For context, I am obviously not a Vancouver real estate guru and frankly I'm not a huge fan of living in a city, but I could not believe our trip to Vancouver this month. We were there for a wedding in North Vancouver and found an Airbnb not too far from the venue. The owners lived in the house and were using the Airbnb option to help with the mortgage. I would guess the house was in the 1.3-1.5 million range and definitely needed some work, but was on a nice lot. They also had another tenant in the basement. The owners had a young family and apparently stayed with their parents when the house was rented out. I really could not believe that people would see this as a realistic option, but I guess it is not uncommon.
One of the couples were renting a basement suite down the street and it was likely a $2 million home. Again, fairly nice house, but not overly big on a nice lot. The owners were also a young family and couldn't afford the mortgage without tenants. The shocking part to me was can you imagine a property in Calgary worth $2 million that would have tenants? My guess is most properties worth over $1.5 million in Calgary probably almost fully paid for or have very small mortgages.
Anyways, it was a really eye opening experience and tough to imagine making a go of it there.
|