Canada

Ding ding ding.

This is why the rich try to muddy the waters.

They try and make it appear as if the homes and retirement funds of the middle class are somehow equivalent to the hundreds of billions owned by the rich.

Fun fact: if we would tax the rich and lower taxes on the middle class, we would get something closer to socialism. Under pure socialism, where everyone owns an equal share of the total wealth, the average household would actually be worth $1.6M.

Any household with less wealth than that is actually doing worse under the current system compared to full equality.

For anyone who purchased a house in the last 5ish years sure. Much longer than that and they are sitting on a whole lot of equity.

Yes if they sold the house they would have 1/2 - 1 million dollars in cash and be homeless. But that's a lot of dollars better than all the other people who currently also don't own a home and don't have all that cash.

Which is sorta the point the article is trying to make.

This article is a smear job trying to say “owning a home makes you wealthy” and ignores the fact that “the cash to own 7 homes” is the real problem.

I certainly agree. Seeing as all property values skyrocketed in the past few years, those whose homes are now worth $1 million only kept up with everyone else.

Seeing as over 60% of Canadians own their home, that means that the rise of property costs merely widened the gap between those that own and those who rent. While the rise of property costs certainly isn’t a good thing, those who own property realistically aren’t any better off than they were before.

Ownership rates are around 65%, but mortgage rates in Canada are only about 30%.

So less than half of homeowners have a mortgage, and another good chunk of those mortgages were small to begin with and are approaching being paid off.

You don't need to sell the house to benefit from owning it or it having a higher price either. You get to live in it for the cost of taxes and maintenance, that's a massive amount of freed up monthly cash flow. The house value being higher means you're paying less comparable to someone who has to rent at current market values (like a young adult moving out)

It would be less beneficial to own the house if the value was lower and rents were dirt cheap.

There is no such thing as a middle class

Exactly, articles like this are just confusing the meaning of class.

What makes you a member of "the working class" is that you are forced to sell your labour to survive. Fullstop. A tradesperson, and a lawyer, and a burgerflipper are all in the same class from that point of view.

As soon as your accumulated capital becomes large enough that you earn your income only as a result of your capital, then you are no longer working class, and that's when your interests diverge from the average worker and average homebuyer or renter.

A landlord with no other job, the major shareholders of a profitable business, a wealthy heir, those people make their money by siphoning value off of other people's work without actually needing to spend their time on work.

Long story short: I have no problem with a 50 year old plumber with a large family who legitimately uses that 4500 sqft house.

My issue is with Karen who used dad's money to buy 8 properties to airBnB them and insists she get special treatment because her business risks didn't pan out.

That is the point though, if like the article says l, 1/5th of owners have an investment property, they could sell it and still live in the current place and have a ton of cash. or sell both and move to a cheaper city and retire. Compared to people struggling to save for a mortgage in this crazy market.

If you're dicing things up that way, there's no middle class in the first place.

Or, radical opinion, don't let people invest in housing. Also, I noticed BC raised their maximum rental increase from 2% to 3.5%. Almost double. So there's that too 🫠

No where in the article does it say that homeowners should effectively be forced to move out.

We absolutely coddle homeowners, with preferential tax treatment, subsidized street parking, super low property taxes in places like Vancouver, and, most importantly, outsized power to prevent new development at the cost of renters, young people, and the poor. This is zero sum: homeowners maintain and grow their wealth, in part, at the cost of renters and actual poor people.

Yes and no. Wealth can be used as a proxy, usually via debt, to acquire more wealth. If this wasn't the case, Elon Musk would not have been able to buy Twitter.

This is why renters are absolutely screwed: not only are they spending the same as someone with a mortgage in many cases, but they can't leverage equity at all. Need a car repair done? Send a kid to school? Retire? Invest? If you rent, you're screwed.

Yup. This article is trying to turn the conversation in to another battle against eachother rather than the ones who are actually fucking us all.

I can’t tell if you’re joking or not. Poe’s Law.

If you own a $3.5 million home in Vancouver, or you’re complaining about not being able to rent out four condos on AirBnb like one woman in the article, then, no, you’re not middle class.