A look at creative ways Vancouver home buyers can still afford to have a life

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Buying a home in Metro Vancouver takes some serious cash, and that often means some serious scrimping.

But there are ways to own a home and still have a life, if you’re willing to get creative.

Melissa Carr’s experiences as a home owner in the Lower Mainland are like many others; she blogs about them at The Thirties Grind. When faced with the daunting prospect of buying their first home, she and her husband had to find ways to save for a down payment.

“If there’s one piece of advice I can give people planning on owning a home in Vancouver or the surrounding area, starting that planning process as early as they would probably be a wise decision,” Carr tells News1130.

“My husband I rented an entire house when we were younger and sublet the rooms out to homestay students and things like that. That’s how we ended up saving extra money that we were able to put aside, month after month, and actually get together a down payment. We found creative ways to pull in an extra few hundred dollars a month.”

Carr suggests many Vancouver home owners need a reality check and learn to live within their means. But she says it doesn’t have to be that difficult.

“In terms of how we budget and spend our money, we do have to be creative. One of the reasons so many people do want to live here is that we have so much to do right in our own backyards. There are amazing parks and mountains for skiing; in the summer, we have lots of great public pools and camping sites that are not too far away. It can be quite inexpensive to get out there with your family and have lots of fun,” she explains.

“We don’t take a lot of big expensive vacations. We’re not a toy family, so we don’t have lots of cars and I don’t spend my money frivolously on designer shoes and clothes. You kind of have to rob Peter to feed Paul in some cases if you want to make living here affordable.”

Shouldering as much work as possible when it comes to home maintenance and renovations can also help.

“If you’re a person like me — into decorating your own home and fixing things up — it can save you a lot of money. We have a 100-year-old house, so there was quite a bit of work that needed to be done, but a lot of it was cosmetic. If you are able to come up with a ‘big picture’ vision and can put in a little bit of elbow grease, you can have really nice results.”

Carr is also a fan of thrift store shopping for furniture and home decor.

She says if owning a single family home in the city is just too expensive, consider apartment living (New York-style!), moving deeper into the burbs, look at co-op housing or even multi-family ownership of a house with friends or relatives.