Close Reading

I currently pay $734.96 per month for my bachelor apartment in Parkdale, Toronto. All inclusive. I found the place in 2015, and it started at $660.00 per month. It's a smaller building where I know most of my co-tenants. Quiet neighbourhood most of the time. I've been one of the lucky ones for sure. I love this city! I'm from Peterborough and I will never move back. Some of the best memories of my life have been here. But you're right Alina, it has changed. Much like most other major cities in the world. The economic hardships being the #1 issue. Rent going up, wages staying the same, and inflation not slowing down. But with Toronto, the transit system is far behind the progress of cities like New York. Toronto should have multiple subway lines going east and west. Queen St. and Dundas lines for sure. The overall culture of the city is not as vibrant as it was during the 2010s. That could be Covid related. Or things are taking awhile to come back to pre-Covid form. But a lot of great venues and restaurants have been shutting down. And being replaced with the construction of condos. The real estate is insane here. It feels like things have gone downhill since the Raptors won the NBA championship in 2019. Because that really united everyone when there were a million people gathered for the parade. I'm hoping things turn around and there's more affordable housing for newcomers. I know I'm staying here for a while longer. Because of my cheap rent. And career attachments to the city. Great job on the video! ?

While I identify and agree with the overall sentiment of this video, here is the problem Alina. As a somewhat successful tech person who came from nothing, I refuse to move out of a city to a culturally or globally lacking city due to “budget”. I tried spending time in BC and Nova Scotia in the capital cities. I could not spend more than a week in Saskatchewan. I can assure you that someone with decent skills and lifestyle would not be able to sustain their social and personal life, and mental health anywhere in Canada other than Toronto. If I spoke decent French, I’d say Montreal is a decent option. Vancouver is too lopsided as an international real estate haven, even though beautiful. So the problem is that Toronto is honestly the only city someone like me (and most my friends) would consider living in Canada, and we are all unfortunately being forced to move to the US. We are in our very early 30s so it’s still not too late to have a big move but none of us wanted to try out NYC or SFO much later than now. I hope things improve and we are able to move back to Toronto. But right now, unless you make $300k+, it’s impossible. And we are only able to make that money in the US (most of us). Cheers and keep it up.

Simple economics should dictate that if rents are so high that the majority can't afford them, they should drop. The peoblem is, there are a small number of people who are more than capable of meeting the high cost of rent and of real estate generally. This is indicative of how much economic inequality has grown in Canada, as it has throughout the English speaking world.

This may be accurate from presentation part, but see the actual reality, if canada is that much attractive for skilled immigrants, it should be world leader in technology or manufacturing but it is not as life is very harsh here. For most professional except IT your education is not valid or you have to go through very length process of validating your education and getting in main stream to get the job some time it takes years of continuous job like effort. Salary structure is garbage compared to USA. It is impossible to find an affordable house or apartment which you can rent, forget about buying.. Tax system is upto moon. Healthcare is broken and on top of that Black money is dumped from all over the world in real estate. Canada is a broken country and it heavily relying on international students and wealth immigrants to run their country. You are welcome here if you have shit load of money otherwise think 100 times before you come to this country.

Oh bhai, if no one will go to construction work , transport work, mason, carpenter work and build homes, what will you sell.. everyone cannot and should not be into business , we need doctors, other professionals, is there anything other than real estate and weddings in Indian diaspora , counting dollars , thinking about parents and next generations, could we name 10 plants, 10 birds of Canada , 5 rivers of Canada , trails , outdoors , you hardly see any desi , cycling , yes we are animals of gym workouts, but there are more than this , sunlight , cool night sky, lying under a tree , walking bare foot, we are victims of greed , falsehood , at the end we got be cremated .. Waheguru bless all .. please do not copy .. bricks and cement wood buildings , kill and cause climate change, being part of climatic catastrophe is not the best thing , greed will never end .. it is a fire ? which is pretty much taking over the globe.. there is life after death .. and karma before death with determine it.. there are more billionaires on the planet ..

Congrats Raman for being successful in whatever endeavours of life you have touched upon and its invaluable experiences sharing so candidly with newcomers to Canada. Your message of being optimistic and positive in anything one does leads to “success” defined by the an individual. I have seen real-estate ups and downs of GTA much more than you have thus far, however; it makes me enormously happy for your accomplishments in such a short time. I am hanging my boots after 35+years in real-estate for good as in couple of days my RECO licence will expire. \n\nIncidentally, you shouldn’t have worried about your security, Toronto Police can take good care of security issues very well and your letter from the criminal litigation lawyer would have been sufficient to subdue the potential offenders. Enjoy next 20-25 years to fullest thereafter mobility might get restricted. Thank you and best of luck.

Here is the questions I don't think you asked - Why are home prices so high in Canada and high tech wages so much lower? Could it be that the difference in immigration policy that keeps wages low via over supply and not policing foreign buyers of real estate?

I have mixed feelings about this video. This video does a good job outlining the immigration process but it does not highlight any of the negative consequences of immigration that Canada is experiencing. One of the main reasons why cost of living is so high in Toronto and Vancouver is precisely because we have so many immigrants coming in without enough housing supply. This is by design because politicians and the upper class have a vested interest in keeping real estate prices high because so much of their net worth is tied up in the housing market.\n\nAnother negative is that employers hire immigrants working low skilled jobs and pay them less than Canadians because the immigrants are willing to be taken advantage of since they're just happy to have a job in Canada which pays better than their country. \n\nAnother myth that gets repeated is that Canadian takes immigrants out of compassion and unfortunately a lot of Canadians believe this. It was never about compassion, it's about bringing more people to 1) pay taxes to support our social welfare as Canadian birth rates decline and boomers retire, 2) keep housing costs high and 3) pay immigrants lower wages for the same work because immigrants are fine being exploited since they have a job in a first world country.\n\nAnother problem is the cultural shift. In the most immigrant-dense regions you'll find that many immigrants themselves surprisingly don't want more immigrants coming to Canada because they see these negative consequences. The people who are most pro-immigration have no problem cramming 8+ people in a basement and exploiting their labour because they make enough money to live in communities that immigrants can't afford, and so they don't have to deal with the cultural shift that's taking place. This is NOT the fault of immigrants, but rather the politicians who put economic growth over quality of life. Over HALF the people in the GTA weren't born in Canada, so they didn't go through our school system and have no connection to our culture. Canada is unfortunately going to become very racist over the next 10-20 years as Canadians start feeling like outsiders in their own country. It's somehow considered racists to criticize the effect of multiculturalism on social unity, yet the cultures we accept in Canada only became distinct cultures because of monoculturalism.

So much of protecting the border and look who's buying your land from under you...\n.What country owns the most US real estate?\n\nChina owns roughly 384,000 acres of U.S. agricultural land, according to a 2021 report from the Department of Agriculture. Of that, 195,000 acres, worth almost $2 billion when purchased, are owned by 85 Chinese investors, which could be individuals, companies or the government....keep being distracted..??

The areas where real-estate had the largest grown are also areas where foreign investment and immigration was much higher.

High taxes, high energy prices, low wages, too much government, crony capitalism, real estate being treated as a speculative investment, too much immigration and nowhere to house them, regulations that deter entrepreneurship, poor health care, refusal to invest in our resource industry, refusal to invest in core infrastructure, declining civil liberties. Lot of these problems have been festering for a while, but things have really gone off a cliff since Trudeau was first elected. Even if you get some wise and saintly philosopher king to replace his corrupt arse, these problems will take years, probably decades to fix. I'm in my late 30s, and basically if I want to get out of this rut, I think I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and figure out a way to move to the States. I'm getting real tired of grinding my butt working and having nothing to show for it.

