• kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    “Some of them are investors who now just want to walk away from their units because they can’t afford it,”

    Quite honestly, fuck them.

    Houses shouldn’t be primarily thought of as an investment. A house shouldn’t be an investment in any way for someone who isn’t actually living there.

    And for the person who does live there, the investment value of their home should be a much lower priority than the house’s value as a place to live.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      Houses shouldn’t be primarily thought of as an investment

      Not only should they not be thought of as investments, they shouldn’t go up in value like investments. A house should slowly depreciate over time. Because of inflation, the dollar-value of the house should maybe go up, but adjusting for inflation it should go down. If you do repairs, maintenance, etc. then maybe it should more or less hold value. If you do a renovation, maybe it should go up in value. But as a structure that gets slowly damaged by the passage of time, it should slowly go down in value.

      What’s ridiculous is that someone who made a solid $200k investment 25 years ago and then lived in a small apartment is worse off than someone who simply bought a $200k house and lived there.

      If housing keeps going up in value then pretty soon the only people able to live in a house will be the ones inheriting one.

      • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
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        4 months ago

        From what I understand, it’s not the building that increases in value, but the property it’s on.

        That’s why developers have no problem leveling homes to build something else. The land is what they paid for.

        But, I could be wrong. 😬

      • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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        4 months ago

        What’s ridiculous is that someone who made a solid $200k investment 25 years ago and then lived in a small apartment is worse off than someone who simply bought a $200k house and lived there.

        I’d like to see the math on this, please. A family friend who works in investments does claim the exact diametric opposite, and I’ve seen things from time to time that rather support that. If you know otherwise I’d love to read what you’ve read.

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
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          4 months ago

          I’m only eyeballing graphs, but from this one, a Toronto detached house in 1999 was roughly $300k, and today it’s roughly $1.7m. That matches about a 7% annualized rate of return. A document from S&P Global says the TSX index has grown at an 8% annualized rate.

          A house you buy as an investment might slightly lag behind an investment in an index fund. But, if you have to pay rent because you’re not living in your investment house-purchasing seems to win by a long shot.

          • Randomgal@lemmy.ca
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            4 months ago

            You are ignoring maintenance, tax and other “running” costs that have to be paid to own and live in your own house.

            • pipsqueak1984@lemmy.ca
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              4 months ago

              I am a homeowner and while I intially agreed with you out of instinct, if you figure that monthly rent should be thr equivalent to property taxes, maintenance and whatever utilities are included in the rent the big push I’m favour of home ownership is the fact that you don’t pay capital gains on a primary residence. In the above example, an investment gaining $1.4M in value would have (Ontario) taxes of around $350k… So it really depends on whether the house being considered is a primary residence or not.