Something pricey

Let's talk about my current living situation. 

Ultimate cosmic powers! Itty bitty living space.

This is my bedroom.  It is also my office, my living room, my coat closet, my library and my game room: my only option that I can truly go to to have my own space when I am home.  Not so apparent from the photo is how small the room is - only made to appear bigger by virtue of my ingenious furniture arranging skills, where I have pushed the single bed against the wall so as to have a scrap of floor space that struggles to accommodate my flailing limbs when I attempt yoga within the confines of its boundaries.  If I lay down on the floor, my feet touch my bedside table and my head is next to the wicker chair that I salvaged off the street to use as a desk chair.   

"Surely," you might say, "There are more places in the house you can go to other than your room?  What about a kitchen?  A bathroom? Living room?"

You mean the mould-infested bathroom with the discoloured floor and the salmon-pink tub, where in desperation one day I took a scrub brush in order to scrape off the strange yellow substance growing in the grout between the ancient tiles?  That bathroom?

 You mean the kitchen that is so long and thin that the only way to have two people in it at once is for one person to squeeze themselves into the counter-top and suck in all their bits so the other person can pass?  Where the best way to make dinner is to wait for the other person to finish making dinner, however long that might take? That kitchen?

Oh, the living room!  You mean the living room that is occupied almost 24/7 by the only other occupant of the house, both my landlord and my roommate? 

 ...  I suppose this would be a good time to introduce my roommate.

CHEESE!

This is Tony, an 87-year-old Italian immigrant, a lovely man who is respectful of my boundaries and who couldn't remember my name for the entire first year we lived together (My name was "Nme" mumbled really quickly in hopes I wouldn't catch on). There is definitely a generation gap between us, complete with a difference in values.  He's finally stopped telling I need to get a real job that is 9-5 and not work on weekends.  Sometimes he appears at the door of my room to tell me his phone is broken, because his finger accidentally hit a button on the smartscreen of his cellphone and he doesn't understand the interface.  

The COVID pandemic was not easy on my roommate.   Before lockdown measures he would go out multiple times a week to play cards in an Italian bar for candies or to community dance events to rip up the floor with the good old-time rock-and-roll (he likes the fast songs).  Of course, once the lockdown began, all of that ended and he found himself with nothing to do, except to stay home and watch news that he only marginally understood the context of, and nostalgically reminisce about returning to his native country one last time before he dies.  I've watched as he's lost enthusiasm to go out and as his health has begun to falter.  It is becoming increasingly apparent to me that the day is coming when he's either going to need to move into a home where there is assisted living, or that one day I might come home and find out that he's had a heart attack.

Not happy thoughts.

But they are practical thoughts, because despite the cheap rent, it is clear that the day is coming where I will need to find my own place.  Also, I would like to be able to enjoy the pleasure that comes from being able to sit on a couch in the living room without having to listen to someone's life story or watching wrestlemania on tv.  I would like to be able to make dinner when I'm hungry without having to delay it for an hour if my roommate is concocting something in the kitchen.  It would be nice to be able to see my virtual clients from my home without having to worry that they are getting a professional view of my bed, or worry that, half-way through the appointment, my half-deaf roommate might answer the phone and loudly ask the person to repeat what they are saying or give a "F*** YOU" to the telemarketers.

Now that I have described my living situation you might be able to understand why I would possibly want to buy a house in this horrendous market that we are experiencing right now, where all housing is over-priced and interest rates are jacked to their highest rates since 2008.   You might even be wondering why I haven't moved out sooner.

 Believe me, it's been a test of patience.

 First, I was in university and planning to move back to BC afterwards.  Then I was graduated, in student debt and making a pittance. In fact when Canada's CERB benefit came out at the dawn of the COVID era in the summer of 2020, $2000/month was about $600 more than my monthly living allowance.  (It was a bit of a disappointment that I wasn't eligible to apply).  Since then I have pinched pennies where they could be pinched and then, when I finally felt financially secure enough to consider renting my own place, rent prices surged.  Now the cost of rest is equivalent or higher to the cost of getting a mortgage, even with $500+ condo maintenance fees and property taxes in the thousands of dollars and interest rates at the highest they have been in over a decade.  Voluntarily raising my living expenses by 4x the amount with nothing to show for it at the end sounds like the quickest way to say to someone else "Take all my money."

I talked to a mortgage broker yesterday.  My penny pinching has paid off and I have over $30,000 prepared for a down payment on a home, over half of that saved in the past two years.  I don't have a steady job but as a self-employed business owner my income has been stable for over a year now.  Now, with home prices looking they might fall in the near future and two years of provable self-employed income in my tax records, I thought maybe I could take a chance and get prepared by seeking pre-approval for a mortgage.

....yeah.... Yesterday I was told that, with my current income, I wouldn't even qualify for a mortgage within the $300,000 price range.  That's the cost of some of the cheapest condos in the city.  I was told that if I wanted a bank to take me seriously, I would need to double my down payment to at least 20% ($60,000), and that I should consider trying to borrow money from other people.  When I expressed my frustration at the system the broker had the nerve to try and justify the situation from the perspective of the banks. I interrupted him and changed the subject.  I get it, from the bank's perspective it's understandable, and I don't give a rat's ass about the perspective of the banks in this moment.  

 What I do see is that I am in a lucky position - at least I live with an 87-year-old Italian roommate who doesn't milk me dry for all I'm worth in rent.  At least I have the option to save money.  What about all the other people who are being taken advantage of?  Who can't save to buy a home because inflation has vastly outstripped wages?  Who are stuck paying off other people's mortgages while banks won't even consider them for their own mortgage, because on paper they aren't "good enough"?

I hate feeling like I have to hope for other's poor fortune (e.g. a drop in home prices or bank foreclosure) in order to have a hope that one day I might have a place to call my own: a place where I can paint the walls, own a cat and maybe even have my own coat closet to put my shoes in.