Buying a house in Toronto? Prepare for a life of misery

Are you sure you want to buy a house in Toronto? Really? Maybe you haven’t thought this through.

The region’s house prices shot up 16.5 per cent in March yearover-year, bringing the average price of a home to $1.1 million. Detached houses in the 905 where exhausted commuter families might envision a more expansive existence saw the biggest jump of all.

In actual Toronto, where a two-income young family would in their heart of hearts most like to buy a detached home, you know, a small one near a subway station, prices jumped 19.2 per cent. According to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board, that means their dream house would cost $1.75 million, hardly possible for most young couples I know, or indeed couples.

Without a significant change in mortgage stress tests — what level of misery you can sustain — something painful might happen, as in a late 1980s-style collapse, that sends mortgage rates too high to contemplate without feeling dizzy and having to sit down whether there’s a chair available or not.

I’ve been through that. I measured out my days according to a document you will be given when you get your huge mortgage. It’s an amortization schedule that tells you how much you’ll pay in principal and interest for the life of the mortgage. That’s the life of you, and it isn’t peaceful.

You will learn, possibly to your surprise, that the deal is stacked so that you mostly pay the interest first. This means that initially you get almost nowhere. If you can prepay every now and then — I hope you insisted on that — the resultant savings will dwarf the payouts on the biggest investments you’ll ever make.

But it will mean no extras, no overseas travel, no fine dining, a scantier Christmas than your kids imagined, and an awareness of money that will cramp your life. In other words, it will mean life at a pandemic lockdown level for decades. If you are able to defer gratification — you learned your money skills from grandparents who survived the Depression — you’re good. But those skills have been discarded.

Are you sure you want to own a detached house in Toronto? I am distressed to see young people complain that they can’t get on the property “ladder,” like hamsters who can’t haul themselves onto that little wheel in the wilder corner of the cage. Is this what happened to Gen Z? They yearn for enclosure, entrapment, a zoo experience, a life in the no-fun zone?

Fine, but what kind of people put up their hand for that? Gen Zs are very conservative. It worries me. So you found a real estate agent to guide you around tiny bashed-up homes that smell vaguely of corn niblets. You suspect that whoever slept in the huge empty bed upstairs must have departed on a permanent basis and the putative heirs were too stingy to stage the place.

There are many funny little rooms, could be a sewing room, could be an informal child punishment centre. And a toilet at the base of the basement stairs. Not a bathroom, just a toilet. Is that a stuffed bird on the wall? Birds?

You are so traumatized that you wildly overbid on any house where the owners have painted everything white — floors, mirrors, door handles — and put out fresh peonies with the brokerage information package on the dining room table. The thick lawn appeared only yesterday but you don’t know that. The inspector you snuck in — they don’t allow inspectors — says asbestos is fine as long as you don’t disturb it.

And the house is yours. Well, it’s a fine mess you’ve got yourself into. You realize that everything you went through to get a house — the longing, saving, planning, spending, begging, bitching, overtime, marrying, quarrelling — was merely preamble.

Your life, your constricted life, has now formally begun. Your interests used to be jobs, friends, children, doing stuff. This will change. Furnaces. Furnace filters. Furnace filters and how often they should be replaced. Water pipe, meet tree root. Home offices and who gets the nice one. Chimney sheaths. Home security. Kitchens, kitchens, kitchens. Subway tile. Deck slippage. Raccoons. Wasp nests where you least expect them. Attic squirrels. OMG. Garter snakes in the washing machine (Manitoba only). Cable bills. Ikea. Flooring generally. Parking permit renewal. It was your turn. Blue bins. You’re supposed to squish the cans. Boxwood blight. Cedar shortage. Curb appeal. Or not. Neighbours. What is he doing? OMG. Brass is back. Open plan is over.

Finally it’s over. You paid off the mortgage. You want to downsize but your house, excitingly overpriced, sells for only slightly more than the condo you had your eye on. In other words, it’s a paper profit rather than a real one and sadly, everyone has to live somewhere.

Your heart sinks. You find that the only hugely profitable real estate deal possible will be your move to Kirkland Lake. Or Bracebridge. Those frantic mortgage decades were the best years of your life. The journey, not the arrival, is what matters.