You know nothing, Mike Burton.
That’s what my head has been telling me for weeks now. I have been trying to dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s, but every dot pierces a hole and every cross tears a slash in the substrate of our mortgage environment. The system is set up in a way that seems to be egregiously anti-purchaser. You can’t inspect a house prior to making an offer. People make suggestions that are “technically” illegal, but everyone reassures you that these things are part of the normal course of purchase. You choose a price for a home, and then you have to negotiate against every lemon-flavoured deficiency after the fact.
It’s a nightmare, and it points to a gigantic hole in our protections as citizens. This process is one of the key events in an individual’s life, and it’s just wrong on a bunch of different levels.
Given the price of housing at present, I’m beginning to think that perhaps we have swung WAY too far in the direction of making home buying a mysterious, opaque process. That would certainly go partways in explaining why things are the way they are. Oil money, obviously. But when you can’t find out half of the information you need, when there’s no registry of offers and conditions on properties for sale in the community, it’s pretty obvious that the deck is stacked in favour of just one side.
Of course, when I own a home I’ll feel differently. Someone who enacts legislation that cuts the value of my home significantly is going to feel the wrath of anyone who is losing wealth in that process. But I wonder if it wouldn’t be worth it.