The Housing Market needs to crash.

[CN Tower]

Of course he has the right to criticize.
The problem with car dependent ife style is that these drivers pay no where near the true econonomic cost for the pressure they put on infrastructure needs, resources, and the environment. Just imagine if everyone in China and India and Africa lives such a life too, what the world and its resources will be like.

You can't fathom life without a car is because you were born and raise in suburban North America. If you are forced to live in an Asian or European city, you will adapt to urban life sooner than you think and appreciate the convenience too.

You make a whole stack of (wrong) assumptions. The way I figure it I pay an insane about more in taxes than I get back in services but do it for collective welfare of country. Driving is probably something that washes out between gas tax, insurance, registration etc. I am way behind on paying in v. taking out of the system.

I love my car(s). I also love my bike(s).

 

[neubilder]

What's truly amazing is just how fully you detest cars and I can't fathom my life without one- the practicalities of travel, the convenience, the comfort, the personal space. Amazing!

The difference of course is that I don't begrudge or criticize your lifestyle choice while you attempt to discredit mine. Fascinating indeed!

I actually do own a car (golf tdi - 1100km's per 50 litre tank). But I drive it only occasionally for pleasure, getting out of the city, and for times when you just need a car. I cycle or walk 90% of the time. I can't even imagine subjecting myself to the drudgery of fighting Toronto traffic on a daily basis.

Car culture is so entrenched here in NA that most can't even see the lunacy of it. Cars and infrastructure related to cars command an enormous amount of time, resources, and energy. If everyone would cut car usage in half and give over the extra space to better uses such as parks, greenbelts, bike infrastructure, play areas for kids etc., quality of life in the city would improve dramatically.

 

[figaro]

But it was was average working people expected to own, or were told that's what they should strive for. That's why there are more detached than semis in Toronto. From the 2006 census, ~30 percent of Toronto's housing stock was detached. Rows, semis and townes added up to ~17% if you include duplexes. Things have defintiely changed since 2006, but the white picket fence American dream home generally hasn't shared a wall.

But we're not just talking about Toronto proper. Detached housing has been extraordinarily affordable in many parts of the GTA for long periods of time. GTA-wide, detached accounted for 43 percent of all housing in 2006. In some communities, it is likely 60 or 70 percent of the total.

The last generation and a half of people who grew up in your typical detached suburban house may or may not be immediately accepting of the fact that when they're ready to start their families, they need to be looking to downsize in size and space from what they had as kids, and they're not going to be saving a whack of dough in exchange either.

It's not a value judgement on semis or townes or whathaveyou. It's an observation.

I fully understand it is a cultural thing. However, what average people "expect" to own when he was brought up is completely irrelevant. The percentage of detached home living is also irrelevant. The world doesn't change because one keeps "expecting" or feel entitled to something. You accept what you can afford to buy, and what one "needs" should evolve with time and circumstances. When owning a detach house is NOT what an average Torontonian can afford, and this person unfortunately is no better than average, it is only his own fault for being average.

When you can't buy one, there are two options

1) work hard, get promoted, and make more money.
2) move where average person can buy a detached home - Barrie, Regina, Houston whatever.

For me, I like the fact that detached homes are becoming unaffordable (I don't own one) because detached home living takes too much space and it leads to such big spawl, making the city costly to run. I hope there will be less and less detached supply or even single family house in general, and everyone will have to live in multifamily residences.

 

[LordWanker]

Car culture is so entrenched here in NA that most can't even see the lunacy of it. Cars and infrastructure related to cars command an enormous amount of time, resources, and energy. If everyone would cut car usage in half and give over the extra space to better uses such as parks, greenbelts, bike infrastructure, play areas for kids etc., quality of life in the city would improve dramatically.

That's straight forward to do, increase the price of fuel to match those available in Europe and most people will be forced to adapt accordingly. However you have the developing countries such as China who is doing the exact opposite. They are embracing the car culture and all the associated pitfalls.