I think this video is good overall, but downplays the potential severity of our housing crisis. It's not just a problem for renters. Rapid expansion in finance and real estate are only a good thing if they are backed up by real growth, otherwise it's just a bubble that puts the entire national economy at risk. In Canada, it's got many characteristics of a bubble that will crash during an interest rate rise or economic crisis.\n\nAlso income inequality is not the whole story. Wealth inequality has been rising rapidly in Canada and is made worse by rapidly rising rents and inflation. Owning a home outright or with a smaller mortgage means spending less of your income on housing in Canada's current system, so even at the same income level homeowners are dramatically better off than renters and renters have noticed. It's one thing to point at some graphs of the Gini index and say inequality isn't that bad, but that's not good enough when regular people see homeowners buying fancy cars and taking lavish vacations while renters scrape by.\n\nFurthermore, you pretty much ignored the demographic concerns in Canada. We have an aging population, which means we either need high immigration that worsens the housing crisis or higher taxes to pay for growing healthcare and pension costs. Neither option is good and both paths lead to increases political and economic instability. Demographics is one of the main reasons the OECD has a poor outlook on growth in the long term.

This is so relatable. I was earning 60k CAD in Vancouver, living in an one bedroom condo and had no investment. Then I moved to Seattle (3 hours from Vancouver), now making 170k USD, owning two real-estate properties. I don't want to move back to Canada anymore, because the life there is very expensive, why do I pay so much tax and still can not have a decent life?

Canada is well represented around the world. But you don't really know someone until you live with them. This country basically shuts down for at least 4 months a year during the winter. Sure people still do stuff but any Canadian can agree that winter, compared to the other seasons is night and day. \n\nIt sells itself well in real estate especially with foreign investors but deep down nobody really wants to live here Jan-April. \n\nPersonally I moved to the states cause I'm in a field that presented better opportunities, better pay, better quality of life year round, cheaper life in general without huge taxes.\n\nThat's the trade off, either work more and not deal with winters or deal with winter and get some support for not working as much.

Why invest in a business when a literal doofus can just buy home and land and make many of my relatives made fortunes from “land trade”. \nReal estate and all its related jobs (agents, construction workers) is where a lot of Canadians work.\nAnd cooling the real estate market will affect a ton of those workers. \nAlthough a lot of this actually ignores one of the biggest issues. Our geography.\nSo much of Canada is cold and just an overall annoying place to live in that it’s simply less attractive for anyone to want to set up anything here.\nIt’s big, but a lot of useless land.

Yeah, I've been talking to a Canadian over discord for almost 2 years now trying to learn more about the country and what he told me was shocking. Canadian make about 25% less and pay 33% more in taxes then American and somehow a house in the middle of goddamn nowhere cost as much as a house in Portland. If you live in NYC, SF, or LA yeah you can forget about buying a house but its not like in America housing is unaffordable everywhere like in Canada. In Texas, you can get a big beautiful house for 300k, the catch being that real estate taxes is really high and you still be paying that even after the mortgage been paid off. Florida is affordable but hurricanes, Cleveland is really cheap despite a good reputation, and a house in the rural areas is easily under 100k. Canada pretty much have no houses under 300k which is made worse by the fact that they make less, taxed more, investment is harder + more expensive, and it actually hard to establish credit because they don't have looser standard like in the US.

Wow thanks for making this video. I totally agree with your pointe mentioned in the video. The gov regulations are too much. Here in Montréal they ticket people on any thing, it’s not cool at all, you feel abused financially on top of it with all the imposed taxes, real estate are becoming very expensive to buy. You ask yourself eventually not even the weather helps. Sun and beaches are blessings

