Comments on: Van-ity

By: Cory

Cory — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 00:51:10 +0000

My parents live in Mississauga Ontario and would love to have us move there so they can be closer to their grand kids. We live outside of Waterloo. In the spring we looked at a house in a very nice area of Mississauga. It was a 4 bedroom 2 car garage on a large lot 80X200. The house was clean but not particulary upgraded. It was listed for $879,900. It sold for $868K in a week. So even with a 600K downpayment you would still be stuck with a mortgage of $268K. We could do that but then we would have a mortgage. Where we live now we live on 2 acres and purachased the house for $670K in summer of 2008. When we bought it we sold our former house for $475K and added all of our savings a hefty $200K to make up for the difference. If I was to do it again I probably would have stayed in our old house and kept my 200K nicely in the bank. Thats moving up for you……

By: never mind

never mind — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 23:25:44 +0000

Garth, does it ever bother you that some of the comments just seem jealous, the advice sometimes ridiculous? who are you gearing to? who is your average reader? what’s their average education, class, income?
Just curious…

You start. — Garth

By: beng

beng — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:59:04 +0000

Speaking of Vancouver…

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/a-crush-for-condos/article1388228/

Everybody wanna live in da Van’ity

By: pjwlk

pjwlk — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:03:06 +0000

#31 nonplused: Nice rant(s) on the auto stuff fella, but you’re giving away your age. I’ve had many of the same experiences as you but you have to step into the new world. I’d like to counter some of your points for sake of conversation.

- You can’t legislate common sense and no matter what the auto makers do or don’t do there are still going to be people who do stupid things and shouldn’t be driving.

- You sound like a rear wheel drive believer. I was until one winter during a storm I watched car after car, all front wheel drive, and half the size of my “battle star” station wagon drive by me without an issue.

- Traction control has been the best thing I ever discovered by accident. It also does not operate over a certain speed, so your comment about excelleration is moot. Traction control has saved my bacon many, many times especially when towing my trailers in the winter. You may be thinking of Yaw (sway) stability control which I do agree can teach people bad habits. However people have bad habits regardless so perhaps it may save a life one day.

- SUV’s wind up in the ditches because four wheel drive makes people think they can stop a lot faster than they really can. Nothing will save idiots who drive too fast in 4WD

- Your back end kicking out is just another form of instability that can kill people and has for many years. I used to practice in parking lots bringing my rear wheel drive car back under control after intentionally making it fishtail… only to be harassed by the police for “playing”. Guess what? It’s pretty bloody hard to fishtail a front wheel drive car without using the rear brake. Even harder if you know how to drive them properly.

- I believe that front-wheel drive to be far superior to rear wheel and quite honestly auto makers should be making pickup trucks with front wheel as the two wheel drive postion and the back wheels kick in when switched to 4WD.

- 100km/hour is regular highway speed here in Ontario so I’m not sure what you mean by that.

- It’s the big nut sacks hanging from the back of the trucks that cause most of the problems if you know what I mean…