Red Deer’s 2% house depreciation hurts the most, the ones we need the most.

Garfield Marks

Published

3 years ago

3 minute read

We welcome your opinions.. Here’s one from Red Deer resident Garfield Marks.

Red Deer has a severe supply management issue when it comes to housing. In 4 years our population grew by 195 residents while we added 1299 new homes. House values decreased last year by 2%. Making it undesirable to young families to put down permanent roots in Red Deer.

Why it may be better to just rent in the short term.

The prices of real estate has declined in the last year by 2 %.

So what, you may ask.

Let us look at last year’s first home buyer.

Buys a $300,000 house. Puts 5% down ($15,000) and takes out a mortgage. Pays legal and moving fees for about $1,000 which would be a bargain. $16,000 out of pocket to start.

5% down means a $285,000 mortgage which means mortgage insurance which if added to the principal means a real mortgage of $296,400 to start.

Taxes for the year on property will be about $2,600.

If the mortgage was at 2.94% that would mean a monthly payment of about $1,394 or $16,728 for the year.

Let us say the needs no maintenance but one could expect maintenance of at least $1,000 but in this example we will negate maintenance.

House insurance would be about a $1,000.

During the year the home buyer spent $16,000 buying the house, $16,728 on mortgage payments and $2,600 on property taxes, $1,000 on insurance for a total of $36,328.

Today the house sells for 2% less or $294,000, then minus $12,411 real estate fees and GST, down to $281,589, then minus $1,000 legal fees to $280,589, then minus mortgage payout of about$290,000 to a net loss of about $10,000 in proceeds to the owner.

So that $300,000 home cost the owner $46,000 to live in the home for 1 year. He could have rented it for $20,000 so in this case it would make more sense to rent.

So to many people losing 2% value in their home is a big deal.

Perhaps we could slow down the building of new homes to let the market catch up, because now it leaves the most vulnerable home buyer at risk, and those are the first time buyers, the young families and the residents most needed to create a growing community.

So far from encouraging the young upwardly mobile to move to Red Deer, we are scaring them away.

Perhaps our supply and demand equation is heavily weighted to the supply side, yet we keep investing in new subdivisions while devaluing our own homes.

Who wins? Developers, city hall tax collectors, builders but not the tax payers. The city definitely makes the case for big property managers and renting. Too bad.

Garfield Marks

Political editor/writer and retired oilfield supervisor

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Pop Quiz: You Know You’re A Woke Punchline When…

Published on March 25, 2023

Bruce Dowbiggin

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” They can be powerful words to live by. Live-and-let-live has underpinned much of the Judeo/Christian tradition. It also informs many of the world’s other religions. For secular people the sentiment works just as well.

If you want to be loved and respected then you must extend love and respect in equal measures to those of whom you’re not all that fond. It is both a brake on hubris and an inspiration to our “better angels”. While that balance has been observed more in the breach than in the commission at times, live-and-let-live nonetheless still provides a path to mutual co-existence.

There was a time when that balance guided society. Or, as they like to say, the Good Old Days. Now, the needle monitoring live-and-let-live swings like a Hillary Clinton polygraph. If you’re with safe-space generation, no micro aggression is too small, no affront to LGBTQ-2 too slight to put off national calamity, no enemy too small to squash.

Woke causes replace empathy in the daily conversation. Why? Journalist Michael Shellenberger says apocalyptic behaviour “provides psychological comfort to secular Western people who have gradually abandoned traditional religions. For over a century, sociologists and psychologists have documented rising rates of depression and anxiety… Is it a coincidence that the people who said Western civilization was unsustainable are making it so?”

Not everyone has succumbed. How can you tell? In the spirit of comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s “You might be as redneck if…” here is your guide to discovering if you have become a Woke punchline.

If you’ve forgiven Japan and Germany for the atrocities they inflicted on the world in the 1940s but you can’t get past Sir John A. Macdonald putting the railway through the land of the Sioux, Blackfoot and Lakota… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you are concerned about world over-population but you’re nagging your kids about when they will make you grandparents… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you’re so sensitive about killing animals for food that you go extreme vegan but then attend a Pro-Choice rally in a T-shirt bragging about how many abortions you’ve had…you might be a Woke punchline.

If you’re in favour of Trudeau’s aggressive immigration policy but then your kids say they can’t afford to buy a home in a large Canadian centre… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you try to convince friends at a dinner party that Trudeau’s Carbon Tax really does fight global warming but your monthly hydro bill triples… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you think Trudeau family friends are the best people to investigate him ignoring CSIS warnings about China but you think Pierre Polievre is a little too cozy with the international forces of Qanon… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you believe Doug Ford is trying to dismantle free healthcare but then act indignant with the boys at beer-league hockey that you can’t get your knee fixed for over two years… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you think Stephen Colbert is still funny, but think that Bill Maher is now sounding like a January 6 insurrectionist… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you think banning Muslim and Sikh symbols is racist but Quebec doing the same is their cultural right… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you think the B.C. government will cure drug addiction by giving addicts a cozy place to shoot up but you tell people at work that you can’t go downtown anymore for all the junkies blocking the Starbucks entrance… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you firmly believe the prime minister is trying to keep a lid on inflation but you protest that Galen Weston is gouging you on food prices… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you donate to Save The Children but then buy a $350 pair of running shoes made by children in Asian sweatshops… … you might be a Woke punchline.

If you think career criminal George Floyd is a martyr but Egerton Ryerson is a genocidal racist… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you think today’s academic standards aren’t what they once were but then you go to school to berate the teacher for not communicating the curriculum properly to your indulged child… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you get to the bottom of this column without recognizing yourself in any of these contradictions… you might be a Woke punchline.

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Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx