dbd33

I was thinking of the GTA, yes. I had in mind the development around the Danforth GO, the one at Woodbine and Kingston Road and that awful squalid Watercolours by Mattamy housing project in Mississauga. I wouldn't want a new house, I'd find all that suing of the builder to be a massive pain in the arse. I'd rather buy something that's built and accept it with known failings rather than buy a hole in the ground and find out about the defects later.

Living in Barrie or similar, implies four hours a day commuting, I don't think I'd want to do that for what the builder calls an "estate lot" the same as the next "estate lot" and the next and the next. I'd rather have less space, less commute and be able to walk to the shops.

sysclp

Not everyone has $400K to spend. We were lucky to be able to spend $219K and that was at the top limit of what we could afford. Sure, I would rather have had a larger yard, but at least I am not renting anymore. On our street they made a bit of effort to make the houses not look identical and you do have a garage plus room for 2 more cars in the drive. The houses on this street were built in 1991 and are "link houses" which means the garages are attached but the houses are all either detached or semidetached.

finallygotout

I know what you mean. Where we just bought, they won't let you have 2 houses the same net to each other, and the colours have to be different as well. The houses are detached, not linked, and there is ample space between the houses.

Ours is just slight more than what you paid, and that is a for a 4 bedroom, double garage house. A coworker bought one of those mattamy homes in mississauga, and she said there was a lot of problems when they finished their house. They still have the 1yr warranty which will cover all of that anyway.

If you are going to buy an old home in a half decent area, it's going to cost you more than it might for a new home, and you are bound to end up living next to a lot of empty nesters, which doesn't help if you have kids.

sysclp

No kids here, but we are definitely the minority on our street. I think every other house here has at least one!

dbd33

I like the variety on this street. There are children of every age, retired people, gay couples, a bit of everything really. The houses are of every type and age and vary in size from tiny one bedrooms like a trailer to large four bedrooms worth close to a million. It's rowdy, people play guitars on the porch until late, the street smells of weed, but people still push their kids out to play in the morning and expect them gone 'til night. From our front porch the view is Brooklyn as in "As Good As It Gets". It's the antithesis of a planned community and, for that, it's worth putting up with the structural imperfections.

(Sorry, sysclp, I know that's a lot of money.)

iaink

For me all this confirms the folly of living in the GTA.

OK, if I was in the GTA I'd maybe be earning 80-100k as an Engineer. As it is out here I earn $60-70k, but my house, which has 3/4 acre and a view of a nice river in a little community, 20mins drive from Belleville, would probably sell now for $150k. Its assessed at $125k!!! Similar size new houses on reasonable size lots are perhaps $250k

And no, my roof doesnt leak, the cold doesnt come in and nothing major needs fixing on a regular basis.

With any sort of downpayment and an average paying job...say two incomes bringing in 40-50k, there is no need to live in a shoebox in Toronto unless you really want the city life. I'm not fussed about it, if I want to see some big city life once in a while I'll drive a couple of hours and see a show or whatever. Rest of the time I can live without it.

There seem to be a reasonable number of decent jobs available in the small to middle size towns here, so unless you work in big boy IT or corporate finance, I cant understand the desire to pay through the nose for high density rat race housing and endless sitting in traffic. Isnt that why many of us left the UK in the first place?

dbd33

I left the UK because I couldn't figure out how to raise the money to buy a house in Camden Town. Now, despite a messy life, I have a house in the equivalent of Camden Town. Toronto is a bit slow and empty, it's not London and it's not New York, but, if you can stick the provincialism, it's liveable and it's affordable.

sysclp

Yeah, especially since I moved here from a place with a cost of living maybe 1/4 to 1/5 of what it is in the GTA. My house was a nice one for the area (about 30% above the average house price) but that was only $90K and didn't have that much equity in it so I didn't have a huge pot to start off with here. Housing prices here are and will remain a stuggle to someone like me. Frankly, I thought it would be a lot longer than 4 years before we could get a house because of that, but we got lucky with a low down payment plan and a lenient lender or we would still be in an apartment.

What I paid for a small starter house here would buy a mansion in Alabama.

finallygotout

Yeah..but would you have been happy living in Alabama, with no access to medicare like the OHIP you get here, and access to the nearest costco?

finallygotout

Is it true here that it's illegal to call yourself an engineer if you are not fully certified by the board, kind of like in the UK where if you are an accountant, economist, and others, you had to be chatered?

I ask that because as a business and finance grad, I took all my certifications in the UK, and it looks like am going to have to take it again here, if I do ever want to be considered a financial planner ( CFP ).

So are you a certifcied engineer then, with the ring and all that? The same goes for nurses, plumbers and even builders I hear? You can't just start calling yourself a fully certified one of these, until you have taken the respective exams.

Souvenir

I didn't know economists had to be chartered.

It's all cobblers, anyway. I'm a full member (by examination) of a chartered institution that represents an industry about which I know next to nothing.

sysclp

Most people there do OK as most employers provide health insurance, even for burger flippers at McDonalds. Frankly, you get what you pay for in Canada with the free medical care and I wish there were other options. Don't ever have to go to the hospital here as they are horrible (as in dirty with bugs visible, at least in the one I was in). No Costco in Alabama anyway, just Sam's Club.

Personally what I disliked about Alabama was the lack of anything to do other than go to church. No clubs, no pubs, no arts, no sports other than college football and basketball (which I hate). Church and football are the main social activities there. Plus the weather sucks unless you really like living in a sauna. It is really a very boring place to live, although it is a good place to visit for excellent and affordable shopping.

The point of my post, was I moved up here from a very low cost of living place to a very high one, so it has not been easy to try and get re-established and do things most Brits moving over with a large fund from selling their high priced house find easy, like buying a house in the market up here. Not everyone comes to Canada with the means to buy a house outright or afford the mortgage on a $400K house.

finallygotout

No they don't smart Alec, but there are professional exmas. The chatered bit was relating to accountants, business and finance lot and others. Do you have anything to add to the engineering bit, or are you just nit picking?

Can you just call yourself an engineer in Ontario or Quebec with being regulated by the province, is that cobblers as well?

Souvenir

I never nit-pick. I'd just never heard of economists being chartered.

If anything, the engineering profession is probably more tightly regulated in Canada than it is in the UK. I don't think you'd be able to get away with calling yourself a "telephone engineer" or whatever here.

iaink

Couple of popular misconceptions there.

No, Im not yet a PEng, but as a graduate engineer I work as an "Engineer", every job Ive had here had the E word in the title. There are one or two things I cant legally do without PEng status, like sign off on machine safety or building plans, or advertise as a consultant I guess, and my work has to be supervised by a PEng at some point (in my case the Eng Manager in Scarborough we nominally report to). So lack of PEng is not really a problem, although just for the networking oportunities and the ability to sign passport applications its something Im working on. FWIW my immediate boss, who used to be eng manager for a large Jap multinational with about 50 engineers and countless techs reporting to him has at no point been a PEng either. Very few of the Engineers I worked with in Automotive supply were PEngs, there are far more in the aerospace field I work in now, mostly on the design side.

2nd misconception is the ring thing. Any graduate of a canadian engineering program gets the ring, its nothing to do with PEng status, and even when I get my PEng status I still dont get (or want) the pinky ring.