Can't Afford Real Estate in Canada? Here's Where You Should Move Instead

Join tens of thousands of smart young people who are building real wealth instead of enriching corporations

Image credit

For those who haven’t heard, the “great” white north has descended into little more than a massive real estate pyramid scheme.

Despite possessing the second-largest landmass on earth, more trees per capita than any nation on earth, and enough public land to give every citizen two free acres and still have more than 2 billion public left over, Canadian houses prices are still outrageously high, shackling mortgagees with crippling lifelong debt and renters with immense amounts of needless suffering, all in order to enrich parasitical land-lorders and institutional investors.

Many months ago, we predicted smart young Canadians would soon start to flee corporate-culture Canada, heading for nations where they have a real shot at owning a home and retaining a far greater portion of the wealth they create.

Well, readers, it’s happening:

Canada just saw its biggest Q1 emigration in more than half a decade.

---

Au revoir, Canada

The real-estate-induced brain drain has started, my friends.

Talent outflow has always been a problem in Canada, but watch what happens as their corporate-captured political parties continue to ignore tens of millions of struggling citizens and offer tokenistic policies instead.

In the first three months of this year, 13,100 people permanently left Canada for a better life elsewhere.

And it makes sense:

• Canada slipped to 26th on the Passport Index, a measure of where young entrepreneurs should set up shop.

• Of the top fifty cities on Nomadlist, a site that tracks where young entrepreneurs are looking to move, Canada only has one city that makes the cut.

As one commentator put it, only chumps still start businesses in Canada.

Because what’s the point of putting in a massive amount of capital, risk, and hard work to build a startup if most of your profit is just going to end up in the bottomless pockets of land-lorders and banksters anyway?

The sad reality is that Canadians are creepily obsessed with real estate. The number of home renovation, home flip, home trade, and rental property shows is embarrassing. But it makes sense — Canada doesn’t produce anything real anymore… it just spins debt for a living.

Here’s how the Canadian economy works:

1. Buy a house for near-zero money down and a huge amount of debt.

2. Watch the price go up thanks to constricted supply and investor demand.

3. Refinance to pay for fancy cars, decks, cottages, second homes, and income properties.

4. Because of all the extra demand, real estate prices go up further.

This economic insanity has caused one of the biggest real estate bubbles in history, so much so that even income earners in the top 10% — that’s people earning $100,000+ per year with no debt — are now priced out of all property types across the entire country.

Here’s what that looks like on a graph:

Image credit

In other words: A young family earning a whopping $100,000 per year can’t even qualify for a mortgage on a condo.

No wonder Canada has a massive homelessness crisis. (And remember: it’s deathly cold up there for half the year.)

When you add in rampant inflation and chronic joblessness, you can understand why Canada scores so high on the Misery Index.

Instead of permanently fixing housing unaffordability, Canadian politicians have sat back and allowed house prices to rise to the highest in the G7.

The average house price in Canada is $711,316 right now. In Toronto and Vancouver — where nearly a quarter of all Canadians live — it’s $1.26 million.

Young working Canadians are left with only a few rubbish options:

1. Wait for a housing crash in which they will likely lose their jobs.

2. Find a way to load themselves up with lifelong seven-figure debt.

3. Compete against Airbnb to lease wildly overpriced rental properties.

4. GTF out of dodge and enrich another nation with their skills instead.

If you’re thinking about joining the growing number of smart Canadians who are leaving in droves, here are some ideas to get you started:

---

Keep reading on Medium or subscribe to Substack Pro…