Owning your the house you call home is one of the dreams of every family, Filipino, Canadian, American, British or whatever nationality. But owning a home is daunting and scary and not everyone can afford to buy a house outright with cash. House prices vary in prices based on a lot of factors and is different in every country. For example in the Philippines you can buy houses as low as 500 thousand pesos which translates to about 12,000 Canadian Dollars or 9,500 USD, but of course that is not the top of the line house and not the best location.
In Canada, house prices has been soaring in the 30-70% increase in prices since the pandemic began.. Cost of an average house in Barrie, Ontario costs about 450,000 CAD according to this article https://www.movingwaldo.com/daily-living/cheapest-place-to-live-in-ontario/. Whether you are buying a house in the Philippines, Canada or the US, everyone goes through almost the same process, and almost everyone gets into a mortgage.
What’s a mortgage? According to Canada.ca “A mortgage is a type of loan often used to buy a home or other property. A mortgage allows the lender to take possession of the property if you don’t repay the loan on time. The property is the security for the loan. Normally, a mortgage is a large loan and is paid off over many years”
And as a loan, a mortgage needs to be computed, for those people who have a hard time with math like me, you would often need to rely on your real estate agent. But doing your own due diligence isnt that hard. I did a search online and found this mortgage calculator that can help you compute what you need to pay. It should work wherever you are as the data inputted can easily be changed.
In the last 2 years, hundreds of thousands of people probably had the epiphany that our house is not enough or I need a bigger house whith most people being stuck inside their own houses for safety due to the pandemic. I was and am one of those that realized we didnt have enough space for 4 people studying or working at home. We had to be creative in our area management with 3 kids studying online and me working at home.
Owning a house is not everyone’s dream. There are people that prefer renting compared to owning. I have a friend who lives in Canada that prefers long term rent over ownership and he points out that with renting, you skip on your side the responsibilities a normal home owner would face like repairs and stuff and he has a point. Buying a house shouldn’t be a spur of the moment ( well, it is kinda hard to be an impulse buy if you are not buying it cash since you still have to wait for loan approvals, LOL ), but something that is well thought over. Especially since mortgages run around 10-20 years on an average to repay.
For myself, I would like to own the house that I call home. When that will be, let’s see.
