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I don’t wish to pry in asking this but… How do you afford something that high? Were you coming into this with a trust fund or are you one of those 300k+ per ye

I don’t wish to pry in asking this but… How do you afford something that high? Were you coming into this with a trust fund or are you one of those 300k+ per year engineers? I make 130k and feel my 220k mortgage (7.5% interest sadly) is scary. Every time I watch one of those House Hunter type shows in Canada or just look at the home prices in my old home in Charleston I’m boggled by purchases.

rconti 3y ago
if you plug those numbers into an affordability calculator, you'll see that 18k/130k is very very very sane. I mean, I've paid that much in rent on less income.
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mabbo 3y ago
No, this was all our money. But we're a double STEM couple with no kids (at the time). We're also the most boring people you'll ever meet, so our expenses are low. We saved up a 20% down payment after a few years together. And interest rates were 2.5% at the time, so the payments were manageable. The long and short is "make lots of money and live like you don't". (That said, a year ago I was a 300+ developer, which is part of how we paid off the rest of the mortgage in 7 years.)
- brailsafe 3y ago
  I didn't even think it was realistic to get above 200k CAD in Canada, but now it's not even realistic to land a job. Strange time in this country. Beautiful summer here in BC though :)
  - mabbo 3y ago
    There's a few companies offering good money, when hiring starts again. There's the typical Amazon, Google, Uber who pay decently (though Google is only in Waterloo and no remote). Shopify was paying well because they wanted to grow quickly and outbid on top talent elsewhere, but that blew up in their face (I was in the 20% laid off in May). 2 years ago Instacart offered me a ridiculous total comp for remote Canada, but it was mostly paper money- pre-IPO stock that will be worth something, someday, maybe.
    - gloryjulio 3y ago
      Instacart has claw back clause. So if you happened to be laid off or piped, your paper money will become paper
    - clandry94 3y ago
      Google is in Montreal, too
    - brailsafe 3y ago
      Ya, it's just tough out there. I was laid off in April, haven't worked for a Canadian company since 2020. We'll see how it goes.
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  So that means you only put down 118,000 CAD and you were leveraged up Your family wealth didn't increase by 72,000 CAD/year it increased by 135,000 CAD/year but I see, you paid it off. you didn't have to, the option was to just make the minimum payments and sell, could have used your big income for other things but now I'm just reminded why its not interesting to listen to boring (your words) mortgage holders.
grecy 3y ago
> How do you afford something that high? Another simple answer is to have renters. It's not glamorous, it means people are in your space, but when it's necessary, it's necessary.
molsongolden 3y ago
Some of this might be your expectation of housing costs? A 220k mortgage, even at 7.5% interest, is still affordable on a 130k salary. This works out to < 25% of your after-tax income which is pretty average or maybe lower than average (unsure if most affordability stats are quoting pre or post-tax income).
- losteric 3y ago
  tbh the hypernormalization of needing to go in debt and pay interest for a home is extremely scary, regardless of the rate
  - hylaride 3y ago
    It's been that way for almost a hundred years. It's not so scary when interest rates and values have stayed relatively steady (as they have in most of the post-ww2 era in inflation-adjusted terms). All that seems to have fallen apart around the year 2000 (when interest rates were made lower than they should have been).
    - maxerickson 3y ago
      To the extent that government tinkering in the lending market ends up making housing more expensive, we should at least treat it as a policy failure.
- kahnclusions 3y ago
  I don’t understand what that 220k mortgage actually bought… a broom closet? A parking space? A tiny house in a countryside town far from anywhere?
  - madphilosopher 3y ago
    The 220k is the value of the mortgage and not the original purchase price; there was most likely a downpayment at time of purchase. Or, they recently renewed their mortgage and the remaining amount owing is 220k.

rconti 3y ago

if you plug those numbers into an affordability calculator, you'll see that 18k/130k is very very very sane. I mean, I've paid that much in rent on less income.

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mabbo 3y ago

No, this was all our money. But we're a double STEM couple with no kids (at the time). We're also the most boring people you'll ever meet, so our expenses are low. We saved up a 20% down payment after a few years together. And interest rates were 2.5% at the time, so the payments were manageable. The long and short is "make lots of money and live like you don't". (That said, a year ago I was a 300+ developer, which is part of how we paid off the rest of the mortgage in 7 years.)

brailsafe 3y ago
I didn't even think it was realistic to get above 200k CAD in Canada, but now it's not even realistic to land a job. Strange time in this country. Beautiful summer here in BC though :)
- mabbo 3y ago
  There's a few companies offering good money, when hiring starts again. There's the typical Amazon, Google, Uber who pay decently (though Google is only in Waterloo and no remote). Shopify was paying well because they wanted to grow quickly and outbid on top talent elsewhere, but that blew up in their face (I was in the 20% laid off in May). 2 years ago Instacart offered me a ridiculous total comp for remote Canada, but it was mostly paper money- pre-IPO stock that will be worth something, someday, maybe.
  - gloryjulio 3y ago
    Instacart has claw back clause. So if you happened to be laid off or piped, your paper money will become paper
  - clandry94 3y ago
    Google is in Montreal, too
  - brailsafe 3y ago
    Ya, it's just tough out there. I was laid off in April, haven't worked for a Canadian company since 2020. We'll see how it goes.
yieldcrv 3y ago
So that means you only put down 118,000 CAD and you were leveraged up Your family wealth didn't increase by 72,000 CAD/year it increased by 135,000 CAD/year but I see, you paid it off. you didn't have to, the option was to just make the minimum payments and sell, could have used your big income for other things but now I'm just reminded why its not interesting to listen to boring (your words) mortgage holders.

grecy 3y ago

> How do you afford something that high? Another simple answer is to have renters. It's not glamorous, it means people are in your space, but when it's necessary, it's necessary.

molsongolden 3y ago

Some of this might be your expectation of housing costs? A 220k mortgage, even at 7.5% interest, is still affordable on a 130k salary. This works out to < 25% of your after-tax income which is pretty average or maybe lower than average (unsure if most affordability stats are quoting pre or post-tax income).

losteric 3y ago
tbh the hypernormalization of needing to go in debt and pay interest for a home is extremely scary, regardless of the rate
- hylaride 3y ago
  It's been that way for almost a hundred years. It's not so scary when interest rates and values have stayed relatively steady (as they have in most of the post-ww2 era in inflation-adjusted terms). All that seems to have fallen apart around the year 2000 (when interest rates were made lower than they should have been).
  - maxerickson 3y ago
    To the extent that government tinkering in the lending market ends up making housing more expensive, we should at least treat it as a policy failure.
kahnclusions 3y ago
I don’t understand what that 220k mortgage actually bought… a broom closet? A parking space? A tiny house in a countryside town far from anywhere?
- madphilosopher 3y ago
  The 220k is the value of the mortgage and not the original purchase price; there was most likely a downpayment at time of purchase. Or, they recently renewed their mortgage and the remaining amount owing is 220k.