I watch the Home & Garden channel on TV a lot and it seems that most of the shows I watch are filmed in Canada. When they give the prices for houses up there, they are so high I just cannot believe it. A normal family that looks to be in the middle income category (judging by their homes and lifestyles), are all having to pay up in the $700,000 to high $900,000 range - even over $1 million for a lot of them, and these homes are not great shakes of any kind. They are old. They are lined up on streets that have 2 inches between each home, they have tiny little back garden areas, if they have any at all, and they just seem like they all need a ton of work done to them.

I guess I could go online and look up normal house prices in Canada, but I thought that since some of my readers live in Canada, you might be able to tell me.

What's with the high real estate costs up there?

I mean, there are places down in the lower 48 here that a family could pay anywhere between $20,000 and $100,000, and these are not such run-down looking homes as I am seeing in these shows.

Now those lowball priced homes might be located in more southern states, specifically Georgia which is where I've seen houses that low priced, but up here in cold New England, where we have generally higher priced homes, you could actually get a mansion of a home on a large lot of land here for $800,000 to $1 million, a nice sized home indeed.

So what's the scoop? Are the incomes up in Canada much higher than down in the States? I guess that would explain it.

Just wondering....

Thanks,

Bex

ADDENDUM: I just found this on a message board about home prices in Canada and it does kind of explain a lot:

"Much of the absurd cost of houses these days have been brought about by the culture in the past 20 years or so of television shows dedicated to brainwashing people to think of houses as investments rather than as homes. You can't turn the telly on without some estate agent advising people on what sort of decorations and improvements to carry out to jack up the value of their homes.

The house I'm living in at the moment is supposedly worth half a million quid. Thirty years ago it cost £30K - roughly three times my wages at the time. That's an insane rise in price. It's just a four bedroomed house, a double garage, and a quarter of an acre garden. Certainly not what any sane person would call half a mil's worth of property.

But the estate agents and the TV lifestyle have got everybody drooling at the money they can make with a few improvements and a lick of paint and so upwards it spirals. Unless you're planning selling up and living in a tent you're not really making any real money - because you're going to have to pay the same again when you move. The estate agents make a nice big fee though - which is why they're so linked to all the BS lifestyle home improvements shows.

"The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog...

He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer; he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounter with the roughness of the world...

When all other friends desert, he remains."

~ George V. Vest ~

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