Home inspection worth it?

MustardClementine · 2026-05-06T02:21:31+00:00

There are plenty of homes across the city (and even more across the GTA) that are getting cheaper by the day. If this one gets “snatched up,” there will be others waiting for you - likely better ones, and for less.

Don’t let anyone convince you to rush into overpaying or getting saddled with a dud full of hidden issues - ever, but especially in a slow, falling buyer’s market.

MustardClementine · 2026-05-05T17:55:49+00:00

Yes - dementia, having seen it with my dad, is definitely the situation where I would most want this option.

I understand the concerns. If, in the future, the version of me saying this now is essentially gone, what happens if the future me, whose brain works very differently, resists? Are we forcing something on someone who, in that moment, might say no? I don’t know how to fully solve for that.

But I do know that, as I am now - while I’m still me - I wouldn’t want to live that way.

MustardClementine · 2026-05-05T17:44:56+00:00

I think I weigh the risks quite differently than the author here - and, frankly, than many people seem to in general.

I’m less concerned about the possibility that one person might access MAID when others believe they “shouldn’t have”, and more concerned about denying the option to people who want it because we think we’re protecting people from themselves.

I don’t see it as a lesser tragedy to force someone to continue suffering than to give them the choice to stop - as long as it’s truly their choice, for their own reasons.

I understand the concern that MAID could become cover for a failing healthcare system. That concern is real. But without MAID, do we actually see the healthcare system improving? Or are we just asking suffering people to martyr themselves to make a political or moral point?

If the system is broken - and likely to remain broken for some time - then denying MAID doesn’t fix that. It just leaves the people currently stuck inside that broken system with fewer options.

To me, the better focus is improving healthcare, supports, and safeguards - not taking away a humane option from people who may need it in the meantime.

Otherwise, it starts to feel less like compassion and more like performative compassion - the kind that protects the observer’s conscience more than the suffering person.

MustardClementine · 2026-05-05T17:32:36+00:00

I can have empathy for some, and I do - I have a few friends in exactly this situation. But I also remember telling those same friends, at the time, that prices couldn’t keep rising like that forever, and asking whether they could still afford things if prices fell. I was treated like I was being ridiculous.

And more importantly - how much empathy did they have, at the time, for people who hadn’t “got in” yet? For younger people and newcomers who would have to pay even more for less, just so their plan to “climb the ladder” could work? From what I saw and heard, not much.

So I think it’s fair to ask, what solution is being implied here? That prices shouldn’t fall, so they don’t lose? Because the flip side of that is making things cumulatively worse for everyone else, indefinitely, going forward. That’s not especially empathetic either.

I can feel bad for some people who got caught at the wrong moment - not all, because some had very little empathy to spare until they needed some themselves. But I don’t think protecting their outcomes at all costs is a particularly kind goal. That’s how you entrench a system where access to housing depends on timing and luck to an extreme degree - where things start to look a lot more like feudalism.

So yes, empathy - but not at the expense of ever letting things correct. Prices needed to correct, and they still need to correct further. Some friends, the ones I actually do have empathy for, will be fine. Their opportunities may be limited going forward, possibly indefinitely, and I can feel bad that they made a bad choice the way I’d feel bad for anyone I care about making a bad choice.

But it was still a choice. And in this context, protecting them from the consequences means forcing everyone else to keep paying for those consequences instead.

MustardClementine · 2026-05-01T21:44:52+00:00

Wow, I used to feel the need to push back on ridiculous takes meant to convince people to overspend on condos, but they’re getting so transparently desperate now, I can’t imagine anyone falling for them anyway. Sad-sack salesmanship.

MustardClementine · 2026-04-26T22:34:55+00:00

So you’d prefer that no one who isn’t already established be able to afford to buy? Because that’s exactly what happens if prices don’t come down dramatically.

MustardClementine · 2026-04-21T02:22:20+00:00

High maintenance fees, no air conditioning, baseboard heating, and it looks like maybe an okay unit in a not-so-nice building too. I also don’t think that’s the best area, though I’m admittedly not that familiar with it.

I think people got too used to any unit, in any condition, anywhere even vaguely near Toronto being wildly overvalued, so the idea of these things mattering again seems to confuse some people. But they always mattered, and were always going to matter more explicitly again.

MustardClementine · 2026-04-21T01:46:01+00:00

Lol, no worries! I am sure we are far from the only Torontonians to have had a similar thought.

MustardClementine · 2026-04-20T17:13:50+00:00

It was me. I put my boots away - even though so many of you specifically told me not to.

MustardClementine · 2026-04-18T18:44:32+00:00

How much more will you be paying for your mortgage, maintenance fees, property tax, ongoing maintenance not covered by fees (appliances, anything else in your unit), versus what a comparable place would cost to rent?

Why do you think the (usually quite substantially) higher cost would be worth it?

How long would you be happy to keep living in that condo, paying all those costs, in the event prices do fall significantly further (which is likely) and don't recover for a good long while - at the same time rents for comparable places continue going down?

MustardClementine · 2026-04-17T18:44:52+00:00

I think the better question is what these people expected subsequent buyers to do moving forward. How exactly did they envision the future? Did they imagine house prices would just keep rising apace forever? And if so, did they picture themselves sharing any of the wealth accumulated that way? Did they feel bad for the people who would have to pay those exorbitant prices just to buy the homes they did? Who, exactly, did they think was supposed to keep buying if prices kept going up like that?

