In 2021 you may be finding it difficult to purchase a home in your so-called “ideal location”.  Have you stepped outside the box to determine what your ideal location really is?

For some people “ideal location” means living close to work to avoid a commute. For others an ideal location is a commute away from a busy business district and closer to nature. For some folks, a perfect home is about having more personal living space inside the house and out (especially a growing family).

Below are a few ideas to keep in mind when determining what your ideal location can be:

Your Perfect Home May No Longer Be A Commute Away – due to the pandemic many have found working from home actually works! In some cases this may even be a reality post-pandemic. If this is you, you are in the favorable position of moving to almost any community you want to, as long as you have a reliable internet-connection. For some this can mean the suburbs, while for others this can mean a new town in another part of their province or country. Perhaps this new location is where family and friends live, that you’d like to see more often.  For the more adventurous, this can mean finally getting the chance to live in a more remote community where many of your life long personal interest truly lie. 

Is The House With The White Picket Fence Really For You? The house with the white picket fence and perfectly manicured lawn may sound like a utopian dream for some, while others loath the idea of cutting the grass, weeding the garden and painting the fence in their spare time.  Have you asked yourself how well the homes you are considering will affect your current lifestyle? If you enjoy recreating outdoors, perhaps you are better suited for a town home than a house. If you love to travel and living in a turnkey location that’s easy to rent out makes your life simpler, is a condo purchase a more suitable option for you long term?

Building Equity Is Number One! When you do the math, what you need to consider are monthly property taxes & utilities, strata fees and mortgage interest. If these three items added up, are a lower number than what you are paying in rent right now, then owning is likely a better financial option. With interest rates so low currently, a smaller portion of your monthly mortgage payment goes toward interest than ever before. Not even factoring potential property value increases in the future, over the course of the next five years, you are highly likely to build a significant amount of equity in your property. This equity is what you can use to buy your next home. Quite possibly, with this equity you may even be in a position to buy a second home and become a landlord, rather than continuing to pay rent, which ultimately pays for the property you live in, which is owned by your current landlord.