If the monthly cost was the same, would you rather pay to rent a property, or pay down a mortgage and own it? Here in Canada right now, the real estate market is reeling from unchecked immigration and a recent sudden interest rate jump. The overcrowded rental scene is heating up even more, as people try to dump their houses into a cooling market, and it is now CHEAPER to own than to rent!

The comparison

The house in question is a typical 3 bedroom 2 bathroom home, older but in decent condition, within my region (Okanagan BC Canada), with a front lawn and backyard garden, suitable for a couple with 2 children. The house should be able to be found within a few weeks of searching.

Buying

It can be bought with a 5% down-payment ($20000), at mid-market fixed interest rate, and $2400 per month for 25 years. About $300 per month would cover property taxes, putting total costs to own at $2700 CAD ($2075 USD) per month, not including utilities or insurance.

Renting

It can be rented with a 3 month damage deposit ($8400), and monthly payment of $2800 ($2155 USD), not including utilities or insurance.

In both cases, you will have to prove your income is sufficient to pay the monthly bills, but in the case of the rental, the owner of the house can also ask you personal question and turn you away if they don't like your look, smell, attitude, ethnicity, gender, beliefs, age, and so on. While the bank only cares you've got a steady job, the landlord wants to know everything about you and will reject you for the slightest of reasons. They don't need you - there are 10 people waiting behind you to apply for the unit. You also have to abide by their rules, such as restrictions on guests, on use of the yard/facilities, noise, and so on. In the rental, you can't do construction, landscaping, or remodeling. The owner of the house can enter for various reasons, do regular inspections, show your place to prospective buyers, evict you for various reasons (through no fault of your own), sell the house to someone else, etc. It's never yours, even after 25 years of making the monthly payment.

Renting has so many drawbacks, and lately, it's even more expensive than buying! Why would anyone choose to rent?

• they believe the housing market is about to crash, and are sitting on the sidelines
• they can't afford the $20000 down payment (but can afford a 3 month damage deposit of $8400)
• they don't qualify for a mortgage

If you don't have a steady job, you can't get a mortgage, even if you have income or savings to cover the monthly payments! That's the main reason people rent instead of own.

Currently we're seeing housing prices fall at the same time as rental costs are shooting upward. Rent has doubled in the past couple years, whereas housing prices have been cooling since their peak early this year.

Keep in mind, when renters who can afford to buy a house see their rent getting as high as a mortgage payment, some switch from renting to buying. "Why pay off someone else's mortgage, if I could be paying off my own?" That means there's a mechanism which keeps rental prices from getting too much higher than mortgage payments.

My situation

My wife and I have been renting the house we're in for 3 years, but the owner just decided to sell it, so we're looking for somewhere else nearby. We both have physical disabilities making regular work impossible, but have guaranteed monthly income, and have learned to stretch it so that it pays the bills.

They say you should never pay more than 1/3 of your income toward housing costs, but nowadays that isn't possible. For years, we've put at least half our income into paying the rent. $2700 would be about 2/3 of our monthly income! But we would be willing and able to make that happen, in exchange for a safe and stable place to care for our little son and baby daughter.

So, we could potentially afford to pay a mortgage of $2700, and still have enough for groceries, diapers, medicine, clothing, etc. It would be tight, but having a place of our own would make it worthwhile, and I would grow a garden full of food to help bring down costs.

But we simply don't qualify for a mortgage because we don't have steady jobs. The bank literally has a computer, which the banker inputs your data into, and the replies you give to various questions, and then it spits out a yes or no answer. No steady job, no mortgage. Nothing else really matters but that regular paycheck.

I remember as a small business owner in the 2000s, trying to get loans based on my eBay income. I made good money, but I didn't have an employer. I could make the payments, but I didn't receive regular paychecks. Nowadays there are probably more services for people like that, but back then, I was a trailblazer. They had no idea what category to put me in, and eventually just rejected me, and I've been a renter ever since.

Unfortunately, most landlords also won't accept tenants who don't have steady jobs, even if they can make the payments! Ads for rentals sometimes even say "full-time working professional only". If you're sometimes at home during the day, they don't want you! There's a massive superiority complex going on with landlords, and you really have to impress them and "be good enough" to get accepted. If you seem too private, and like you're not going to let them come in whenever they want to, they reject you. If you seem like a cannabis user, they reject you (even if you have a prescription for it, and never ever smoke anything, like @MediKatie). If you don't show them the proper respect, they reject you. In this market, you need them, they don't need you.

