Mortgage Brokers have come to the defense of first-time buyers and are asking Ottawa to bring back the good ol’ days of 30 year mortgages and extra ‘help’.
The Globe and Mail asked first time buyers what would help them, and oddly enough the overwhelming response wasn’t ’30 year mortgages!’.
It was:
Affordable houses.
It appears that the price of a home has an impact on first time buyers:
“The biggest challenge I face is affordability,” said Dustin Strong, a 34-year-old Vancouver renter looking for a home in the $500,000 range. “I have spent several years saving up enough for a reasonable down payment, but have now determined that in the current market, it just makes more sense to rent.”
Ok, so the price of the home and the fear of losing your down payment and more as prices decline:
Market uncertainty and bubble-talk are also holding buyers back, said James Ellis, a 26-year-old looking for a house in Kingston, Ont., with a $250,000 budget. His biggest challenge, he said, is “determining if the value of a house now is inflated or not, and whether resale value in a few years will reflect the current value once the housing market equalizes.”
“Our main challenge is beating the fear of home prices falling on us,” added Joseph, a 28-year-old looking for a detached house in Calgary. “That is what has kept us renting.”
Read the full article here.
