Die bittere Wahrheit ist, dass billigere Wohnung eine Altersvorsorgekrise für Hausbesitzer bedeutet
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-housing-prices-retirement-plan-middle-class/?rdt_cid=5613774159697115391&utm_campaign=Consideration&utm_id=1&utm_medium=FacebookAd&utm_source=offsite&utm_term=RetirementCrisis
9 Kommentare
The frank fact here is that scaffolding high home values has *allowed* for the gradual weakening of both our public pension system and our private pensions.
The idea that the average home becoming affordable to the average Canadian means a retirement crisis is somewhat true, but it’s only true *because our government has ruled out the sorts of policies which would fund retirements through CCP, and the kinds of policies which would strengthen and proliferate unions to make private pensions as common as they were in our grandparants‘ day.*
We’re currently backed into a corner that we’ve chosen to step into. Our government is ignoring a significant option that would free us from that tight spot, because these solutions would benefit current and future Canadian pensioners at the direct expense of Canada’s wealthiest decile.
Weakening of our public pension? Our pensions are more overfunded than ever thanks to their tech investments. We need a transfer from the old and rich to the young. Lower housing price is the way to do that. Someone has to pay.
Oh no the horror! Homeowners who put all their money into their house instead of being smart and putting it into something that is historically much safer than housing might lose their retirement nest egg!!! Oh no please we can’t possibly let the generations who have struggled the least go through this hardship! Won’t the government please think of the boomers!
Seriously who actually cares if these people lose their retirement funds, if you’re dumb enough to bet on the value of your house only going up then you deserve to lose that money
Why? They have a roof over their heads, food in their belly and money for extras. With basic CPP/OAS, even with the high utilities, you should still be able to have a decent life.
Maybe not flying all over for holidays or having to save up for those holidays.
>In B.C., where the average house price is about $1-million, and Ontario, where it is roughly $860,000, a dramatic decrease in prices of 40 to 50 per cent is needed to restore affordability, given the median after-tax household income in Canada is $70,500. **But this would cut retirement income by thousands annually for homeowners depending on their home equity to finance their later years.**
So people that don’t own yet should just be screwed and forced to deal with higher prices because the people who were able to buy during some of the best times to buy a house won’t get an infinite-money generator? Nah, screw that. Let the market crash.
A big problem with prices going down is that new construction won’t pencil out because building costs are too high. Lowering interest rates or reducing permitting times will help lower financing costs. Lowering development charges will also help. But a bigger problem is that construction in North American isn’t seeing productivity gains.
If you see a huge price crash in metros it’s going to be because people no longer want to move to cities, which is really bad for the cities and likely means the country is in a bad recession.
How many times will this G&M article get recycled on Reddit?
In another sub-reddit (I will leave it to someone else to find it) a post did a really good analysis showing that most boomers are not relying on the extra value in their homes as retirement nest eggs. The extra value is a nice surprise but not integral to their original retirement plans. There are people who have borrowed against their home value but the overall impact on the economy will be small.
A more interesting discussion is how you get boomers to move out of their homes to allow development, intensification so that all those new units can be built and drive down the price of homes.
Edit: We’re one of them. Extra value is nice but we want to stay where we are in an area where our property would be quickly redeveloped into at least 4 and up to 12 units.
Articles like this are fantasies. NOTHING is going to drop the current price of housing that much. Not unless there some literal catastrophe like a zombie apocalypse.
Housing affordability means scaling up construction and building the kind of dense housing that is cheap because it’s small, and building lots of apartment buildings. That could freeze housing until wages catch up. Talking about the consequences of a 50% drop in prices is like talking about the consequences of… a zombie apocalypse.
I’m not sure I understand the article.
How exactly are seniors depending on their homes for retirement? They either have to sell, reverse mortgage, or HELOCs to sustain a certain level of cashflow beyond OAS and CPP.
Aren’t we entering a phase where seniors are going to have to sell to fund their retirements? Won’t that put downward pressure on home prices if there are enough of them selling all at once? And for the seniors that have a good pension or fixed income stream of some sort then falling home prices don’t impact them as they feel no pressure to sell.
>Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security payments won’t suffice. The average CPP monthly payment is about $900 at age 65, while **OAS is essentially meant to assist the poorest seniors**.
I thought it was GIS that was meant to help the poorest?
Edit: There’s a lot of numbers that allude to something scary for seniors. But until someone models out how home price corrections are correlated with senior poverty this feels like fearmongering. Like does a 5% drop in home price mean an increase of 5% in seniors living below the poverty line. For all I know a 5% drop in home price means granny goes on a cruise every other year instead of every year.