Commentary
I bought my first home in Alberta for 60 percent of what the original owner had paid for it a few years previously.
That was in 1985, shortly after a couple of years during which tens of thousands of people fled the city, its battered economy, and a housing market in a state of complete collapse. If you were willing to assume a mortgage, you could buy a home for $1.
I bought mine for, as best I can recall, $62,000. Five years previously, its original owner had paid $107,000 or so for it. For a little more context, I had just signed on in 1983 in the Calgary Sun’s sports department for the princely wage of $525 a week….