Ugh, housing...

[Lindsey]

For the longest time, Saskatchewan was one of the cheapest provinces to live in. My boyfriend has been living with his mom since high school, has paid off his student loans and has one year left to pay off his car and he'll be completely debt-free. Through all this time he has been saving up money for a down payment on a house so he doesn't waste money paying rent. And now he's decided he's 23 and doesn't really want to be living with his mom anymore....
BUT last year out of nowhere housing prices skyrocketed. The rich Alberta people saw how cheap they could buy places in Saskatchewan and they came in droves, and our economy is going crazy with the discovery of diamonds in the north of the province, as well as the potash, farming, and realizing we're sitting on an ocean of oil. The result? Average home price last year went from around 100,000 to 175,000. Already this year the average price is 225,000 and it's expected to reach 275,000 by the end of the year. Banks are advertising 40 year mortgages with no down payment for first time homebuyers. 40 YEARS!
So Kyle realized if he's gonna act he has to act NOW. He went to the bank yesterday and they told him the best they can do is around 160,000. They told him to try a mortgage broker and he can try to get more, otherwise wait until he's completely out of debt (1 more year) AND gets a raise (now he's making 20/hr). I don't understand how the heck ANYONE is able to afford a house right now. We drove around tonight looking at houses that are closer to his price range (180ish) but they were all run-down shacks in really really sketchy neighborhoods. Is it worth it to go somewhere like that just to own property?
It's a little depressing to me, because I know I won't be buying a house anytime soon, but it's going to be 15 years before I'm out of debt from school. So it's going to be a LONG time before I can buy a house, and until then I'm just wasting money on rent (which would actually be the exact same price as mortgage payments).
I hate being a grown-up.

[Taurus Babe]

Lindsay,
I feel your pain! I live in BC and the real estate here is just nutz!! You are looking at a starter home, a poopy little shack, or tiny condo for about $300,000 $400,000 It is crazy!!!!! And frustrating for us young people, in fact frustrating for anyone that is trying to get into the market.

[Marilyn]

New homes here are running just over $100 per square foot depending, of course, on what options you want in the home. You can find used homes in nice neighborhoods for less.

It's hard for me to understand how people can afford to pay the prices here. It is so much worse for you there. Perhaps things will change in a few years. You know our bubble burst in many parts of the US and housing prices have dropped. Sounds like you are in one of the areas where housing is over priced, and it may come down at some point.

Beware of the terms of the no down payment mortgage. Just look at our financial news and you can see what can happen if you don't have a fixed interest rate.

[Lindsey]

Lindsay,
I feel your pain! I live in BC and the real estate here is just nutz!! You are looking at a starter home, a poopy little shack, or tiny condo for about $300,000 $400,000 It is crazy!!!!! And frustrating for us young people, in fact frustrating for anyone that is trying to get into the market.

Hey welcome back! I haven't seen you here for awhile!
I know there are the hopefuls here who are saying we're just in a boom right now and prices will eventually go back down, but the truth is we're just getting up to being even with the rest of the country. It's great for people who already have property though. My grandma bought the cabin across the alley from us at the lake about 7 years ago, for $35,000. Her husband has since lost his mind and went into a nursing home, and she just really doesn't get out there anymore so she decided to put it up for sale. It's listed for $180,000! I think she should buy a Viper or something with that kinda money :D
New houses here are well over 300,000 for the smallest ones. On top of that, property taxes are through the roof because the new subdivisions are gorgeous, with lakes and parks and shopping centres. I know housing prices in BC are crazy, but at least there's beautiful mountains and lakes and everything there ( I love BC!) but come on, Saskatchewan? We have wheat fields.
I grew up in a small town of less than 500 people. Last week, a house sold there for $235,000. It's smaller than my parents' house and that isn't very big.
INSANE.

[Jess36]

I know what you mean. Where I live, you could buy a decent house for $150,000 a few years ago. Now all the people from the bigger counties are moving and the housing prices are skyrocketing. I don't think we'll ever be able to afford one either.

[Janet]

I am so thankful that we build our house 31 years ago. I honestly don't know if we could afford the newer homes. Prices have gone through the roof, I think. To give you all a better idea...when we married in 1974 we bought a two bedroom house trailer on an acre of land with a two car garage for $8500. Yes...you read that right....$8500.