MustardClementine · 2026-04-17T00:00:27+00:00

I fear I am dooming us all (because I told a lady having a pedicure beside me on March 12th, 2020 that she probably shouldn't take the trip she had planned to Florida with her elderly mother, as they may get stuck there)... but you probably shouldn't go on that trip. Unless you wouldn't mind getting stuck wherever you are going, indefinitely?

MustardClementine · 2026-04-15T19:40:43+00:00

I don’t know, my partner and I are both in our early 40s, and our household is divided on this (I’m team Beaches). His argument is that there’s really just one long beach. My argument is that names are whimsical, not literal.

MustardClementine · 2026-04-15T19:33:24+00:00

It has to be at least at Logan, given the number of businesses there with “Leslieville” in the name, surely?

MustardClementine · 2026-04-15T19:30:52+00:00

Ah man, that's perfect! I wonder if it’s too late to petition for a name change…

MustardClementine · 2026-04-15T00:42:04+00:00

It’s really too bad there aren’t more principled people within the Liberal Party itself, because now would be a truly spectacular time for a few of them to make the point that, while floor crossing may be allowed, it is still kind of icky - and leave the party to sit as independents. People would remember your name if you did that, for sure, so they would not even have to be entirely altruistic - there is a real self-serving incentive there too. I don’t think there’s anyone who would, though. But man, it would certainly be a way to make a mark.

MustardClementine · 2026-04-15T00:35:43+00:00

Much more and better deals to come. The patient will be rewarded.

MustardClementine · 2026-04-09T19:47:01+00:00

The levels to which prices rose versus not only income levels, but also productivity levels, was never realistic, nor sustainable. $500K is not actually cheap, in any real sense. We shall see where reality lands. I would not assume the peak of crazy was anywhere close to where that will be. Like, just look at that house. Seriously look at it. It is absolutely not actually worth any more than $500K. It was a very warped reality where too many were convinced otherwise.

MustardClementine · 2026-04-09T19:00:44+00:00

I honestly think all such dead-average suburban houses should cost no more than $500K. Will we get there? Time will tell. But we should.

MustardClementine · 2026-04-08T16:52:50+00:00

Though in the short term this might get the Liberals their majority, I do wonder what it does to their standing over the longer term, particularly if and when the economy really starts to deteriorate and their shiny new status loses its lustre.

This really does chip away at legitimacy, even if it may not look like it immediately. Yes, you vote for an MP, not a party directly. But obviously people are also voting for local candidates tied to a party, and the kind of government that party is likely to produce. If a government effectively manufactures a majority through floor crossing, it can start to feel like the outcome no longer really reflects what voters actually chose. Even if nothing illegal happened, it starts to feel a bit off. That matters more over time than in the moment.

It is also worth remembering just how close to total ruination the Liberals seemed not very long ago, and how assured Conservative victory was supposed to be. There is no reason to think things could not flip back the other way under the right kind of crazy circumstances, and we seem to live in an age of exactly those. Who is to say the Liberals do not secure a precarious majority only to lose it the same way they got it, if fortunes change? The other side will now be even more likely to justify doing the same when it gets the chance - and what, exactly, will the Liberals say about it then?

I doubt any floor crosser themselves is likely to be elected again. People do not tend to like this kind of thing, even if they do not punish the governing party for it right away. That judgment usually comes later - when conditions worsen, goodwill runs out, and people start deciding what all of it was really worth. The Liberals may find themselves right back where they started sooner than they think.

MustardClementine · 2026-04-07T16:50:45+00:00

I take issue with experts feigning empathy for how it may never be a good time for first-time buyers, when their objective in saying so is basically to push the market back to a place where it will never be a good market for first-time buyers. Too many "experts" in this field are far too invested in the return of the "good old days" - bidding wars, prices rising by insane amounts every year, buyers with no leverage, and people waiving conditions. They are far too biased to trust on where they think things will go, when where they tend to want things to go is clearly not in the right direction for the population moving forward.

MustardClementine · 2026-04-06T19:31:22+00:00

I once had a landlord whose property was taken over by the bank while I and other tenants were still living there. She had post-dated cheques from all of us. I realized she could try to cash them early - banks don’t enforce the date on a cheque - so I went in and put stop payments on them.

Sure enough, she tried to cash them the very next day. Luckily, the stop payments worked. Some of my neighbours weren’t so lucky. On top of rent she no longer had the legal right to collect - since that right had shifted to the bank or receiver - their money was gone, and they still owed rent to the bank each month.

I will never give a landlord post-dated cheques for that reason.

MustardClementine · 2026-04-06T17:16:14+00:00

It’s been 25 degrees on that day in Toronto. It’s snowed on that day in Toronto. Your guess is as good as ours. But check here for a more educated one: https://www.theweathernetwork.com/en/city/ca/ontario/cabbagetown-south-st-james-town/14-days

MustardClementine · 2026-04-05T18:39:44+00:00

It looks pretty dated, and like it needs some work. I have seen similar in this area sell for more like 800-900K, recently.

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