 100k as well.

guess what? the guy who "owns" the mortgage doesnt really own a home.... hes in debt.... and has a lower chance of being successful in our business because his shitty cash flow now.

:suspicious:

Based on your logic, you don't own your business either. The bank does since that is their money you are spending on YOUR business.

It's all semantics. Does your partner really own his own home? Well, yes and no. He's free to do what he likes with it. Paint it whatever color he wants. Decorate it however he likes. If anything happens to it, he is liable for it and the bank will get their money either way.

Do you and your partners own your own company? Yes and no. You guys can run it however you like. But if you lose all your money and the business goes tits up, you still owe the bank the money you borrowed.

exactly.....borrow for a house or borrow for a company.....guess what, you still have dept too

Also the bank probably "owns" more of your business than they do of the guys mortgage via interest rates.

For me it's like this, I pay off a primary residence whether it be a condo etc then the rest is gravy. I can pay my property taxes and strata fees and leave all my shit there till the end of time and I don't have to worry about moving, storage, etc.

Realistically I could be mortgage free by 35, without a mortgage I wouldn't have to bust my ass to do what I want to do. I could find a job where I get as much time off as humanly possible, make a reasonable wage, and have the freedom to do what I want. Don't ever plan on having kids and am currently in the process of attempting to get my EU passport. Pay off this play and I could go work in the south of france just enjoying life.

For me, while I'm somewhat "locked down" by having a mortgage, I pay nothing relative to my earnings. It all depends on the level of which you are handcuffed by your debt and what you want out of life

If you have two kids and are scraping by to make ends meet, then you made those choices and giess what? You can't afford to live in Vancouver, you can't afford to take those vacations you thought you'd be going on. It's as simple as that.

I'm in my mid 20s and currently in 1.3 million cdn mortgage debt. 1 million of mortgage is invested into 3 condos in HK. The remaining 300k just got approved for a 2BR 2 Baths upcoming apartment in Richmond; however, we are planning to rent out our house and downsize into the apartment instead. I have names on all of them, but the only thing I did was sign for the loans. My parents are the ones who forked out the down payment for these investments.

What they do with the 3 condos in HK is chop it up into 4 individual suites and rent them out. Currently those 3 condos in HK monthly rent covers the mortgage and a little extra, however, in book value, they have all rised by 30% in less than 2 years. Couple senior members in the family have already made 300k-several million cdn by doing this.

I let them do this to my credit becauae it's my dads only way of investing. He's not good with stocks, and mutual funds etc only earn him so much and his day job business is sinking ship. Besides, I probably can't put down my own downpayment for another 5 years or more. The question arises every now and then... "What happens if real estate crashes?" Their theory is, if it crashes, then the tenants will continue to pay for the mortgage and eventually it will rise back up in 5 , 10, or even 20 years. In addition, if we just keep it and never flip it, in 20+ years, the property will be paid for and we will officially own it.

The crash has already happened once in 1997 when they took more than a 50% loss on a property investment, so I'm sure they realize this is a possibility.

The only big contribution I made to the family was this. Without my average paying job, the last 300k loan would never be approved. My sibling who owns a small business cant get a mortgage due to not having "stable" income, so in a way they are thankful for me which is nice. For the arguments of rent vs buy.. buying can be another form of investing. It's just some people have ways to get better returns investing in something else rather than real estate, thats all.

:suspicious:
I pray that you keep your day job. [/sarcasm]

Can we all just agree that at the end of the day, only net worth (after you liquidate everything) matters? All these situation A vs situation B scenarios are getting repetitive and boring. :concentrate:

Sorry no. This is the intraweb and it is serious business. :whistle:

Don't forget the little incident in 2003 where a guy from China literally took a shit in HK and caused a little thing called SARS. Things were never cheaper and developers were pretty much giving flats away. That's the beauty of it, shit happens.

Funny thing about HK is that people have a very short memory when it comes to investments (ie stocks or real estate). Crashes in HK almost happens like clock work and yet there's always a new batch of naive people throwing money into the financial and real estate market.

I keep hearing things like "nah different times now, we got China backing us up" or "well those were special cases where blah blah blah".

I guess what I'm trying to say is that people who have been hit in 1997 and 2003 have not recovered yet. I'm not talking about the rich, I'm just talking about the majority who try hard to be rich through those measures.

by your logic, then one can argue that Hong Kong citizens have been dumping shit to Canada for more than decades.

Hongers (not all) are disloyal locusts driven by greed & speculations; HK locusts are the first to snatch up opportunities in sight of capital gains and the first to flock when all utilization have been emptied.


HKers do not commit to being Canadians, they simply are holders of dual citizenship with no loyalties toward Canada. 80% of Hongers have returned to HK, to take advantage of China growth; yet how many of them pay their share of income taxes back to Canada?

Each year federal government transfers hundreds of thousands of cheques to these Hongers living in HK that probably never return to Canada. What a waste of our tax money!



Mainlanders have to give up their China citizenship in order to become Canadian citizen. These folks will never be able to gain China citizenship ever again; they have become true Canadians. Hongers (holders of dual passports) are not true Canadians but rather use Canada as opportunistic risk diversion in case their self-interest turns sour.

talk about being a hypocrite, Hong Kong people take the cake