Novocastrian

I've done both.

The first time we came to live here (1982) we knew squat about Toronto (or indeed Canada). We rented, we had no option but to do so, having no money to speak of. We bought somewhere in the same neighbourhood (High Park) 2 years later.

The second time we came here (1993) we bought a house in April, with a closing in July, the day after we arrived.

We still live in that house.

gryphea

We have rented for 3 years and are about to buy (eek).
Our tenancy agreement has a break clause; 2 month rent penalty.

We actually rejected one house as we didn't like the tenancy agreement ( a few reasons) and in effect there was no break clause.

Chookie

We rented for 2 years before buying a house.

Partly this was because we were not entirely certain where we were going to settle, but also we wanted to get a feel for the place before we committed to buying.

And the reason it was for 2 years was that I simply couldn't face packing up and moving before that!

Piff Poff

We bought our first house here within 6 weeks. At the time there was 0% rental availability, people were sleeping in tents and all the campgrounds were chock full. Houses were selling within hours and the prices were going up daily.

We bought in a decent and popular neighbourhood. We bought the biggest we could afford - that was out mistake, we moved from a two up two down to a massive 5 bed, 3 bath place and couldn't make it home. We decided that we should look for something else pretty quick. After about 10 months we stopped looking as the prices had just gone sky high and we were actually making good money on our house, so we decided to start putting in some upgrades.

Our realtor called and convinced us to look at the house we are now in. That was Sunday am, Sunday pm we looked at the house and put an offer on which was accepted, Tues am we sold our house, to the first people that looked at it, we made a shed load of profit and was almost mortgage free - we should have stayed that way

I have to say the housing market is not that brisk around here anymore.

AlexInBC

Yes, we bought in Canada from over in the UK, rather than renting first. I hadn't actually even seen the place in person until the day we moved in. I sent my husband to check it out on his own, knowing that he was likely to be far more fussy than I was anyway (I'd already fallen for the photos - he was more objective). It worked out brilliantly for us and we've been here 5.5 years now and don't want to move, but it could so easily have turned out very differently. I wouldn't recommend anyone else do what we did, but it can sometimes have a happy ending

lcar

I haven't yet moved over (flights booked for May 21st), but my OH has been in North Bay for 6 weeks and has bought a house. We move in on May 31st.
I picked it out of a bunch of others and sent him the link, and he viewed it and sent me photos and videos.
I'm happy with what I've seen, though it is a bit of a gamble and I am trusting his judgement pretty heavily! Fingers crossed...

HGerchikov

You can also add a clause that allows you to sublet the property for the remainder of your lease if you want to move out. Basically, provided you find someone that has at least similar attributes to yourself - employment, credit rating etc., then the landlord pretty much has to agree to the sublet. Some landlords will also take a 6 month rental if the property has been empty for a while. We rented for 6 months when we arrived, then bought after 4 months, we found another family who only needed a place for a couple of months to take over our lease, introduced them to the landlords and everything worked out for everyone. Incidentally the house we bought was two streets away from the one we rented and we are still in it 6 years later so we could have bought before arrival and would have been happy.

Silverdragon102

We did it, I came over beginning of Feb 08 and we moved permanently 31 March and signed for the house a day later. Was lucky to find a great realtor who knew area and what we wanted and we have had no regrets what so ever in both the house and the area we live in (30Km from town, rural just what we ordered)

For us it was the only option as we had 3 dogs we was bringing with us and knew it would be an issue finding somewhere to rent

Almost Canadian

To those that advocate not buying to avoid wasting thousands in realtors' fees, what is the rent that it paid over that year then? Woud a year's rent be more or less than the commission paid to a realtor?

To those that believe that they wouldn't want to buy in the wrong area, do you believe that you would look much outside of the area you chose to rent in anyway? I am sure there are exceptions to the rule, but I suspect most would get it pretty close on first attempt unless, of course, they buy the first house that takes their fancy without checking out commuter routes, areas etc.

ann m

This is not dissimilar to us.

I came over for a week in April 07 - looked at 28 houses and with a lot of emailing photos back and forth to hubby, put in an offer on the one I liked and then arranged the closing date for the day after we were arriving.

Luckily, the whole family liked it - I chose well - and we are still happily in this house four years later. It was the perfect choice and has been a lucky purchase. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this route either though.

I remember iaink saying much the same thing to me in 2007 - think about the realtor fees if you mess up. But I figured we would have spent $000's in rental anyway. Having just coming from a short-term rental in the UK, I wanted my own home, and I was gonna get it!

fledermaus

I see what you are saying, but- a 2 bed house would have cost us around $1000 a month to rent with no need to buy buildings insurance, decorate, install new kitchen cabinets and floor. Buy-washer, drier, fridge, stove, blinds, lamps, carpets, plants, lawn mower, garden tools.

Not sure if property tax has to be paid on top of rent.

Realtors fees were close to $10K, plus lawyers. Factor in to this the hassle of buying and selling. It's easier to rent and you tolerate crud that you wouldn't if you owned it. So there isn't much in it and in theory all that money could have been sitting in the bank earning money

We moved 40km from where we first bought.

dbd33

There's also the consideration that you may not be able to sell quickly or for the price you paid. It's no fun to be stuck in a house for a year cleaning it up for viewings twice a week.

TheThornes

We didn't rent when we first came over. We knew exactly the areas we liked and moved over with a shortlist of 12 properties we liked the look of but chose to wait until we were here so we could view them in person. We viewed all the properties within a couple of days of landing and then made an offer on one which was accepted. We then had to wait for about six weeks before we could take possession. We're still in the same house 2 and a half years on and couldn't be happier.

Personally, I probably wouldn't have bought had we not been familiar with the area but I certainly wouldn't have bought from the UK without having seen the house in person; too much of a risk in my view.

el_richo

The realtor $'s plus the interest payments to the lender turned me off the whole buy before you try route. Not worth the risk for us, especially since rent is very reasonable in the Vancouver area for where we thought we'd like to live.

Although the rental costs are similar to the interest payments we'd make, the chance of incurring ~$50k realtor costs plus any additional on top should we decide to leave just wasn't worth the risk (assumption that price remained stagnant).

If it works out for people, great. If not, it can be an expensive trial both financially and emotionally.

It's all subjective based on risk aversion and affordability anyway, i guess.

Monique_in_Canada

we bought before we moved......

we came over Jan of 2001 for a week for a reccie with our boys who were 6 and 8 at the time, we picked 2 possible areas to live in and took the boys to the schools in those catchments, they picked which school they wanted to go too as we felt it was their adventure too....they picked their school, so then we knew the area we wanted to live in, we then waited for our acceptance which arrived in just before Easter of 2001, so we flew out for 4 days over Easter 2001 to find a house (we had already sold out house in the UK and was living in my in laws house which was empty) we did the deal on our house with a moving date of June 8th, went home to UK...packed everything up, left UK on June 6th, did the lawyers paperwork and money's on the 7th and moved in June 8th.....it was perfect for us....we lived in a lovely family orientated area....boys were very happy and settled very quickly.....