Crazy - I do feel for those not yet in the market and do wonder how the heck they'll ever gain a foothold. Its all most people can do to scrape together a down payment these days.
The area is solidly middle class - and improving - but its not exactly Royal Oak or Gordon Head or View Royal never mind Beach Drive, Broadmead, Bear Mtn or Ardmore; how young folks and new graduates ever get in without winning a lottery is a head scratcher. The days when my parents bought a 4 bedroom split level SFH in the UVic/Mt Tolmie neighborhood for $27,500 are ancient history, consigned to the history books.
Every day young people are buying homes in this city. But they have to start with condos, build equity, and move up. Lots of them don’t want to do that, they want the Oak Bay bungalow and a BMW straight out of university.
Back when your mom and dad bought their rancher that area was the literal sticks, next to cow fields, in a small city on an island the rest of Canada barely knew existed. Times were different, and most people would have thought Victorians were nuts living in such a small backwards place when the big money was in Edmonton and Winnipeg and Toronto. So there was opportunity lost back then, living in cheap little Victoria.
I’d prefer it if our society spent less time feeling sorry for people wanting Step G, from Step A, and instead communicated the realities of homeownership and how to get there (key point: complaining on Twitter doesn’t make an iota of difference). We like to think of Victoria in 1960 as the same desirable place it is today, except (whoa!!) housing was so cheeeeeeap, man! But Victoria then wasn’t what it is today, it was not as desirable and it had little employment. People cut their teeth elsewhere then retired to slow, quiet little Victoria where a pain in the butt ferry had to move you to the mainland if you wanted to get some business done.