In 1977 we moved our trailer to the side yard and built our 2 bedroom house. We have a mudroom, two bedrooms, kitchen, living room and family room and built it all for $23,000. About 10 years ago, we built on another bedroom and bathroom. Guess we were very lucky, compared to what newlyweds are up against now...huh?

[Lindsey]

Janet, you make me wish I was a lot older than I am now lol. My 20 year old cousin got engaged over Christmas and is getting married this summer. She has no idea about finances or bills or anything because she still lives with her parents and they pay everything for her, including her tuition. She's trying to convince her boyfriend to buy them a $300,000 house for them to move into this summer. She doesn't realize it's not just that easy, especially on one income. She still has 3 years left of college.
My dad always says "Don't worry about it, I didn't buy my first house until I was 35!" But they bought the house for $69,000. It was a big investment then but compared to now that's nothing. You can't buy anything for that much now.
Our rent has went up $200/month in the past year. The landlord likes us, so he said he doesn't want to drive us out by charging too much but he has to raise it. He has signed a contract not to raise it again for another 12 months, but I can't imagine how much it'll be raised then. It will for sure be somewhere between 1500-2000 a month. I'm so sick of paying rent and throwing my money away, but I really have no other choice.

[DianaB]

That's too bad, Lindsay. I live in a small town and our prices aren't too bad compared to other places, but we're an hour and a half from the nearest large city and don't have any colleges. We have one home that's for sale for $500,000 but I don't know who they think is going to buy it! Mostly nice homes are $100,000 and up, with not too many up towards $135,000. We have a lot of lower end homes and fixer-uppers for sale. Of course there are some new homes that if they were to sell would sell for a lot more than that. We were told when we built ours 9 years ago that if we were to sell that there would be no market for a home as expensive as ours but there have been several others that were more expensive than ours built so there is a market for them. We don't have a lot of commerce to keep our young people here so we're turning into a town of retirees. Our schools have half as many students as it did when I was in school 33 years ago.

[Lindsey]

Your town sounds a bit like my hometown, Diana. Well, until the oil started sprouting up everywhere. There is a lot of work in the oil field and a lot of people have been moving to town because of it. We have two cities just under an hour away, and both of them are huge with oil too but I think a lot of young families like the small-town feel and want to raise their kids there, and actually a lot of high school students who don't want to go to college just stick around home and fall into the oil industry, so there's still quite a crowd of young people there.
A new little subdivision was built in our town about 10 years ago and it seems everytime I go home there are more houses there. Some of the houses are GORGEOUS, and none have had any problem selling.

[Lindsey]

Well, good news :) He had a meeting with a mortgage broker today, and he was offered 25,000 more than the bank would give him. This gives him just enough to be able to buy a house I found online today. We've been driving around and looking at houses and online searches for a long time and this one seems pretty promising. 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, an extra kitchen downstairs so you could convert it into a basement suite if you wanted, double garage... it's a bit of a fixer upper, but with some paint and new flooring (which he can get for free from his uncle's flooring company, and he can install himself because he used to do that!) it could end up being really nice :) He's doing a walk-through tomorrow with a realtor. I'm so excited for him! Oh, and maybe a little for me because I won't have to feel weird always going to his mom's house lol.

[CoyoteQueen]

Well, good news :) He had a meeting with a mortgage broker today, and he was offered 25,000 more than the bank would give him. This gives him just enough to be able to buy a house I found online today. We've been driving around and looking at houses and online searches for a long time and this one seems pretty promising. 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, an extra kitchen downstairs so you could convert it into a basement suite if you wanted, double garage... it's a bit of a fixer upper, but with some paint and new flooring (which he can get for free from his uncle's flooring company, and he can install himself because he used to do that!) it could end up being really nice :) He's doing a walk-through tomorrow with a realtor. I'm so excited for him! Oh, and maybe a little for me because I won't have to feel weird always going to his mom's house lol.

lindsey, marry him in his fixer upper and you wont need to buy your own house in 15 years!!!!!

[Lindsey]

lindsey, marry him in his fixer upper and you wont need to buy your own house in 15 years!!!!!

