To understand why young people are buying fewer homes, begin by asking yourself: What do you need to buy a home? We’ll start with three basics. You need a mortgage. You need income for the downpayment. And you probably need a spouse. Controlling for income, gender, and education, a married person is 23% more likely to own compared to someone who is not married, and many more couples buy a home as they are preparing to wed.
So writes Derek Thompson in “The End of Ownership: Why Aren’t Young People Buying More Houses?” for Atlantic Cities. Megan McArdle counters with some reasons why young people might be interested in buying.
Responding to news that Vancouver Gregor Robertson has created a housing task force, Jak King:
As I understand the latest figures, 55% of Vancouver’s population are renters. And yet not a single renter is represented on the Task Force. Not one.
The “micro-lofts” are located in the century-old Burns Block building in Vancouver’s Gastown neighborhood, and they can be had for $850 a month, a price I would have killed for when I was living in one of the many neighborhoods in New York that included the word “murder” or “die” in their informal nicknames and/or slogans.
This photo shows the other side of the unit that the article linked to previously shows. (via @davewiner)
'Smallest rental units in Canada' to provide a tour on Monday -
$850 / month. Under 300 sq. ft. I don’t understand why council is behind these units - that is completely unaffordable. Common sense says get a larger place and split the rent.
Mae Saslaw at Simple on whether to rent or buy -
If you can buy a home, should you? Homeownership is the American Dream, after all, and the 2010 Census (PDF) shows that in all the occupied homes in the country, twice as many people own than rent. That’s over 111 million homes, out of which 75 million are occupied by the owner, and 36 million by renters. We also know that people don’t always make the most perfect financial decisions, so let’s take a look at some of the factors that can help you determine whether to buy or rent.
Sobering Warning from the Governor of the Bank of Canada on Vancouver housing costs
From the “It’s Not Easy Being a Renter” file comes a report that, in Vancouver, researchers have found that landlords tend to reject same-sex male couples 25% more often than average, and that single parents also face unusual discrimination. Researchers seem to call the rental being taken as the basis for rejection as a negative. If the reason is simply true (in that the applicant was just plain too late), then how can it be negative? If instead the landlords were looking for some other type of renter to fill the unit, then we can call it negative discrimination. If we get a hold of the study, we’ll report more in depth.
(Thx Karen.)
The Tyee has commissioned a series by Jackie Wong on renting in the Metro Vancouver area.
Part 1: No Room to Rent in the Livable City:
[L]andlords, especially those straining to maintain aging but affordably priced properties, sometimes deem it necessary to evict long-term tenants in order to carry out upgrades. Others evict tenant to occupy units for personal use. Appealing against such ‘no-fault’ evictions can lead to drawn-out disputes before the B.C. Residential Tenancy Branch, notorious among renters for its secrecy and procedural inconsistency.
Part 2: Thrown Out: Fight Grinds on Against ‘Renovictions’:
As [residents of an apartment complex evicted so the landlord renovate the building] saw it, once in possession of a vacant renovated suite the landlords could increase the rent, collecting more from new tenants than they would from its former occupants. Residents regarded the derelict conditions in the hallways as intimidation tactics, meant to motivate tenants to move out on their own when eviction notices weren’t enough.
Part 3: Landlords See a High Price to Cheap Rent:
It’s hard to argue with people who’d like to be able to stay in homes where they’ve become settled. But it’s equally hard to argue that private investors should pay to renovate Vancouver’s many apartment buildings in need of updating without their getting anything in return.
Part 4: Inside BC’s Secretive Landlord-Tenant Dispute Process:
[T]he isolated working conditions and lack of communication with stakeholders created a culture of secrecy unusual for a public tribunal, this former DRO [dispute resolution officer] says. She first dealt with the Residential Tenancy Branch as a law student, representing tenants. The DROs she encountered were lawyers. It was only when she later went to work for the RTB herself that she discovered a law degree was not a job requirement. Some of her colleagues had held other quasi-judicial roles, such as working as inspectors for the Liquor Distribution Branch.
Part 5: Landlords and Tenants Agree: Market Can’t Fix Itself:
The City of Vancouver’s Rental Housing Synthesis Report — a blueprint for changes it would like to see — concedes that reverting to pre-1973 tax policy won’t help in today’s environment. Instead, it calls for partnerships with senior governments in targeted programs with measurable outcomes.
Some of the ideas it suggests:
- Provide green incentives to support rental building retrofits.
- Provide HST exemption for goods and services required to operate and update rental housing.
- Increase depreciation rates for rental housing assets.
- Help smaller landlords qualify for small business taxation rates.
- Institute a rollover provision so landlords can defer payment of their capital gains tax when they re-invest in rental housing assets.
- Modify eligibility criteria for landlords to make use of the Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program (RRAP). Many Vancouver buildings
“With widespread warnings that we’re approaching the peak of the housing boom, with Canadians more indebted than ever, largely due to their outsize home investments, and with cities like Toronto boasting some of the lowest rents among major world centres, why aren’t more of us re-examining the math? The reasons are cultural and emotional, backed by ill-conceived public policy. This Canadian Dream is an expensive delusion. There’s never been a better time to rent.” — Joanna Pachner, Canadian Business, July 13th, 2011
CNN Video: Should you rent or buy a home? -
Makes the case that there’s nothing wrong with renting a house, especially in this economy.