Vancouver's market is tanking. A 2BR condo goes for $500k but can only be rented for $1600/mo. A 1BR is high risk in a slowing market and, again, there's a huge gap between rent and mortgage. My realtor says nothing below $350k is even selling. To avoid capital gains, you must live in the property for a year, but they also tax gains made before/after that. I don't think there are any more gains to be made here in the condo market. Not in the immediate future. And you'd have to hold the property at least 5 years just to cover selling costs--bad idea in a stagnant market.

Sounds like a completely different market then. I'm sure there are alternative options, but in the short term it sounds like you have to bear with the higher mortgage payments. I guess when it comes down to it, if you're where you want to be, and doing what you want to do, the cost is worth it.

Oh, yeah...not much choice. We're going to stick it out where we are until our kids are ready for school. I just lament that houses have gone up so much that our home equity will barely make a dent and we'll be paying double what we would have.

Andrea, your story has made us think twice about our tentative plan to end up in Vancouver someday. Are prices as high elsewhere in coastal BC, such as Victoria? My girlfriend is from coastal France, and she fell in love with Vancouver when we were there last summer; the climate is similar to what she's used to, many of the plants are the same, and she felt very much at home. But we'd probably want to be further out, maybe on Vancouver Island, which is why I'm curious about Victoria.

Well, if you don't mind a long commute, you could get a nice house in Langley (1-1.5hrs from Van in rush hour) for $400k+. In Victoria, it looks like you can buy in Saanich for $550k-$600k and have a nice home, although I don't know about commutes. Colwood and Langford (a bit further) seem to be $350k-$450k for starters.

If you go up Island, say to Nanaimo (where I grew up), you can buy an executive home with waterviews for under $500k.

But here's what you get for $900k in Vancouver if you don't want to live on a major road or on the east side: http://www.mls.ca/PropertyDetails.aspx? ... ID=5606859

Wow, a house like that would go for around $250-$400K in Montreal, depending on the neighbourhood.

Commuting is not an issue for us, as I work at home fulltime and my girlfriend is a paralegal; lawyers are everywhere

But we're stuck here for the foreseeable future; good to know that there are cheaper options in BC though in case we do decide to move out west in 10-15 years.

Thanks.

My father dreamed of retiring to Nanaimo. He never got the chance. I'd love to retire just about anywhere on Vancouver Island, though Kris tells me we're never moving again...

Nanaimo's great. If my husband's career would translate there, we'd go. But we don't want to take the risk of him working in a low-level position, in case he ever got laid off or we wanted to come back to the city.

Clearly we should plan for the first GRS face-to-face meeting on Vancouver Island!

I haven't contributed to this discussion yet, but this topic keeps bouncing around in the back of my head. It's not often that someone poses a question and I really have absolutely no idea how to answer it.

The only significant debt that my husband and I have is our mortgage debt. Credit cards are a convenience and get paid to zero each month. We've never had a car note, though it might happen the next time we have to buy a car, perish the thought. (The kids keep getting bigger, the next car is probably going to have to be a little larger than a Corolla, and though we'll probably have enough cash on hand that we could pay all or most of the price of the car outright, at this point we feel like we ought to keep a pretty significant cash nest egg.) Note to self: start saving explicitly for next car.

So, the mortgages. The rental will be paid off before kid #1 goes to college. Our residence's mortgage is scheduled to retire when I'm 67, but who knows what will happen between now and then--I suspect we'll move at least a couple more times before then, and probably acquire some more debt if we can swing another rental house or two. I don't want to carry a mortgage on my residence when I'm retired but am not freaked out at the idea of having debt on rental assets.

In sum, even though I feel like we have our money pretty well under control, I can't really wrap my brain around what it would be like to be completely debt-free. I hope it will happen but it feels so far off.

It's also hard to envision what "retirement" might look like when we're up to our eyeballs in keeping the wheels turning every day--work, kids, house. I know intellectually that someday we'll have an empty nest, but that feels pretty far off too!

If I can read some good novels while basking in the sun in a beautiful garden, that'll be a darn good start.

After our mortgage is paid off, we'll accelerate our retirement savings. My goal is not to be able to do a particular thing, it's to have the freedom to do whatever I decide to do at the time. I can see myself volunteering about 10 hours a week as a treasurer of a not-for-profit or two. Other than that, I'm not sure yet.

I don't think I'll ever be debt free either. I kinda dream about it... sell our expensive house in port moody ($750k?! Man, my first home cost only $290k just 4 years ago!) and move to a farm or something. But It'll never happen. Other then the giant sized mortgage, we are debt free and have a lot of assets socked away but... with the mortgage hanging around our necks we'll be working hard till we're 70 too.


The lower mainland is the best place in the world I've found to live and I was lucky enough to grow up here. After doing a fair amount of traveling, there aren't many places I feel I could live other then here though (except montreal, quebec or parts of japan... for various reasons!)

So I can't really answer this question myself.

Once I'm debt free, a little traveling is in my future. One of my long-term goals is to visit each of the National Parks. Another is to eventually travel throughout Europe.

But otherwise, I don't see much changing...except for the occasional dance I'll do when I realize I won't owe anyone anything.

It sounds like I'm in kind of a different situation at this point than many of you are. We (my wife, son, and I) have a mortgage (300k) but apart from that we've managed to pay off almost all of our debt with the exception of paying off our car which has 3k left on it and will be paid off in Sept (if not sooner). We've also recently started putting money into savings. What am I going to do after I'm debt free (apart from mortgage debt which I'm not really interested in paying off sooner)? I'm going to save and invest and work towards not being tied into working for someone else. In general I'm happy to be working and find my field (software development) rewarding for the most part. I'd just like the freedom to do my own thing and not have to worry about making ends meet.

Hear, hear, CaseyM. I went solo 10 years ago when I became a consultant. Now that my consulting business is pretty solid, I'm working on transitioning to passive income, so that I can eventually be making a meaningful living without having to work for anyone else.

Thanks for the kind words consultantjournal, a passive revenue stream is definitely the end goal but for the time being not feeling trapped answering to the man is the target. Thanks for the link to your blog, I'll definitely check it out.