Last week CBC's "The Bottom Line" tried to sum up the nuances of our national real estate market with a panel of experts gathered around a table in the downtown Toronto CBC studio. There is no shortage of advisors ready to impart their financial wisdom to the news media. They thrive on economic change along side our thirst to know what lies ahead and what we should be doing to prepare. 

For as long as I have been reading newspapers and business/financial magazines,  from time to time we see an article that attempts to weigh the merits of renting your living space against owning your own home. Whenever we see a rising of property values beyond what had been typical in the previous few years we tend to see far more of these articles.

What you dont see that would be more telling, are articles that look into the financial makeup or mindset of the determined renter vs the buyer and long time home owner.  Rob Carrick, a long time financial columnist with Canada's leading financial daily newspaper, the Globe & Mail is one example of the columnist who's job it is to impart financial wisdom to the masses across the country. He is also an advocate of the notion that renting is a safer bet than buying your home. He has made a career of penning words of caution for at least the past decade and a half. Like Chicken little locked away with a lap top and a Keurig coffee maker he churns out pieces with titles like "Sell now while you can", “Under 25? Live it up! Financial advisers can wait” and "When mortgages attack",. Last week's column was subtitled "smart people rent". " His best wisdom on financial responsibility for Canadians starting out is likely to be found in his book "How to move back in with your parents, The young persons guide to financial empowerment".  

We read articles from experts like Rob Carrick without questioning their merit,  this is the Globe & Mail after all and any or all who speaketh to us through its sacred pages, must have only words of pure wisdom to share. I confess I don't know Rob, and to be fare, he is probably a great guy and is better compensated than I for his work where as my own wordsmithing earns me nothing and is seen by far fewer eyes than his stories in the Globe & Mail.

My image of the pro rent financial writer is the guy, or gal who could have lived next door to Gerry Seinfeld. Urban dwellers who spend most of their time in the shadows of the vertical towers they inhabit. Their day to day world is wholly within walking distance or a short cab ride. Once a year they may rent a car to visit with family who live outside of the big city though never bother to pick up a local real estate catalog or venture into an open-house where they might learn that outside of the overpopulated urban dome, home ownership is possible without renting out your children for science experiments or selling your organs on eBay.

The vast expanses of the suburbs and small towns or the sight of a dog off a leash can appear threatening and totally foreign to some who know only big city living. I'll admit on moving from Toronto back to Barrie a dozen years ago there was a period of adjustment needed but a paradigm shift was inevitable and within a year the big city I left behind took on a different look and feel.  Ever since I find myself breathing a releif filled  sigh when I come over that hill on the 400 highway and see my town hugging the shores of Kempenfelt Bay on returning from the traffic and congestion of the GTA. 

What you didn't hear from the roundtable at CBC the other night and are unlikely to read in a National news paper article about real estate is the average Barrie home price is less than half that of equal homes on smaller lots in Toronto right now and almost half as much again as those in Vancouver. The home I last rented and broke my lease on in East York in 1993 was worth $125,000 then. Today it is worth just under $600,000 and yes we have had ressions in between then and today where economists did warn us not to invest in real estate..

Canada is a vast oasis, Ontario alone is made up of a full spectrum of differing lifestyles and geographically specific financial realities and whether to rent or own is wholy dependent upon where you are on that map and how far into your future you are willing to plan for.

National real estate stories written on a macbook in a Starbucks in downtown Ottawa, Vancouver or Toronto that attempt to summarize or advise with a broad coast to coast brush on the pros and cons of home ownership, the real estate market or whether it is better to own or rent  have no hope of ever being totally accurate. Not from where I sit anyway.