Lol nah I don't think I'll ever get married :) I just want to spend my whole life travelling around the world with my dog! So I suppose me buying a house would be pointless anyway :)

[Tink]

Lindsey, the economy is insane in the real estate market.
People are getting in so deep that when the interest rates on those adjustable rate loans goes up they simply can't keep up and they're foreclosed on. A bank will tell you that you can afford 25% of your gross income for mortgage payments, but when you do, the house ends up owning you... it's a sad spot to be in when anything else comes up that you hadn't budgeted for. (And it will!)

I would not even want to buy right now. My first house... a 3 bedroom one bath on a city lot was $11,300. Of course back then we were making a lot less too! Our payment on a 20 yr loan was $103 a month and that was plenty to pay! LOL

Katie and Josh and Joel and Shannon all rent upstairs apartments in our small town and both couples pay $325 a month. That's pretty average for here. It really does vary greatly what part of the country you're located in. Most of the jobs here are in factories and the starting pay is $10- 13. an hr. which is what they all make.

[Lindsey]

Wow Tink, that rent seems pretty low! When I first moved here after high school, 4 of us shared a 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom house for $700 a month, which I thought was really expensive! Now I'm in a 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom duplex which is about a third the size of that house and we pay $1200 a month. It's hard to even find a one bedroom apartment for less than $1000.
If Kyle ends up with the house he's looking at today, mortgage payments for him would be around $1000 or maybe just a little less. He has two people (his cousin and a friend) who have agreed to move in with him and they'd each pay 1/3 of the mortgage for rent. Then if he saved up enough money to convert the basement into a suite, he could easily gain revenue from that, because the house is right near the tech college.

[DianaB]

In college communities the rent is always higher. I know that the rent around here is about like Tink's. My daughter's paying around $350 for her rent.

[Marilyn]

I am so thankful that we build our house 31 years ago. I honestly don't know if we could afford the newer homes. Prices have gone through the roof, I think. To give you all a better idea...when we married in 1974 we bought a two bedroom house trailer on an acre of land with a two car garage for $8500. Yes...you read that right....$8500.

In 1977 we moved our trailer to the side yard and built our 2 bedroom house. We have a mudroom, two bedrooms, kitchen, living room and family room and built it all for $23,000. About 10 years ago, we built on another bedroom and bathroom. Guess we were very lucky, compared to what newlyweds are up against now...huh?

Janet, your story sounds a bit like ours. We lived in apartments when we first married then bought a brand new 2 bedroom trailer for just over $5,000 and parked it in the middle of my parents pasture. That would have been around 1975. We had an old calf pen for a back yard, and the water supply to a cattle trough was diverted for our water supply. We had a simple septic tank and a propane tank, and we lived very economically. We ate from my parent's garden and they would butcher a calf and split it with us. Our trailer payment was $58 per month. We lived there for about three years. Hubby worked construction as a cement finisher while I went to college and we used all our money extra money to build a house. It took us almost three years to build our first home. We bought 3 acres for $7,000, and paid as we went, didn't borrow a penny. $45,000 and three years we had a three bedroom 1-1/2 bath home that we sold a few years later for $95,000. Oh and when we sold the trailer, they had gone up in price, so we sold it for just about what we had paid for it.

Those were the days....

We skrimped, but honestly it was the best thing we ever did to get us started.

[Janet]

Same here Marilyn...money was tight, but we skrimped and saved. My husband, myself and my husbands uncle built our house. It took the three of us a little over 7 weeks to get it done. I think our first payment was $110 a month and I think together we made around $10,000 that year. Can you imagine living on $10,000 a year?...LOL ...thank goodness we both kept getting better, higher paying jobs.

[DianaB]

Both of you sound a lot like us when we first got married. First we rented a small 2 bedroom house from my parents but decided that the $60 rent could go towards something of our own. We bought a trailer house for $6,000 (we sold it for $5,700!!!)and set it on some land that my husband's parents owned (we started buying it from them sometime around this same time). After 3 1/2 years we rented some ground that had a house that came with it. It wasn't much but over the years we fixed it up and it wasn't too bad. We planned on living there for a few years and then building but we had a really bad year that set us back financially for a long time. We ended up living there for 19 years before we finally built our home in 1999 which was a really good thing. The flood last year would have ruined everything! It was over my head in the old house (we were able to buy the old house and ground a few years after we had moved out of it.) We had a couple of guys come and build our house. My husband doesn't like working with wood. It's not the fanciest but it's mine!!!!