I was born in Canada, and lived to see the change from traditional values to this mess...\n\n1 - homelessness\nthe rents and other things went up, and welfare does nt match it. even minimum wage does nt cover it in some cases, \nit s a given that you will finish on the sidewalk, and that does that many will turn to drinking and drugs.\nit will not last long however, as winter comes and there are nt enough shelters, so they conveniently die.\nyou could invest billions, it will not help if you have bad management, you have to dig deeper...\n\n2 - racism\nit s a bit of a backward country in that sense, many rural areas were very late in receiving immigrants,\nso they re not used to see diversity, unlike the US lets say, so there are parts of the country where acceptation\nwill be low, they will discriminate and gossip for sure, but it s more backward as it is racism.\nin time, when they get to know you, it goes away, and they realise how dumb they were.\nI live in Quebec, and you can blame feminism for that, they see Muslims as a symbol of patriarchy and feel threatened.\n\n3 - medical\nit s been like that since about the 90s, again, bad management made the system crash for some reason.\nI admit that I m not sure of what happened exactly there, not enough doctors for sure.\nmaybe it has to do with income, as they can get more revenue in the US or elsewhere.\nI suspect that hospitals s management - administration is too slow and crowded, but I m no expert.\n\n4 - technology\nyeah, well, it s expensive here, cell contracts, internet, probably because of distance, but I suspect\nthat we re being cheated a little too, and since again, we re a bit backward, we re used to the old methods.\nwe re not fast to adopt new trends or fashion either, it s very traditional here mostly.\n\n5 - taxes\nwe have federal and provincial taxes, plus purchase taxes, so yeah, we pay a lot of them.\nexactly, it can vary from 30 - 60% for sure, overtime does nt pay that much, 2 nd jobs can build you a big bill.\nyou re better to save on expenses than trying to earn more, you have to be cheap.\n\n6 - Canadian experience\nI m born here, but I heard of many stories about immigrants s credentials not fitting the local standards.\nin some cases, it sounds ridiculous, and closed minded, not accepting outside concepts and ideas.\nI did nt know about speaking English, but I sure know about French in Quebec...\nhere, it s very insecure about the language, almost paranoid, without speaking French, you will have many troubles.\nagain, it s mostly about bad management, and rules and mentality that self sabotage.\n\n7 - housing\nlike mentioned before, the real estate in general has jumped tremendously.\nI m no financier expert, but an overview of economy tells me that banks compete between countries,\nand they will recourse on artificially inflating the value of real estate, and that plainly kills people.\nthis is the main reason of the homelessness you see on the streets.\nyeah, the soundproofing is quite poor, and some very old buildings can cost a lot in heating.\n\n8 - well, crime is on the rise, and citizens supporting the law and public safety is not very encouraged by the system in place.\nin some way, you re better to shut up than supporting the police... this has to change!\n\n9 - the social services are biased, and impose their vision if you want help.\n\n10 - the mental health policy is too wide, and makes you ill instead of helping.\n\n11 - the pharmaceutical companies are too influencing, and make people sick instead of helping.\n\n12 - the food regulation is lacking, it is not strict enough, allowing chemicals, gmo, and radiation.\n\n13 - feminism is almost radical, especially in Quebec, they segregate genders, and dividing us, it makes the country weak.\n\notherwise, you pretty much covered it well.\n\ngood work sissses.

7:00 No, diversity is not strength, it is weakness. The non-European immigrants see Canada's open door immigration policy as a weakness. I live in Vancouver and large parts of it, including my suburb, have become Sinified (Chinese) because they have used real estate to park their funds in this city. The properties are left unoccupied or Chinese-occupied as the prices are too high for the born and raised to afford. It is a type of Chinese colonialism which the Canadian government has allowed. And there is a huge South Asian cluster in Surrey, Vancouver. Neither assimilate and why would they, because they see there is not much of a Canadian culture to assimilate into. So you end up with a mosaic of cultures that mostly remain separated from eachother and foreign ownership has become excessive.

America is like a b## ch you there just for your interest the money not for the love ! Because we hate thing like high crimes, racisms , homeleness , lack of afordable health care , to much politics . My advice work as much as you can and invest in your own country real Estates or and business ! Or just retire back home with an American pension !

