Montreal City Weblog

Kate 10:50 on 2024-05-10 Permalink Reply  

• Blork 11:55 on 2024-05-10 Permalink

  By “landlords” you mean people with mortgages as opposed to people with leases. (At least that’s what the BoC report is about.)

  They were talking about this on CBC yesterday and it was a bit frustrating because they didn’t really go beneath the headline, which implies the current state of things puts specific pressures on tenants more than on mortgage-holders. That might be true, but I don’t think that’s what the report is actually about.

  I think the report means that people who rent are general less financially secure than people who own their homes. I don’t know that this is news; it’s always been like that at least in a general sense.

  I don’t have the patience to slog through the La Presse article, but if anyone here has done so, it would be nice to hear what you think.

• jeather 12:24 on 2024-05-10 Permalink

  It’s pretty clearly comparing non-mortgage holders to mortgage holders — default rates for car loans are about 1.3% and 0.2%, respectively, and credit cards 2.2% and 1%, all but car loans for people with mortgages have gone up in the past 2 years — and trying to explain why even though interest rates on mortgages went up, it’s still hitting tenants (“non-mortgage holders”) worse.

• Blork 15:39 on 2024-05-10 Permalink

  OK, so they’re saying that renters are paying more for other loans, presumably based on their being perceived as a higher risk than mortgage holders. Interesting.

  In terms of increasing rents vs. increasing mortgages, there’s no doubt that rents are definitely skyrocketing. One hears about people having to pay three or four hundred more a month than they did a year ago, and in some cases much more than that. In places where there are no rental controls it can be disastrous. But mortgage holders don’t have any “mortgage controls.” I’ve read many accounts of people renewing their mortgages and suddenly having to pay $1500 or $2000 more a month. Those are not even the outliers; apparently that’s fairly common.

  Personally, we had to renew last October, when rates were highest. Fortunately we’re on the home stretch (final five years) so the monthly increase is just a couple of hundred I think. Also, we didn’t buy at the limit of what the bank said we could afford. Far from it. 20 years ago my mortgage payments were a bit more than I would have paid in rent. Now they’re a lot less because the payments didn’t change over time but inflation didn’t stop. Even with the higher rates, by now the payments are still less than renting.

• Bert 21:49 on 2024-05-10 Permalink

  What appears to be lost in the exchanges are that mortgages and leases and not equal or equivalent. My mortgages never included hydro, gas, plumbing repairs, shingling, snow removal, lawn care, paving, stonework, carpentry, etc.

  Mortgages are basically an all-risk situation whereas a lease is a zero-risk situation. Who pays for lower risk?

• Ian 09:11 on 2024-05-11 Permalink

  Your tenants pay your mortgage if you’re doing it right, and then you own the property outright and all profit after taxes and maintenance is free capital that you can reinvest. If you don’t understand the profit mechanisms of being a landlord you should go into a different line of business.

• jeather 09:20 on 2024-05-11 Permalink

  In what universe is renting zero-risk all-reward? Or mortgages all-risk zero-reward? Come on.