Renting an Apartment
My chosen neighborhood (city) to live in Canada is Mississauga. Mississauga is part of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and is slightly south of Toronto. The city also has direct access to Lake Ontario, which creates additional advantages for choosing a neighborhood. The main reasons Mississauga seems an excellent choice for living are the clean air, free of industrial emissions, the tremendous cultural diversity due to the large number of migrants from different areas, and the excellent social programs. Thus, Mississauga, within the GTA, is a city I am particularly interested in exploring for this paper.
After a thorough search for residential properties on realtor.ca, I settled on choosing a three-story house at 1220 Azinger Lane (see Figure 1). The house is located away from a major roadway, close to the scenic Etobicoke Valley Park, and only a 30-minute walk to the public beach. The house has two bedrooms and four bathrooms. The basement has a separate exit to the street.
Among the unique advantages of this choice is the home’s location in a prestigious neighborhood, offering increased security, 9-foot ceilings, a fenced-in backyard, and a blend of classic exterior and modern interior features. A monthly maintenance fee of $160.93 is charged for this home, and there are plenty of public schools (Lakeview Park Public School, Toronto French School, Allan A. Martin Public School) and walkable spaces (Mississauga Seniors Centre, P. Horizon, Carmen Corbasson Community Centre) in the neighborhood. The total number of parking spaces is two, including an open garage. Although no direct rental value is listed for the selected home, the average rent for a four-bedroom detached home in this neighborhood is $4,613, according to zumper.com.
Owning a Home
The total cost of the selected home is $1,329,000 (prices here and below are in Canadian dollars). After entering the data at ratehub.ca, given a 20% down payment ($265,800), Big 6 Bank (rate 6.43%) was selected to take out a mortgage loan. With a 20% down payment on the sale price, the monthly installment would be $7,077.
Increasing the down payment to 25% lowers the monthly payment to $6,634. If 25 amortization periods are used for the mortgage with a 20% down payment, the monthly payment is $7,077; with a 25% down payment, the monthly payment is reduced to $6,634. Toronto.ca was used to calculate the residential property tax rate. Figure 2 shows an itemization of the three tax items that would need to be paid when purchasing a home with a mortgage. These include the city tax ($6,725.79, 0.51%), the education tax ($2,033.37, 0.0015%), and the stock tax on city buildings ($95.62, 0.000072%), totaling $8,854.78.
Budget Planning
The previous results showed that if I rented this property, I would pay $4,613 per month; if I purchased it, I would pay $7,077 (20% down payment) or $6,634 (25% down payment). In this case, my choice is to rent because, first, it is cheaper, and second, I am not tied to a region and can change it or even the city at will. After making a monthly budget including rent, entertainment, and daily living expenses (food, clothing, communication services), as shown in Appendix A, my net difference between planned and actual spending was $417.50. My actual income was $500.00 higher than planned, and my actual spending was $82.50 higher than budgeted.
Appendix A
Personal Monthly Budget