The problem with Canada is that it is a giant, socialized mafia-ran ponzi scheme. There is so much red tape around EVERYTHING, all by design in order to expand bureaucracy. The immigrants that are allowed here are just tax slaves harvested as Canada has some of the highest taxes in the world. Want to get a job? 3 references, so much years experience blah blah. Want to become a trades person? 5 years with poor pay and schooling. Want to build a house? Good luck. 10 years for zoning. The list goes on and on. Born and raised here, and someone said it the best in the comments that Canada is basically a tax haven for real estate. It's a money laundering paradise. Stay as far away as you can from this country, it is a welfare deathtrap.

Canada is a land with great resources, great opportunity and potential, but for a place with so much supposedly smart people they do alot of dumb things. Been here 7 years now and I have seen so many issues that have obvious solutions but because of some weird culture or heritage or whatever they just keep doing the same thing until it hurts them. The real estate market is an absolute MESS and everybody knows. Money laundering, realtors colluding to set prices, blind auctions etc you name it. But they are just gonna keep doing the same thing until the country is in a major recession. Then everybody is going to be crying for bailouts. The health system is a MESS. Trying to find a doctor is like finding a needle in a haystack. They have them driving taxis instead, claiming that their qualifications arent as good. Yet they dont have enough doctors or nurses to support anything. Coworkers whose spouses work in those industries let me know they have to be working ridiculous shifts because there are not enough people. The taxes are ridiculous. I work in I.T. and taxes are like roughly half my salary. Many coworkers have told me all the illegal stuff they do to get around the taxes. Which I don't do because I wasn't raised like that. But people get taxed so much everyone is doing some thing to try to bypass it. And if you dont know the tricks or dont want to do them, you just get screwed. People don't talk about real issues here. There is alot of fake positivity and optimism because they dont want people to get sad and suicidal from the really long and harsh winter. I used to wonder why there were so many train delays until some one explained to me that many people commit suicides in winter by stepping in front of the trains. The only thing propping up this country is the constant influx of immigrant slave labour through the college system, (Like a ponzi scheme). But the immigrants are going to stop coming here if they cant even afford to live at all. Even the regular citizens cant afford it. So what will the country do after that, since there is an elderly population and not enough people to support the industries? Right now most of the immigrants come here and save up there money to go somewhere else or back home after they realize what a shitshow it is. I even have coworkers born and raised in Canada who are telling me they want to leave. Canada needs to stop patting itself on the back for doing stupid apologies and stuff like that, and actually do economically sound things to stop digging themselves into this hole. Great potential for this country but I don't know if it will ever be realized.

In Canada from last 15 years and living a decent life as a single. I have no plans to start family or to own real estate. Canada is much better than the overpopulated places I have been to before. Canada in my opinion is hybrid between developed and developing countries. It has dysfunctional health system, Government doesn't do things that would directly benefit citizens, money laundering from other countries has made real estate unaffordable for ordinary citizens, no incentive to develop new cities so 2/3 rd of the population lives in 7-8 major cities, higher inflation rates, harsh Winter.

As a born and raised Canadian I have seen the country become more of a place to park real estate money than a functional society in the past 20 years. Most of my friends, born and raised here too, can't even start families in their 30s a lot of the time, so I cannot even imagine what it would be like for a new immigrants. Our government basically lures immigrants here as a tax raising scheme and doesn't care much for what kind of quality of life they have.

We have to stop pointing at races, colors, nationality, religion for reparation ... we need to focus on the real issue ... you have big corporation getting out of control, billionaire now becoming trillionaire. That is crazy knowing that a lot of us are stuck at the bottom and real estate is getting unattainable, some part of the world people don't even get clean water ... wealth distribution is terrible and is getting worst every months. There's a need for a reset button, it's okay that you make money and that some go to your kids but there should be a limit of how much wealth one group of people should be able to get. Government aren't the solution because people in power there are put in place by the same group that need to be corrected ...

I don’t get why you’d want to be a resident and care so much of a residency. In a country you don’t even want to live in. It just doesn’t make sense like what a waste of money and time. I mean you live in China and love China so much then stay in China, period. Wtf people love to complicate themselves and their lives. People love problems and difficulty. These rich Chinese I think were only buying property and helping skyrocket the real estate in Vancouver, that’s all they succeeded on.