My fifth oped in Canada’s Globe & Mail newspaper. Again, it hit a bit of a nerve, probably because it’s about house prices and everyone seems to love talking about house prices. My focus this time was on housing affordability and the reason why increasing supply (of whatever type & tenure) will likely do nothing to reduce housing costs. It’s called “The big problem with housing affordability? Real estate is still a valuable asset”:
“I live in Toronto, and I rent. It was a deliberate choice when I first moved here in 2011, but now it’s not. I recently worked out that our family could buy a house valued at about $720,000 on our current rent: nothing close to the cost of a house on our street, currently selling for around double that. If we want to stay where we are – close to the subway, good schools and more – we can continue paying rent, or we can double our housing costs by buying in the neighbourhood. Buying would mean we’d be paying about 40 per cent to 50 per cent of our disposable income on housing, which is common in Toronto.”
Read the rest here.