So even if I'm willing to pay the same (or more) to rent, instead of own, I don't have a steady job, and landlords will reject my family and I. I definitely can't buy, and it's nearly impossible to find someone who will rent to me. It's pretty incredible to have $34k ($26k USD) to spend on housing, every year, and still not be able to find something. We are a couple months away from being kicked out onto the street, with pockets full of money.

Sometimes, it feels like they want a renter who is so rich, they really don't need to be renting. Why should a "full-time working professional" even need to rent a little apartment off someone else, shouldn't someone like that be able to afford their own place? Landlords are incredibly entitled, and believe they deserve to have their mortgage paid off by the renter, as well as some profit on top... just because they're involved. They don't want to do any repairs, they don't want to handle any problems, they just want to be paid. And to be able to decide who gets the privilege of paying them. They love to choose who is good enough to pay off their loan - and then get kicked to the curb.

So many people are renting right now, and so many people are homeless, that EVERY available rental storage unit in my area is full. I recently called every storage business in town, trying to help a friend, but there was NOTHING. So if you end up without a place, and have to put your belongings in storage for a while, you're out of luck unless you have a friend with an empty garage.

There's just nowhere to put people, and nowhere to put stuff. Construction all around, all the time, but nothing is ever available. Most buildings are pre-rented before they're built, set up as SROs (single resident occupancy) for crack addicts from Vancouver, or immigrants flown in from Syria.

Immigration

I feel badly for other Canadians out there, trying to find somewhere to live. There just aren't enough bedrooms to accommodate all the humans within our borders. More are being built all the time, but our rate of immigration (most of it illegal) is so high, we can't keep up. People who have never paid taxes in Canada, who arrived illegally, who say they hate Western culture, are given "protected persons status" and provided with a really nice place to live. They get all their other needs met as well. They obtain this by walking across the border or being flown in on refugee planes from Africa and the middle East. Once all the houses and apartments are filled up, they start putting these people up in hotels. It's ridiculously expensive.

Imagine if I wanted to go to Syria, all-expenses-paid, and be set up with a nice apartment and plenty of cash? There's no such program over there, and nobody is upset with Syria about that. Why? Because, we recognize; "they're having trouble providing housing, food, and medicine for their own citizens - they can't afford to take in the world's hungry!"

But if Canada can't provide housing, food, and medicine for their own citizens, why are we expected to take in the world's hungry? Why the double standard? Shouldn't we focus on getting our disabled, and our young families, and our other vulnerable citizens into stable homes, before we do that for the billions of needy people in OTHER countries? That's not racism, that's common sense. NO country can support the entire world's poor.

In the USA, a similar problem happens at their border with Mexico. People (mostly single men) from South America are walking through Mexico and illegally crossing into Texas. They've put such a strain on resources there, mayors are chartering buses to take immigrants to Liberal strongholds like DC and NYC. "See how you like it!" And they definitely DON'T like it. Politicians in DC and NYC are accusing Texas of "weaponizing immigrants". That's admission that immigrants take up resources and put a strain on the system, something everybody knows, but something politicians deny. Instead, they make it a racial issue, and claim "they deserve better than to be stuffed into buses and sent across the continent". But when interviewed, these illegal immigrants are very thankful to have a ride, saying they were provided with food, and allowed to disembark at any point.

Here in Canada, our immigration comes mainly from illegal border crossers, and from programs bringing in hundreds of thousands of muslim immigrants from countries we've been helping destabilize for decades. They are given priority over Canadians, even the disabled, even children. We have Canadian families living in cars, or living in boxes, while planes full of middle Eastern immigrants are flown in, and set up with welfare and guaranteed housing. This is the truth you won't hear in the mainstream. You won't even hear it on most Canadian's lips, either, because they have been shamed and propagandized into believing that talking about it is racist. They don't want to be cancelled and shunned from society, so they don't talk about it, they don't admit it.

I suspect this is all being done by design to destabilize Western society, but I'll leave that for another post.

The bottom line is: My wife, 2 kids, and I are doing everything we can to find somewhere within BC to live. We have dollars steadily coming in, we just don't have employers, so we're going to be on the side of the road with our belongings in just 2 months, unless we manage to pull off a miracle.

And yes, with the market the way it is, it would be cheaper for us to OWN a house. But we can't qualify for a loan without employers. So we'll rent... if we're among the lucky who can find someone to take our money.

DRutter