Forget Toronto; a young couple in min wage jobs can still buy a house two hours away

I believe that everyone has the right to safe and affordable housing. But nobody has the “right” to live in downtown Toronto. Nothing wrong with letting the market sort out who the lucky dogs are gonna be.

If you’re a climber and require the proximity of the trendiest restaurants and the most beautiful people, it may well be worth your while to make the sacrifices required to get into that market. Like paying three thousand a month for a studio apartment.

Others, especially young folks looking to start a family, might be interested in spending half that and having a house and a yard to show for it.

Check this out. Your mortgage on this is gonna run about a thousand a month. Add in taxes and utilities and you’ll still be well under $1,500. For that, you get a 66 X 132 lot, three beds and two baths. And you own it! That mortgage goes away after twenty five years.

Mildmay is a quaint little town two hours and six minutes from downtown Toronto, according to Google Maps. It’s got an old-timey pub, a liquor store, grocery store, and churches that still annoy you with the ding-donging of their damned bells every Sunday morning.

Any of course the Mildmay Cheese Haus, where you can get… cheese.

Lots and lots of different kinds of cheese.

A young couple each in a minimum wage job can quality for a mortgage on this if they can beg/borrow/steal a $15,000 down payment.

Minimum wage jobs are plentiful in the area. If you’ve got more than a pulse going for you, it shouldn’t be hard to find more than minimum wage without too much of a commute. There’s an outfit in Walkerton, ten minutes away, always on the lookout for welders at thirty bucks an hour.

What we don’t have a lot of is job opportunities for coders, game developers, animators, and all the other cool careers that our high school counsellors have been pushing the kids into for the last twenty years.

Those folks are are out of luck. They’re doomed to the big city and a life of being gouged by landlords and developers every month. Most of them will never have their own place.

If, on the other hand, you can weld or drive a truck, you’re in luck!