LACKIE: Take that real-estate ridicule elsewhere, please and thanks


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Someone asked me this week if young Canadians are simply “too addicted to debt.”

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I will add that it was in the context of a discussion on the current state of our real estate market presently, you may have heard, in the midst of a “recalibration” following two years of absolutely mind-blowing activity that somehow carried us through to global pandemic.

The implication being that the Canadians now squeezed by gajillion dollar mortgages in the rising-rate-and-declining-value environment are essentially on par with that dude from high school who thinks it’s cool to spend the bulk of his monthly income on a leased Range Rover while living in a basement apartment complete with mattress on the floor.

It’s not the same.

People have been lamenting the mounting unaffordability of Toronto real estate for years and years and years, but it was really the pandemic market in which things descended into lunacy, with the House Price Index up by 62% at the peak from where it was just three years ago pre-pandemic.

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But now that we are rapidly coming down off of that February peak, the throngs of largely Millennial and Gen Z first-time buyers who somehow managed to get in by jumping in are now finding themselves the subject of scorn and ridicule.

Someone please make it make sense.

I would maybe understand it if we were limiting the discussion to the casual investors who were driven by greed overleveraged themselves, but the keyboard critics don’t seem to make any distinction.

How many years have people been describing Toronto as a bubble waiting to burst? My friend’s parents thought it was a smart move to cash out at what they were absolutely certain was the peak in 2007 — that same home in midtown just traded last fall for three times what they sold for (and that’s following both the 2008 and 2017 downturns , thank you very much).

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When a global pandemic didn’t actually burst the bubble but instead only served to accelerate it, buyers were quite literally watching the market outpace their capacity to save. Hence the FOMO — which may have been partially driven by a desire to catch the rock-bottom rates, but more so, I would argue, about not missing the moment and being priced out forever.

Do you know how many clients I have worked with that were waiting until finding a suitable home before starting a family? Who would have been thrilled with a condo if they could find one that was actually suitable for three human people including babies who sleep? Or wished that renting didn’t mean being at the mercy of a landlord that can sell your home out from under you pretty much at any moment?

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These people I’m referring to weren’t casually day trading real estate, they were searching for a home, including all of the intangible, non-monetary benefits that comes alongside that security.

Those who purchased at what we now understand to be the peak of the market will almost universally acknowledge that they spent far more than they ever wanted to but found little alternative. Their budgets likely started out somewhere on the low end of what the bank preapproved but incrementally grew with each unsuccessful offer. Maybe they were fortunate and the Bank of Mom and Dad was able to pitch in. Or maybe they decided that cutting out Ubers and dinners out was worth it to make the numbers work. After all, let’s not forget that we have the stress test to keep us safe!

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Sure, hindsight being 20/20 and all, it may be easy to Monday morning quarterback it, but the clear sense of delight detectable in the comments under pretty much any online article about this “correction” is enough to make me want to scream.

Scream.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term schadenfreude refers to the “pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune” And sure, there’s lots to unpack when looking at all that has transpired around us over the past two and a half years. But maligning a whole generation of young people who weren’t satisfied to be shut out of a fundamental human right ain’t it, friends. Please, oh please, redirect that scorn towards our politicians who created, sustained and tacitly approved of these appalling conditions in the first place.

On Twitter: @brynnlackie

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