Canada

Flat since 2022... It's barely 2024 and central banks had to increase interest rates by 4% due to inflation in that period. They're now talking about dropping that interest rate and the real estate market is already salivating.

Your argument about buying at the peak and losing your job is not useful, of course it has some limited risk, but you're talking about a few thousand people losing their down payment due to vs a few million making absolute bucket loads of money. You could get hit by a car tomorrow too, doesn't mean you should make financial decisions based on that small potential that something bad will happen to you.

"If prices stagnate" - That's a big If, historically speaking.

I'm 100% betting housing prices continue to rise, the government has no interest in actually decreasing the cost of housing from a political perspective. The majority of Canadian families own their own home, especially older Canadians who vote more frequently than younger people. They may try to keep it from going up so fast, but any growth is still going to make purchasing a better decision. It will not become politically viable to crash the housing market until home ownership rates drop 10-20% off current values, and that's going to take decades.

I literally bet my house on this, We bought a home that's significantly bigger than I need right now because I expect my three school aged children will not be able to move out in 10 years and will need to live at home with us for a significant amount of time. There's even enough space on the property to build a secondary dwelling unit (and zoning allows this) for one of them to have their own home.

good thing I'm not living in Grand Theft Auto I guess

it typically doesn’t include hydro/water. Let alone Internet and cable.

I have literally never lived anywhere that had included utilities. Nowhere I have ever rented in 24 years of renting has done literally any maintenance per month. It's basically "Did you water heater explode?" They always use some family friend they pay 50 bucks to cut a hole in the wall, replace a plastic pipe, and then just screw in a cover over it.

Rather that renting can be significantly cheaper and less risky to your savings in the current market.

I can't tell if you're joking or not.

The value of owner-occupied homes grew by almost 40% between 2016 and 2021.

While both owning and renting come with a cost, those who own their home have been lucky enough to offset those costs by way of a significant increase in the value of their homes. That isn't the case for anyone who rents. Worse still for renters, the average cost of keeping a roof over their head has increased by more than what those who own have experienced. The average cost for shelter among renters grew by 17.6 per cent in the past five years, from $910 a month, on average, in 2016, to $1,070 in 2021.

Get out of here with that 'oh woe is the landlord' garbage.