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Should You Rent or Buy in Vancouver? Do the Math FIRST , If there is a Rate Hike you will PAY!

163 views · Published 30 January 2016 · 6:42 · Indexed 8 November 2026

Channel: Mike Martins · 2016 · People & Blogs

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A lot of people have been asking me the same question: Mike, why are you renting instead of buying a house?

Some people assume that if you have a family, the natural next step is to buy a home, put down roots and settle permanently in one place. But here in Vancouver, British Columbia, I think you need to look very carefully at the numbers before making that decision.

The four-bedroom townhome I'm currently renting is in a gated community in Vancouver. I asked what a place like this would cost to purchase and was told roughly $2.1 million.

That's the problem.

There's nothing extraordinarily luxurious about the place. It's a decent family home, but Vancouver real estate prices have reached a point where buying can require committing an enormous amount of money to one property.

I'd rather have financial flexibility.

Instead of putting hundreds of thousands of dollars into a down payment, I'm thinking about my son's future, retirement, investments, travel and other opportunities for my family.

And there's another part of homeownership people sometimes forget.

The mortgage payment isn't the entire cost of owning a house.

You also need to consider property taxes, insurance, maintenance, repairs, renovations, strata fees where applicable and all the unexpected things that eventually break.

That's why I think renters should perform a simple experiment.

Find the house you would realistically buy. Calculate the mortgage payment, property taxes and reasonable maintenance costs. Compare the total monthly ownership expense with what you're currently paying in rent.

If renting saves you hundreds of dollars every month, ask yourself what would happen if you actually invested that difference instead of spending it.

That's the important part. Renting and wasting every dollar you save is very different from renting while deliberately building investments and savings.

Homeownership can absolutely make sense for many people. If you buy at the right price, intend to remain somewhere long-term and can comfortably afford the total cost, owning can provide stability and the opportunity to build equity.

But I don't believe everybody should feel pressured into buying simply because society tells us that's what successful adults are supposed to do.

For me, renting provides mobility. If circumstances change, I can move. I'm not forced to sell a property before relocating my family, and I don't have the majority of my financial future tied to one Vancouver house.

This is simply my personal approach to Vancouver's extremely expensive housing market.

It's not always how much money you make. It's how much money you spend — and what you do with the difference.

Let me know below: would you rather rent and invest the difference, or buy a home and build equity?

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