When my father decided to repaint the walls on the ground floor, at the beginning of May, I should have known. That something unusual was going on. I was finishing my first year of university. I only lived half the time with my parents, in the suburbs of Montreal. More than an hour and a half by public transport from the faculty.
Posted at 9:00 a.m.
I went on a trip after school with my brother and two friends. The classic European journey of initiation by train. Sunday in London, Monday in Paris, Wednesday in Brussels, Friday in Amsterdam. Time to get lost 12 hours in Berlin, and presto! we took the night train back to Venice. We have seen some, from the country (eight in all), during this month and a half.
I returned at the end of June. The next day, Paul DiPietro offered the Stanley Cup to the Canadian. My parents had sold the house – I didn’t even know it was for sale! – and decided to move… to Quebec. I found myself in the water. St. Laurent hit. Without a penny or fixed address. My savings skyrocketed in brewery tours in Amsterdam, shopping for soccer shirts in Rome and celebrations of a historic Olympique de Marseille victory in the Champions League.
Luckily my girlfriend suddenly had the brilliant idea of handing me the dust pan and offering me a roof, in exchange for my participation in the rent and the household chores. She took pity on me. We had only been dating for three months. The four of us lived in a poorly lit ground floor for a year. Then as a couple for two years, in an apartment that we rented for less than $400.
I still live in the same neighborhood, 30 years later, exactly at the same height, one street to the west. Behind my apartment at the time, where there were shooting galleries, today a six and a half is rented at $2,750 a month (not a figure of speech).
You can’t stop progress or inflation. 20 years ago, many musicians indie of America adopted my neighborhood because the rents there were affordable. This is no longer the case. You almost have to have the means of Elon Musk to rent the old apartment of his ex, Claire Boucher (alias Grimes). I’m just exaggerating…
“When I grow up, I’m going to live in our house,” said Fiston when he was little. He did not project himself into Tanguy. He just didn’t care where his parents were staying, if at all. We were quick to burst his (real estate) bubble, making him understand that he probably wouldn’t have the means.
He still hopes to live in the neighborhood, when he decides to leave the family nest to fly on his own. The problem is that the rents there are outrageously expensive. Tenants who are lucky enough to pay a reasonable price do not budge. They cross their fingers not to become the next victims of “renovictions” or repossessions.
An old friend I hadn’t seen for a long time recently told me that after losing his home twice in a short time, he decided to buy a house in the suburbs. There was no longer any question of his children being forced to change schools according to the speculative real estate ambitions of each other.
I wonder if my sons will have to leave town too, if they ever hope to become homeowners. Even though the feds just created a new homeownership tool (which is pronounced like gluten intolerance). The CELIAPP, as my colleague Marie-Eve Fournier pointed out, will mainly benefit the wealthiest. They will be able to set aside $40,000 in an account that offers the combined advantages of an RRSP and a TFSA, in order to acquire a first property.
How many years will it take most of Sonny’s generation – who works part-time in a mobile canteen (and serves the best burgers in town) – to put aside $40,000? And to what extent will this allow them to really cope with the real estate boom? When we know that 94% of the Quebec population earns $100,000 or less per year, who can still afford to become a homeowner on the island of Montreal?
My colleague Vincent Brousseau-Pouliot did the exercise last June. To buy a single-family home at the median price in Montreal, experts explained to him, a couple should ideally earn more than $212,500 per year, after a down payment of 20%.
The median price of a single-family home in the Montreal area is currently $565,550, up 18% over the past year. That of a condo is $402,600. A couple who would have maximized their TFSA in a few years would barely manage to pay 20% of the down payment of a condominium, at today’s prices.
“It was much easier for people my age to buy a first home,” Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said the day after the federal budget was tabled. It’s true. It was even more so for my parents’ generation. Even if some baby boomers try to convince themselves that today’s young people are child-kings who have always had it all in their mouths.
At 25, after graduate studies abroad, despite scholarships, I had accumulated a student debt of $25,000. But I could nevertheless aspire to property. I don’t know if the young people of my son’s generation will be able to say the same. Over the past 20 years, the median price of a house in Montreal has tripled, while the median income of Montrealers has only increased from $30,400 in 2000 to $38,700 in 2020 (in constant dollars, according to Statistics Canada).
At the rate things are going, Fiston might live for a long time in my basement, with his Tanguy furniture. Unless he hits the jackpot. Or that I suddenly feel like moving to Quebec…