Novocastrian

Affordability was certainly the main issue in 1982. I could barely afford the rent.

11 years later that had changed and I knew the GTA very well.

As one of our favourite posters says "Don't fail to research".

rich07

We bought within 5 weeks of landing. We selected the area we wanted to live on the basis of the school catchment area and found a house we liked that needed work. We have no intention of staying here long term, but like the schools and the area, when the right property comes up for us, we will sell up and buy it. In the meantime what we are spending is paying down our mortgage rather than being dead money. The best advice I can offer is get a good realtor, ours was great and very quickly found what we were looking for short term, they are nothing like UK estate agents.

London Mike

All depends on your circumstances of course, but the reality is that in the first 3-5 years all you're really paying down is interest to the bank- but yes at least you your own property. Mind you, costs to upkeep, property taxes, sell on fees etc etc...
Yes, to a good realtor, but they're all motivated by their own self interest not yours.

el_richo

Depends if the interest payments are larger than the rental payments, plus other assorted costs each option incurs.

ChrisBoar

Where are you getting this from? If you're the buyer you don't pay any realtor fees. That's down to the seller.

Fee's are minimal if you are not selling.

We brought our home before we moved over. In fact we still owned our UK home, that was a fun few months having 2 mortgages!

I would say get a referral for a good local realtor who knows the area. That's what we did.

el_richo

I think she's implying that the realtor costs were incurred when they decided to move to a much better option shortly afterwards.

dbd33

Quite. I think renting makes sense because this is a large, and likely, bill. That, or you stay in the first house you saw, regretting not having gone for a different one.

Atlantic Xpat

The Mrs moved back in Sept and I moved over in Nov 2004. By Oct she was done with living back with her parents so we rented a basement appartment for the princely sum of $350 a month. Lived there until Feb when we bought a house. That was fine and dandy, but what hurt the most was the fact that we carried two mortgages from Feb to Oct when my house in the UK finally sold. Mind you that hurt less than the movement in exchange rates from $2.20 to $2.05.. (& I know anyone moving over now would give their left testicle for an exchange rate of $2.05, but it was a big swing at the time.)

We had the advantage of moving back to the area that the Mrs grew up in, so she had firm ideas of where we should live. Buying the house in Feb was done partly because the realtor advised us to do so - good house, good area, good price. That turned out to be excellent advice. Property prices in the greater St John's area went stratospheric 6 months or so later. Our house is approaching twice what we paid for it in 2005. Of course it's all relative - the larger houses in the area that we might want to move to are out of our reach. Plus ca change.

Miss Clinique

We did it. Acutualy it was two years ago this week that we bought our house. We hadnt even exchanged contracts on our house in the UK at the time - we know how to live dangerously Anyway all turned out for the good. Love the house, love Burlington, well not love (my heart belongs to dear old blighty) but it suits us.

When we got home we put pressure on all round, and the house exchanged 3 days later - phew!

Here we are two years later and we are going to Buffalo to flag pole today. Must be something about this week, we seem to do a lot of major things in lfe around these dates - spooky Oh and its my husbands birthday on 24th

fledermaus

Exactly.

Almost Canadian

Like others, we researched the various areas and then I came over a bought a house on a research trip with the possession date to occur a day after we were due to land.

I can't imagine anyone buying a house without first researching the area in which they wish to live and, having done so, I don't see the point in moving a street away shortly thereafter.

Each to their own and all that

gryphea

We decided not to buy on a TWP; too much risk. Then we got PR and have been coming up with deposit

fledermaus

Has anybody moved a street away?? Did I miss that post?

iaink

I ended up about 20km out of the town I was renting in. Its not an area I would have considered had I not stumbled upon it.

My annual rent was somewhere between a half and a third of the potential real estate commision, but you are right, its a factor to consider. A short term rental for a few months would make it a more sound insurance investment.

ChrisBoar

It's a numbers game ultimately.

I would think the best option is to come over on a 1 or 2 week research trip with the aid of a personally recommended estate agent. Decide on the area and buy a home (given you can check everything out on MLS before you arrive). Personally it was a wonderful feeling officially landing in Canada and knew our new home was already waiting for us.

The alternative would be to get tied into a probable 1 year min rental which at the end of the year has left in you a worse position for several reasons....1) A year's worth of rent has probably come close to matching potential selling costs if you decided to bail. 2) You've wasted a years rent when you could have been paying down a mortgage. 3) Houses prices have been rising the whole time you've been paying rent 4) You could end up renting in a really crappy area!

As example we have a relatively small mortgage, $40K, which costs us around $300/month. Renting an equivalent home here costed around $1000/month at the time. Selling costs on our home at the time would have been around $15K-ish. So savings would have been minimal had we decided to bail after a year.

If you are that concerned about making a bad mistake, you'd need to do the maths on what the minimal rental cost would be vs cost to bail out of your home purchase.