 

[neubilder]

Cars, like the suburbs, started out as the 'american dream' but have *for the most part* devolved into the american nightmare. CN tower, do you enjoy idling on the 401 during rush hour, and would you enjoy living here?: http://i.thestar.com/images/74/a7/ea9ca8bc479292b10aac338de1f9.jpeg or here?: http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/tea-leaves-toronto-suburbs-1.jpeg

 

[Lenser]

i always thought Metric's take on this conundrum was cleverly laconic:

Buy this car to drive to work
Drive to work to pay for this car

 

[jeff316]

I fully understand it is a cultural thing. However, what average people "expect" to own when he was brought up is completely irrelevant. The percentage of detached home living is also irrelevant. The world doesn't change because one keeps "expecting" or feel entitled to something.

The percentage of detached home living is relevant because at these rates it shows that detached home living is not currently a luxury, particularly in the burbs. Expectations are also relevant because they influence other choices. The world may not change if you expect something, but you may try to make changes to the world to achieve your expectations.

I don't disagree that detached SFH will become rarer, but given our culture and expectations, it may not happen as quickly as you may think/hope.

 

[Southoftheborder]

Apart from my personal bias which is to like to ride TTC because of being denied the experience due to GM destroying city systems in order to create a market for its buses, I am curious how practical the automotive life is in a city like Toronto. With the millions of people, is there really adequate parking? Sure in some residential areas, maybe the majority of houses were originally built with offstreet parking. But what does that leave in terms of people who have to punt to store their car? Where I live, most houses accommodate a single car. The result is thousands of cars parked on both sides of streets to make two-way streets into one-way. And sometimes emergency vehicles are challenged to reach addresses due to the congestion of parked cars. And this is a population that is a tiny fraction of Toronto. Seems to me that suburbs are useful if only to handle the space demands of car ownership.

 

[js97]

That's straight forward to do, increase the price of fuel to match those available in Europe and most people will be forced to adapt accordingly. However you have the developing countries such as China who is doing the exact opposite. They are embracing the car culture and all the associated pitfalls.

You also increase the cost of everything else. i.e. food cost and every other shipping cost.

IT generally hits middle classes the hardest.

 

[Southoftheborder]

You also increase the cost of everything else. i.e. food cost and every other shipping cost.

IT generally hits middle classes the hardest.

Um. Not a simple function. Look at the airlines. Jet fuel goes up, tickets go up but also profits go down. Do people fly less? Not that I can tell. Also, pricing gasoline higher is not like taxing petroleum. If you tax petroleum, everything that it feeds inflates. But if you selectively tax products, only a sector that uses a LOT of the product increases its production costs. Also, people move to substitutes. The higher the price of hydrocarbons, the more incentive to conserve them.

 

[gabe]

^
I am glad people are realizing that it is not so much a bubble but their expectation towards what lifestyle they can afford should change.

Toronto is experiencing a big change, transforming into a higher ranked city I would say in a matter of few years. Those who still think they SHOULD be able to afford to buy a 2000sf single family house just outside the city core with single income by the age of 35 should think again. BIG CITIES ARE NOT AFFORDABLE, PERIOD, and there is nothing you can do about. Visit New York, London and Paris, even San Fran, average families can't buy a detached house close to the city either. sure, Toronto is not New York and London, but we are no where near that expensive either. Average Parisian makes no more than Torontonians, but their housing price is triple ours. Economics doesn't work here, and don't expect it to.

Less wealthy families in the coming years will have to accept the fact that unless you want to commute 2 hours each way everyday, you will have to deal with condos. New immigrants will keep pushing housing prices for sure. A 1200 sf condo in Beijing or Shanghai nowadays is worth $500-$800K, and selling those condos for a house in Toronto with a private yard seems a steal, and they will keep doing it. Supply will remain scarce and there is noway to get around it.

We have been talking about a crash a housing market for how long, a decade? Real estate is cyclical and will experience ups and downs for sure. But those who expect a major decline in price just because it is increasingly unaffordable for average family to buy a single family house will end up hugely disappointed. Single family house living will eventually become a luxury lifestyle only available to the wealthy, much like it is in major cities outside North America. Don't like condos? That's probably what you can afford.

dude, when someone doesn't make a LOT of money, why does he think he is entitled to a "detached"? what's wrong with sharing walls with neighbours.

