So my rental basement suite, I rent out for 1200 in a major Canadian city. The house is worth 650,000. A mortgage on that house at todays interest rates would be 3650. Insurance is another 150. Property taxes are 300. So monthly fixed costs of ownership are 4100. But there's always something to fix so add on a very modest 300 a month for that and 4400 is a reasonably moderate estimate.
SO explain to me how the person who now pays 1200 a month is going to come up with more than THREE times their rent per month to buy a house. And theres no way that house is dropping so far down in value that 1200 is anywhere close to being able to buy it, even if it lost HALF its value. Give me your solution to how that would work.
Mom and pop landlords provide the cheapest rentals on the market. Our investment in rental housing is absolutely necessary in providing a place for those on the lowest budgets.
Who pays for that? The taxpayer, which means a MASSIVE increase in taxes because the average house in Canada is now about 700,000.
Lets say the gov wants to buy 1000 homes in a city, thats 700,000,000. How much do you think taxes would have to go up to spend nearly 3/4 of a billion dollars for 1000 homes in a major city? If they did that in 30 Canadian cities thats 21,000,000,000.
21 TRILLION DOLLARS! Currently Canadas entire national debt (the highest in Canadas history) is 1.4 trillion. So you'd have to make it 15 times bigger to buy those houses. If everyone taxes TRIPLED we couldn't pay that off.
You think thats workable? Not a chance. And thats just for 1000 homes per city. Vancouver for example currently has about 125,000 rentals, Toronto has 550,000 rentals so 1000 is barely a drop in the bucket.
Amazing the things that one can come up with when one doesnt do the math.