Remember When A Million Dollars Use to Mean Something?

[ssiguy]

I remember when I was really young and getting 5 cent potato chips. I remember when people flipped when movies hit $2, when $3000 was a lot for a car, a Big Mac combo was 99 cents, and a transit ticket was 50 cents.

Of course wages were much lower but still relatively the middle class was significantly larger and your wages went a hell of a lot further than today especially when it came to housing which has vastly out stripped the meagre increases to incomes. In expensive cities like Vancouver a one income earner could afford a house that 2 income earners today couldn't even dream about ever owning.

[kool maudit]

The million figure is a more common subject of discussion (particularly regarding real estate) now that I live in Denmark, where one Canadian dollar equals about five kroner.

[st7860]

A Telus home phone used to be $14/mo 25 years ago. Now its about $30

[lio45]

Originally Posted by st7860

Well for starters in the US realtors charge around twice what they do in BC and are 40 year amortizations for investment properties available in the US?

I just bought a duplex in the Quebec City area (my bank is the BMO) and max amortization was 25 years (it's what I chose).

So this "40 year amortization" doesn't seem available in Canada either.

And why would you care what realtors charge? Nearly half of my properties (both US and Can) were bought without realtors. (I bought my neighbors in downtown Sherbrooke a couple times, bought many FSBO properties too, bought on Craiglist real estate a few times.)

Whenever I decide I want to sell something, I'm likely to try without realtors, and even if I need them, commission is likely negotiable.

What kind of investor would be deterred from a market with great cap rates just because "realtors charge more"? That's utter nonsense.

[st7860]

40 years is available in Canada, for rental properties and the down payment can be borrowed as well.

http://genworth.ca/fr/products/inves...y-program.aspx

[Beedok]

If anyone has a spare meaningless million lying around I'd be happy to take it off your hands.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by st7860

40 years is available in Canada, for rental properties and the down payment can be borrowed as well.

http://genworth.ca/fr/products/inves...y-program.aspx

Wow, that's really expensive though. ~3% of the borrowed amount! And it goes up by 0.25% for each slice of 5 years that you add to the standard 25 years amortization period. IMO it's really not worth it to add to your debt burden like that in exchange for keeping cash on hand. Anyone accepting this must be in a pretty bad position and stretching resources to the max in order to afford to buy something.

It caps at $750,000 as well for loans, which means it can't even be used on a modest Vancouver bungalow...

Out of curiosity, where's the part about borrowing the down payment...?


P.S. I saw you linked me to the version in French, nice little attention if done on purpose

[st7860]

Yes I picked the French version on purpose . I really wonder why they would allow it on second properties instead of primary ones , or have the 25 year limit apply to both primary and secondary home. At first I thought maybe someone at the cmhc just forgot to remove it from their website but I called up genworth and the csr said its current info

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Beedok

If anyone has a spare meaningless million lying around I'd be happy to take it off your hands.

You could have one but only if you had a compelling project to put it to good use, with enough guarantees and promising prospects.