More Houses AND they cost More too!

After ranting about how there were so many more houses going up, now we hear that these houses are getting more expensive; by over 11% nationally in Canada? Interesting stuff really.

Now naturally I looked at Ottawa/Gatineau to see what the new houses around me are appreciating at, and was surprised that over a year they have only increased in cost by 3.3%, and the average new home in Ottawa/Gatineau costs about $162K (now I am positive that varies a lot by size of house and location, location, location), but that was interesting, so I then had to see which areas were skewing the data up so much, and you can guess where new house prices have increased the most: Calgary follow closely by Edmonton, both of them houses have increased by over 40% and the average new home price there is over $200K! Holy crap!

So the cost of a new house for a family is somewhere around $180K? Wow, I don’t think yearly wages are increasing by that much, so how are folks paying for this? My guesses:

• NO downpayment mortgages
• Large second mortgages
• Living a very house poor existence

To those young families just starting out, you have my sympathies, because I remember how I was positive I couldn’t afford a house, when we bought our first house (bought is a relative statement, I never owned much of it, the bank owned most of it). Be wise and understand what you can afford and live with before buying into something you might regret later.