You know, the biggest change in the 30 years I've been in the mortgage business is that much more normal-salaried people could buy houses 30 years ago. The difference is striking. It was quite normal for the produce manager at a grocery store and a part-time nurse to be able to easily get 5% together to buy a home and comfortably manage it quite successfully. Those days are gone. The people we see buying houses today are almost consistently in the top 10% or 15% of earners in the country. That's in Ontario, anyway, and certainly British Columbia. Those are the people buying houses, or else they're getting massive assistance from their parents, who are using some of the accumulated equity in their homes to assist their kids in buying a home.
I don't mean to sound nostalgic, but I far preferred the old way, where ordinary people making ordinary wages could go out and buy a home. Obviously, there's been some stagnation in wages.