A recent survey found that 67% of real estate brokers believe today’s buyers are more risk-averse than they were before 2022. Despite lower mortgage rates and lower home prices than we saw at the peak of the market, many buyers remain concerned that values could decline further.

The topic came up during a conversation at an open house this past weekend.

One of the attendees mentioned that she and her husband purchased their first home in 1991. If you remember that period, it wasn’t exactly a time of optimism. Canada was in a recession, home prices had fallen sharply, interest rates were climbing, and many people believed buying a home was simply too risky.

Yet they bought anyway.

I asked her what gave them the confidence to move forward when so many others were standing on the sidelines.

Her answer was simple.

“I always believed the two best long-term investments were real estate and the stock market.”

She explained that she never viewed a home as a short-term investment. It was a place to live, raise a family, and slowly build wealth over time. She also described homeownership as a forced savings plan. Mortgage payments reduced debt every month, whether she felt motivated to save or not.

That comment stuck with me.

Over the 15 years they owned that first home, they would have paid down roughly $80,000 of mortgage principal. Even if the home’s value had never increased by a single dollar, they would still have built substantial equity simply by making their monthly payments.

Compare that to renting. While renting is absolutely the right choice for some people, many renters struggle to consistently invest the difference between rent and ownership costs. The result is that years pass, housing costs are paid, but little wealth is accumulated.

What struck me most was that this couple made their decision during a period when confidence was low. They didn’t wait for headlines to become positive. They didn’t wait for experts to declare that the market was safe again.

They simply made a long-term decision.

Consider what happened afterward. An average detached home in Oshawa sold for approximately $168,000 in 2001. Today, that same home would be worth roughly $790,000. That’s an increase of more than $620,000, and throughout that entire period the owners had a roof over their heads and a place to build their lives.

The lesson isn’t that home prices rise every year. They don’t.

The lesson is that wealth is often created by people willing to make thoughtful long-term decisions during periods of uncertainty.

Over the past four decades, I have watched countless buyers and sellers react to headlines predicting disaster, recession, market corrections, or economic uncertainty. The pattern is remarkably consistent. Many freeze and postpone decisions, waiting for the perfect moment.

The perfect moment never arrives.

Meanwhile, the people who focus on where they want to be in ten or twenty years often look back and realize that the uncertainty everyone was worried about became little more than a footnote in their story.

Perhaps today’s market will eventually be remembered the same way 1991 is remembered now.

Not as a time when people should have waited.

But as a time when people who believed in their future made decisions that helped create it.

If you are mulling around the idea of buying a home I would be more than happy to create a long term strategy for your future. In the event you are living in a home with equity in the range of $800,000 and are looking at selling, I can show you how the stock market would have increased that investment by $50,000 so far this year. I can be reached at lindsay@buyselllove.ca or 905-743-5555