Thoughts on House Hunting

Many of you may know that my wife and I have recently started looking to potentially purchase a home. In fact, about a month ago, we put in our first ever offer on a house. It was a beautiful, early 1900s historical house in Bankview, that seemed to be extremely well cared for and yet still full of quirks and character.

We are in a relatively fortunate position, as we have a seemingly good relationship with our landlord at our current rental, we are paying month-to-month without a lease, and the rent is definitely below the market average for where we live. This means that we don’t feel rushed or pressured into finding a house too quickly, which I appreciate immensely.

However, I still don’t really have a strong desire to actually purchase my own home, but I feel pressured into the process purely as a means to [hopefully] guarantee some form of long term housing security in a city where there are very few regulations or limitations on landlords. Calgary doesn’t have rent control and rents in Calgary are up 14% from last year alone.

Let’s consider some recent news headlines from 2023 about the state of housing in Canada (and wealth inequality in general):

• The Globe and Mail, February 13, 2023: Housing behind disproportionately higher financial stress in young, racialized Canadians.
• CTV News, February 13, 2023: New study shows that nearly half (49%) of all insolvencies filed in 2022 were by millennials.
• CBC News, April 24, 2023: Calgary’s population surge: new arrivals struggle while 110,000 more expected by 2027.
• BBC News, May 24, 2023: Canada’s household debt is now the highest in the G7.
• Global News, July 10, 2023: More than half of Canadians $200 away or less from missing bill payments.
• National Rent Report, July 13, 2023: Calgary led the country in rent increases last year, with rents increasing by over 18% [in a single year].
• Toronto Star, July 18, 2023: Toronto’s rent crisis: Minimum wage would have to hit $40 an hour for workers to be able to afford to live here, report finds.
• CBC News, August 2, 2023: Of the large provinces, Alberta has the highest proportion of apartment buildings owned by corporate investors.

As mentioned before, although we have a friendly relationship with our landlord, I still live in a state of constant dread that our rent *could* technically double or triple tomorrow and there would be nothing we could do about it, other than pay the rent or hopefully find another place to live. Plus, the rental market is mayhem right now and I don’t want to suddenly find myself in a scramble to find a new place to live if rent was hiked or the house was sold. I know we aren’t alone in this situation.

This is the only reason I am looking to buy a house. I recognize that I am in a very privileged position to even be able to consider purchasing my own home, but I do so reluctantly, solely as a means to secure my own living space, so that I am no longer at the whims of a landlord and the rental market.

The only options we have available to us are to: 1. Purchase a home, at a ridiculously expensive price, enslaving us to a mortgage for the majority of our adult lives. 2. Continue renting, which puts us at the mercy or exploitation by landlords. Or, 3. Becoming homeless. That’s because Calgary has so little social (or non-market) housing options, and the ones that we do have are rightfully reserved for those who genuinely need it more than we do, given our more privileged economic situation than many.

I find this whole process so alienating. So dehumanizing. I just want a safe and secure place to live. I don’t have any interest or desire for home ownership. We need better and accessible alternatives. Especially for those who are in worse off situations than I am, like those who struggle with homelessness.

I also find it so frustrating that while I’m browsing for houses to potentially look at in person, that many of the [few] available options have been renovated to have rental (or secondary income) suites in their basements. This is consistently advertised as a benefit, as a way for homeowners to generate additional income or to offset the cost of mortgage payments. Those “improvements” were also likely a decision made by the previous owners as a way to increase the resale value of the property.

However, by doing so, they have also gone and inflated the asking price of the property, making it less accessible to those who may be looking to purchase a home, but without the means to purchase one that’s been renovated to have a secondary suite. This is part of the problem with the whole house-flipping industry. The value of homes is already going up due to scarcity of options and lack of supply, but then homeowners inflate the value of their properties even more, putting them further out of reach to those trying to find a place to live. This behaviour essentially reinforces the need or expectation that everyone becomes a landlord rather than just being the user of a space. Housing is a need. We need to prioritize its use value as a place to live over its exchange value as an investment.

I wish I enjoyed any of this entire experience. Other than seeing a cute home here or there and maybe daydreaming about having the chance to live there, the whole process just makes me feel anxious. I know that we could just keep renting as we currently do, but what happens when our landlord suddenly decides to sell and we have to find a new place in an already limited rental market? Also, the average Calgary home price is expected to reach the $700 thousand region in like two to three years with all the anticipated immigration, so I feel somewhat pressured to buy a place now rather than putting it off for a few years and continuing to rent, but then risk having a smaller down payment relative to the increased cost of housing.

Anyways, our offer wasn’t accepted, even though we bid $40,000 above the asking price ($560K) which meant that we bid our absolute maximum ($600K) and still lost out to a higher bidder who purchased the house for $650K. This is what happens when you leave housing distribution to the free market. You create a competitive bidding war for all of the available land space and those without the resources don’t get a place to live.