Older millennials, adults aged 35 to 44, had debt-to-disposable income ratios around 250 per cent in 2019, while Freestone noted that metric was roughly 150 per cent for the same age group in 1999.
Can confirm we’re sitting around 250% but this is after exercising significant restraint to not take on as much mortgage as the banks would have given us. Everyone I know who bought over the last couple of years went all out and I can’t imagine them being any lower than 300-350%.
I’m super confused, why is everyone bringing up such ridiculous car prices? Both Canada and the US have cheaper cars too. For example a KIA Rio (5 door) is around $17-23k new in Canada. It’s $16k in the US.
Are Americans only considering massive SUVs when they talk about new car prices?
You are talking about least expensive, they were talking about average.
Where are you getting $17K from? According to Kia’s website, they start at $19,933. And that’s pretty much the cheapest new car in Canada. That’s way out of reach for many people, and the used market is insane.
Earlier this year, my 2005 Civic with 301,000km was totaled. I bought it in 2013 for $5,000 with 121,000km. From my research, if I had sold it before it was totalled, I probably could have gotten more than $5,000 for it, even with the extra decade and 180,000km.
I went on a rampage in 2019 about SUV costs, the zero miles we put on it, and the pain in the ass that thing was to wedge into my microscopic parking spot downtown at my last job, so I bought a sports car. About 3.5 microseconds after buying the sports car my wife was like I’m pregnant (and she also sucks at driving stick, but moot point). So we got her a barely used Cruze, and we got a pretty good cash deal on it. Happy wife, car actually has a ton of room and she didn’t have to wedge a kid and stroller into a sports car, and all is good. It’s been a great problem free car these past few years too, but I don’t think she’s even put 30k on it total.
So yeah, like 2.4 seconds before COVID, we bailed out of our teeny tiny DINK-dweller condo and now live in the burbs. We don’t get great snow plowing, so we usually have a few days or even a week where the cars are buried in the garage and I can’t get them out because they’ll get stuck, which means the kids are staying home. We both work from home now, and I don’t even drive my car in the winter anymore, and my wife is like I want an SUV again. Basically, I can’t bitch about having to park it downtown, and who cares about the fuel milage it gets, because we barely will drive it anywhere. We have kids plural now, and I mean, I get the appeal. Our latest compromise is a small truck, because I’m also sick of having to try and get 4x6s home from Home Depot in teeny tiny cars, and having to mount bikes, on a damn Cruze. We’ve acquired a great hatrid of roof racks for my (our) bikes, and all the noise that comes from them, so I’ve become excited about being able to have a hitch rack again, or even just filing my bikes into the back of a pickup.
But now we are in this scenario, of what do we sell the Cruze for? The comps are bananas, like they are averaging about $8-12k more than we paid, with more milage. Now I’m not necessarily expecting we are going to get that, like that’s asking, but that’s the comparables. Every time she gets an oil change, my phone literally rings off the hook for a month afterwards. The place we bought it from offered $3k more than we paid for it last month, and I wouldn’t sell it to them because they know what I paid, but that sets a theoretical floor. Basically I’m hoping for 6-8k more than we paid for it at a dealer, and if I go it alone, I’d probably ask closer to 8-10k more. It’s such a friggin bizzare situation.
Ah, from Google (and the MSRP), now it’s $20k on their site directly. See: https://blog.clutch.ca/posts/6-cheapest-new-cars-in-canada
There are cheaper options actually. My Kia Rio cost 14k€ (and that was with a deal) back in 2015. So it’s not that far off I guess. But that was actually the new price, with navigation, camera for driving backwards and so on with 7 years warranty on top.
Prices suck of course, but on the low end they are still affordable. Mid-tier is probably a lot of leasing (as you’d have to spend a big chunk of life savings on a direct buy) and high tier is only for rich assholes (or company cars).
How many Rios do you see on the road for every F-150?
I see a RAM for every 2 F-150s. 🥲
It was like 12 years ago I was looking at $10k new Kia rio.
My best bud dated this girl that drove one of those basic Kia 4 doors, I think it was the Rio. This was back probably 2003, 2004. If I remember correctly she paid like $12k for it. That thing would shake every filing you had loose. It didn’t have suspension, it had decorative struts that held the wheels on. What a piece of crap. I’ve heard people swear by them, and I know they’ve come a long ways since, but I always think of that POS when I think of Kia.
It’s getting hard to find cars period. I forget where I read this stat, it was only in the last day or two too, but the number of cars being made, and sold for under $30k, it’s like a small handful of models in total. And good luck actually finding many of said models on local lots, the factory production numbers of these cheaper models is super low.
Also you drove by a Kia lot lately? I ride by one near us fairly regularly on my road bike, and that lot is sparse. The only vehicles on it are SUVs, and there isn’t even very many of them. So yeah the internet says the Kia Rio is $17k, but can you actually get one in your hands for that?! I mean sure, maybe one or two. But remember, we are talking averages here, for the whole marketplace.
$60k average price is definitely in line with the observations I’ve been able to make, and it definitely reflects the laneways on my block. You are right, monster trucks and SUVs, but that reflects the current market. I’m the only person on my block that only has cars in their garage.
I’m from Austria, we don’t have that issue in Europe. But people here (luckily) are a lot less into monster SUVs. If I see even one of those taking up the entire lane or blocking my sight at an intersection I’m getting annoyed.
Going to the Kia website I can actually view cars in stock in the entire country. So I could immediately pick a Kia Picanto (that’s the cheapest one) up for €15,840. Or a Kia Rio for €17,440. Though I just saw on the Kia page, they discontinued the Rio (No more new cars coming).