Expensive homes

The Demographia International Housing Affordability Study was released Jan. 25th.  It confirmed that homes here and in Vancouver are too expensive for an ordinary family to buy.  In all the world, only Hong Kong has more expensive housing than Vancouver.  Some median house prices are listed as:  Vancouver - $678,500; Abbotsford - $443,700; Victoria - $417,300; Kelowna - 385,100; Toronto - $406,400; Saskatoon - $274,700; and Calgary - $353,700.  The writers of this report use this information to argue against restrictions on land use; saying that prices are down in places like Atlanta and Houston because they have less intrusive policies on land use.

If you are interested in economic policies, I recommend you check out Jay's blog, The Seen and the Unseen, at:  http://www.theseenandtheunseen.com/

Doesn't look like any of my children are buying a first-time home any time soon.  Sorry.  I have always thought that the best investment Mom and I ever made was the purchase of our home (except for our children of course).  We always put a higher percentage of our income into our home than we needed to because we thought owning our own home was so important.  It worked for us but these days I don't know if the rules have changed or not.

On a closely related topic, I attended a meeting at our local library (organized by the Friends of the Library to which we belong) where I listened to Carl Zanon who told us how to go on line to find the bcassessment.ca site where we could compare our recently mailed property assessments to those of our neighbours.  Not every property is fairly assessed.  Gratefully our property, assessed below our local median, is in the lower range of our neighbours.  Another way to compare is in how much our assessment changes in comparison to others.  Locally, the assessments have gone down in value an average of 2%.  Ours went down 5%, so that is good for us too--as long as we aren't selling, and we aren't.

My bit of wisdom: Be patient and watch closely.  Like anything else, prudent use of money, money management, or wise purchases, all take effort to research and sort out.  Decisions require more wisdom than most of us have so ask for help from others, and in the end ask Heavenly Father.