Dedicated to all the Renters Out There - Mortgage Payment / Rent Ratio

You are smart. You won't be swindled into paying a premium in order to rent money from the bank and pay more in interest charges than you rent would be. Congratulations!

Clearly there are good times to buy and bad times to buy - guess which time we are in! Generally speaking, as a financial planner I would never recommend an individual buy a home unless mortgage payments are less than equivalent rent.




Methodology:

Mortgage Payment is calculated by using the Benchmark Greater Vancouver House Price, putting 25% downpayment towards the principle and having a 25 year mortgage with blended principle and interest payments. As an aside, the payment is $300 less when using a 20% down with a 40 year mortgage. I don't really know of too many buyers who have $150,000 required as a downpayment though.

Rent data is from CANSIM and purchased with your generous contributions. I would appreciate the feedback on the rent data I used. Here is my issue: CANSIM has rent data for 1, 2, and 3 bdrm apartments but not for single family homes. For comparison purposes I used a multiple of 2.3 times the 2 bdrm apartment rent data to approximate the benchmark SFH rental rates. Do you feel this is too high, too low, or whatever? Should I just use the 3 bdrm and ignore any potential differences?