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Undead said:
I think OP's point was that one must be essentially rich these days to afford a detached house whereas before it used to be well within reach for most of the middle class (even the lower middle class). In fact, the first part of your post suggests exactly that.

The average detached house across the city is $1.8m. That suggests a down payment of 360k (about 2.5 times the average down people make); and an annual income of 400k (4 times the average household) to qualify for that mortgage.
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Agree, but that just about exactly the opposite of what was said.

I realize this is a Toronto forum, but there's a lot of broad brushing going one when folks refer to any SFH or "city" in general. The whole world isn't Toronto. The rent vs. own equation, including the respective costs of each, can vary widely across the country. A quick review of online data shows that SFHs in many other Canadian cities are comparatively quite reasonable.
 
MisterF said:
It's something that our society tried to normalize in the last century but it was never sustainable or reasonable in the long run. We'd have to have much lower density and a lot more sprawl for that to work, and even then it doesn't pay for itself. Toronto was also a much smaller city then.

The norm for cities is for most of the population to live in some form of apartment. The dream of the middle class all having detached houses was never realistic.
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You can have decent density with a significant mix of SFH if you don't design around the car. Houten is a mostly low-rise SFH suburb in NL with 50k people in a built up area of 5 km2. 10k per km2 is quite dense, and enough to support decent transit. And it has a lot of greenspace, maybe not always well-allocated--I'm not a big fan of big grassy verges on roads. I'd rather the green space were in people-oriented spaces and parks.

We could have this pattern of development, but it requires building greenfield communities around transit and active transportation from day one. I think most suburbanites would actually find it decently appealing as it still has a certain sleepy small town quality, and there are even some big box stores. If/when we eventually have transport as a service/autonomy, I think it makes it even easier to be car-light in the neighbourhood design and cuts down on the need for garages etc.
 
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lenaitch said:
I realize this is a Toronto forum, but there's a lot of broad brushing going one when folks refer to any SFH or "city" in general. The whole world isn't Toronto. The rent vs. own equation, including the respective costs of each, can vary widely across the country. A quick review of online data shows that SFHs in many other Canadian cities are comparatively quite reasonable.
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Maybe compared to Toronto, but not necessarily local salaries. Don't get me wrong: I'm not against detached houses, even in a major city. They just have to be a little more urban like @afransen described. And not near major transit stations.
 
afransen said:
You can have decent density with a significant mix of SFH if you don't design around the car. Houten is a mostly low-rise SFH suburb in NL with 50k people in a built up area of 5 km2. 10k per km2 is quite dense, and enough to support decent transit. And it has a lot of greenspace, maybe not always well-allocated--I'm not a big fan of big grassy verges on roads. I'd rather the green space were in people-oriented spaces and parks.

We could have this pattern of development, but it requires building greenfield communities around transit and active transportation from day one. I think most suburbanites would actually find it decently appealing as it still has a certain sleepy small town quality, and there are even some big box stores. If/when we eventually have transport as a service/autonomy, I think it makes it even easier to be car-light in the neighbourhood design and cuts down on the need for garages etc.
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For sure, car infrastructure takes a huge amount of space. I don't know about Houten but large parts of pre-1950 Toronto are made up of singles, semis, etc., which works because there's not much space wasted accommodating cars. But even in those areas the majority of housing is apartments.
 
evandyk said:
Almost anyone who bought a house in Toronto more than 8-10 years ago has a net worth of over a million dollars. Unless they got a line of credit and spent it, which still makes them rich.
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And anyone with healthy organs is rich, they’re walking around with half a million $ kidneys, for example. You need to live somewhere and you need your organs. It’s money outside of your primary residence that decides IMO your wealth.
 
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MisterF said:
For sure, car infrastructure takes a huge amount of space. I don't know about Houten but large parts of pre-1950 Toronto are made up of singles, semis, etc., which works because there's not much space wasted accommodating cars. But even in those areas the majority of housing is apartments.
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I live in Cabbagetown and we have lots of cars in a tight amount of space and yet is seems to work for pedestrians and cyclists.
 
evandyk said:
Yeah, but you need like 2 million dollars to live there. Almost nobody can afford that!
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T’wasn‘t always so. In 1998 this place was under $300k, or about five times our household income of the time. No way my kids will have 2 million, so I suppose we’ll give this place to one of the spawn.
 
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Admiral Beez said:
I live in Cabbagetown and we have lots of cars in a tight amount of space and yet is seems to work for pedestrians and cyclists.
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Absolutely. But my point is that a neighbourhood like Cabbagetown doesn't have a lot of space dedicated to cars compared to more recently developed suburbs. It has narrower streets, hardly any surface parking lots, smaller setbacks, etc. The fact that it's built for walking and transit allows space to be used much more efficiently, so even with a lot of low rise housing it's still relatively dense.
 
I imagine part of the reason why Cabbagetown is so valuable is that it is illegal to create new supply of neighbourhoods of that built form.
 
I think that analysis is a bit simplistic, as interest rates are an important determinant of affordability. Rates were much higher in the 80s and 90s than they were in the post-2008 period. Of course, rates are normalizing so we should expect price:income to revert to mean as well, but going back to 'historical values' from a time with 10-15% rates is unrealistic. If we do, it will become very profitable to be a landlord.
 
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