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In today’s age of inflated housing prices and looming bubbles, shadow selling, house flipping and trading, the real estate supply in Canada is beginning to look and act a whole lot more like precious metals than necessary dwellings for you and your family.
“Parts of the HRM are certainly still affordable with an average sold price below $250,000,” says Shannon Gavin, a PropertyGuys.com franchise owner in HRM. “…A couple, both earning full-time minimum wage, with some savings, can afford home ownership. Take the Woodlawn area of Dartmouth for instance.”
According to real estate numbers The Coast crunched from viewpoint.ca and the Canadian Real Estate Association’s average price map, Halifax is looking pretty happy relative to other provincial capitals when it comes to housing costs compared to average income.
Price-to-income ratio—a simplified measure of housing affordability—says that your home should be around three times more than your yearly income. According to Statistics Canada, the average weekly earnings for a Nova Scotian working full-time, across all major industries, was $903 in June. That’s an average salary $43,334.
Although there is no municipal district in or near the Halifax core where average home prices are as low as $130,001 (three times the average Nova Scotian’s yearly earnings), HRM is still one of the most affordable capitals in Canada.
To purchase a home in Dartmouth, you’d need to make a minimum $23,634 yearly. At the top-end, Halifax’s illustrious south-end homes sell for an average of $503,961. You would need to make $66,870 annually to afford the average south-end home.
In contrast, a home buyer in Vancouver would need to make at least $140,000 per year, along with dropping an over $100,000 down payment on their investment—just 10 percent of the average home price, which was $1,026,207 in July.
The average weekly income across all major industries in British Columbia is just $1,072, which is just $51,474 per year (or $8,140 more annually on average than Nova Scotians make).
Despite the good margins, Gavin doesn’t feel HRM is totally in a buyer’s market just yet.
“Sure, in some areas we are, but certain neighbourhoods have definitely leaned in to a more stable market, where there is less inventory but buyers are waiting for that special home,” she says.
It’s a similar story from RBC’s Canadian Housing Affordability index, which compares median pre-tax household incomes required for mortgage payments, property taxes and utilities for the average single-family detached home/condo across the county. The latest report from June found Vancouver and Toronto continuing their skyrocketing trend away from affordability, while Halifax dropped to its most affordable housing levels since the mid-‘80s. The level of activity in our region remains worryingly soft, though, coming in at 12 percent below the 10-year average according to RBC.
What does the future of HRM’s real estate look like? Gavin isn’t making any dramatic predictions one way or another.
“I think we will see a fairly stable market that continues to have its natural ebbs and flows.”
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This article appears in Sep 22-28, 2016.
What kind of fucking math are these wankers using? At 66k/year you couldn’t hope to afford a 400-500k house, not a chance if you wanna eat. Even 2 incomes of 66k would have a hard time affording a house at that price. Just a a quick trip to RBC mortgage calculator and with a 450k house with a down payment of 50k, your mortgage would be 2299/month, and that’s with no property taxes included. That means your monthly payment before any bills would be 2600-2700/month. Just how do we deem this affordable at 66k/year? It’s irresponsible for professionals to tell people making such small salaries they can afford that kind of life. You want a real estate crash? Just keep telling people they can afford houses they really can’t.
This seems more like an advertisement to get people addicted to the thought of being able to afford that half a million dollar dream home. Imagine that, banks and real estate agents working together so they can make mucho money off poor suckers starting their lives off with crushing debt. People making money off you do not have your best interests in mind, and this is living proof.
LOLS, according to this, someone making min wage can afford a house. Um, yeah. Fuck me, because those people tend to have enough extra cash kicking around to save up for the downpayment… too funny.
It doesn’t really say how anyone’s supposed to actually save up for that 20% down payment though, between student loans, bills, and high rent costs. According to this, I’d be able to buy a house at the wage I’m at right now, but realistically I have about $100/month left over after rent, bills, food, etc. How am I supposed to be able to save up $70,000 for a $350,000 house?
You need to consider this EXPLICITLY says given a 20 per cent down payment with 3 per cent interest over five years. No one rightfully believes a minimum wage employee will purchase a 500K house as a starter home. Also this is looking at HRM — where houses, on average aren’t $450-500K, they’re sitting around $175-$200, give or take the area.
Say someone buys a $200,000 home here in HRM, making minimum wage, and puts $40,000 (or 20 per cent as the article clearly states) down. According to the RBC mortgage calculator you seem to love so much, at 3 per cent interest (also explicitly stated in the article) over five years, your MONTHLY mortgage payment is $757.20. Multiply that by 12 and tell me that someone making minimum wage, full time (around $30K+ a year) can’t afford to spend $9,086.40 on payments to OWN a house here in HRM.
It’s feasible so don’t bitch for the sake of bitching.
No one expects minimum wage workers to afford $50K down payment on a mortgage. This article just says someone, who budgets and works full-time minimum can afford to live here and own for less than renting an apartment.
Someone should have read this and asked “does this align with reality”. Because it clearly doesn’t.
with the majority of nova scotians making minimum wage.. its not affordable
I like the fact that most these houses that are for sale are 50+ years old , have not been updated one bit but yet they are still appreciating in value even though a person may have bought it for 100K back in the day.
You want new generations to buy old outdated houses that have wall paper, unfinished basements old electrical and plumbing, roofs that need replacing siding that’s all moldy, kitchens with old style thin pine cupboards etc etc.
All in all these people wont budge from their asking prices either, I have seen the same house up for sale for 4 years they were asking 250k+ for a 3 bed 1 bath a fenced in yard where the wood fence is falling over smelled old and musty and obvious signs of neglect and in need of repairs.
But nope agents say the house is worth that. Come on people.