The last 5 years have been very kind to us in relation to household wealth ( other than 2008) We invest a little in RRSP, RESP’s and I have a pension but the biggest gain without a doubt has been house equity. This seems to follow the nation as most households have their wealth in their homes. Which, for a number of reasons, is not a good thing.

I do have to say that I do not know how first time buyers can do it these days. We are in Willowgrove and the highest our debt climbed was 205k when we bought a van last summer. That is including the mortgage. When the wife gets back to work we will make just under 10k a month, netting about 6k. She is one mat leave right now. But we have student, car loans, day care, house payments and other expenses to look forward to that will eat up that money pretty quickly each month.

I don’t mean to sound like I am complaining, I’m not, just telling my story. We have things pretty darn good.

We had bought a condo in vancouver in 2001 and decided to keep it and rent it out when we moved back to SK (just in case we decided to move back to Van when I finished grad school). And since houses were so cheap here I couldn’t justify renting out a house I could buy for $130,000. So we kept the condo in Vancouver until 2007 and sold it so that we could build a new house here. I was able to land a dream job with a local uranium company that will remain nameless.

So in the last six yrs we went from having a condo in vancouver with quite a large mortgage to having 2 houses here each with relatively small mortgages. We couldn’t have done that without the changes that have happened here recently……

As far as the additional people, I don’t think that we are growing at an uncontrollable rate….. it’s been consistent, at a reasonable pace. I spent some time in Ft. McMurray and the growth that they went through was absolutely ridiculous…. we don’t ever want to see that happen here and with our economy being quite balanced, I don’t think we will.

Sweet. Don’t give that up any time soon.

The majority are probably happy, since they already own a home…

Nice to hear from you. Of course, I’m delighted to hear of your big income spike. Didn’t take you long to increase your market value by 50%!!

It is tough to buy on a single income but I have no doubt that you’ll own your own home before too long.

The increase in population is a good thing of course, though it still blows my mind if this population is moving into new houses. Though the people that I know that are buying or building new houses aren’t the ‘do it on thier own’ people by any stretch of the imagination.

Being a singleton 5 years ago (at the age of 27), if I had the job I have now paying what I get paid now, I would be able to afford a fairly decent single family home, or a really nice really large condominium. That being said, 5 years ago I was getting $16 an hour as opposed to the $24 I make now. (age 32)

Reality for me is that I am indeed priced out of the local housing / condo market in part to the fact that I have a car loan of about $340 a month. Add to that the skyrocketed housing prices in the city / province (anywhere in proximity to an actual city where I could find a job), I am indeed priced out forever until I hook up with someone with a second income.

Love being able to subscribe using the RSS feature Norm!