Try to accept the fact that in Toronto, DETACHED homes are for the rich people. It is not average working people should expect to own, much like when you make $60K a year you don't expect to fly business or first class when travelling. Detached houses (or even semi-detached) are a luxury and not a nececity. The earlier we accept that, the less painful it will be.

Exactly.
In Japan, 600sf two bedrooms are everywhere, and they are considered "family sized". I am not proposing that kind of "compact" but the space most Canadians have is extravagant by world standards.

The normal concept of family sized space is largely outdated. Try two kids sharing a bedroom until they are 18 and move out; try combining the function of livingroom, familyroom and diningroom in one room, try a kitchen just big enough for cooking, not dancing; try buying fewer cookware and only keeping those you actually use for more than 5 times a year. Try not to have a guest suite and whover visits sleeps on the couch.

The you end up not having to drive 60 minutes out of the city to find a home, and you kids probably will stop bugging you for a car.

Of course he has the right to criticize.
The problem with car dependent ife style is that these drivers pay no where near the true econonomic cost for the pressure they put on infrastructure needs, resources, and the environment. Just imagine if everyone in China and India and Africa lives such a life too, what the world and its resources will be like.

You can't fathom life without a car is because you were born and raise in suburban North America. If you are forced to live in an Asian or European city, you will adapt to urban life sooner than you think and appreciate the convenience too.

You remind me of kkgg7

 

[TrickyRicky]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, you can't change people. Infact, if you could limit yourself to learning only 10 things in your entire life one of them should be - you can't change people. You could spend your entire life just meditating or mastering this one principle.

This does not mean that people can't change. No, people can absolutely change but they can only change themselves. What we learn my extension from this principle is that you live by example. How you live and conduct your life is all you ever need to do to teach others. If living an urban car-free life is superior, than live that life. Do not assume that people are so stupid as not to notice. People spend their every waking hour observing and comparing their own circumstances to yours, just as you do to others. If you don't believe what I'm saying use this excercise to think about it: Observe that parents don't actually influence their children by what they say or preach, they influence their children by how they are. Children react by copying or rejecting how their parents are, but what they say is almost entirely irrelevent.

 

[cdr108]

You remind me of kkgg7

were the comments edited because 3 days of comments are gone?

ditto ... i said the same yesterday.
figaro is now banned ... wonder if the mods traced the IP address back to the same person.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Cars, like the suburbs, started out as the 'american dream' but have *for the most part* devolved into the american nightmare.

I have to disagree. When I bought my first car, a 1989 Plymouth Sundance in 1996 I felt so free and excited. After years of spending hours upon hours of taking the TTC and GO Bus from the Danforth to Airport Rd for work I was free to travel at my own pace. Even with traffic jams on the 401 I was still home way faster, especially on the night shift.

Most importantly though, having a car wasn't about easing the commute. No, it was about freedom to do what I want, where I want. The day after I got the car my future wife and I drove to Ottawa for breakfast and then drove home. The next weekend we drove to Cochrane, ON to ride the Moose Factory train. Two weeks later we drove to Sudbury and rode the Ogawa Canyon train. Then we went to drive in movies, and dozens of country road trips.

Even today, I love driving to work. Sometimes I take my vintage Triumph motorcycle. As I ride up the DVP to the Eastbound 401 in the mornings I can generally ride at 80-100 kph the whole way, provided I'm on the road by 7:15am. It takes me about 35 min to get from Cabbagetown to Markham Rd and 14 Ave where I work. If I took transit it would take two hours. Of course I could buy one of these soul destroying boxes of homes out here, but I love Cabbagetown and am not leaving the core.

 

[Dan416]

I think the main thing keeping people attached to their cars, at least in this city, is that public transit is just so excruciatingly s l o w.

The subways we do have are not extensive enough. GO is acceptably fast, but the buses can get tied up in traffic. Buses in the suburbs are a PITA to take. Most streetcars are laughably slow.

Whenever I go to other cities I marvel at how easy, convenient and extensive public transit is. Here, it's a joke.

We unquestionably need to invest a LOT of money into transit. Otherwise the GTA will choke on its traffic.