From the point-of-view of a born and raised Montrealer, Marty White doesn’t understand all the fuss about home ownership. “Obviously people own homes in Montreal,” he says, “but like Europe, Montreal’s really a renter’s culture. I’ve been living on my own for more than 40 years and renting for nearly 35 of them.”
On a recent weekday afternoon, we’re sitting in the living room of White’s bungalow on a quiet street in the neighbourhood of Danforth Village. He’s a fit-looking 60-year-old with curly, salt-and-pepper hair and a moustache. He’s dressed neatly in a white shirt and taupe dress pants, having just come from celebrating Rosh Hashana at his place of worship, the Beach Hebrew Institute.
“Funny thing,” he says, “here in Toronto people own cottages, too. In Montreal, you’re more likely to rent one.”
White’s memories of his childhood in Montreal were of rented homes. As a young man, in the mid-’70s, he began working for British retailer Marks & Spencer at its downtown store. It was a wonderful opportunity, he remembers, an education in merchandising, marketing, distribution and management. He was married by then and he and his wife happily rented in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce (NDG), so moving to Toronto when he was offered a promotion represented a dramatic change.
White noticed that rents were at least 50 per cent higher in Toronto so he was skeptical when his wife insisted they look at a three-bedroom penthouse with a wraparound balcony on the southeast corner of a highrise in Forest Hill. But it was around $700, he recalls, a steal at that time.
When his marriage ended 10 years later, White left on an 18-month sabbatical, cycling around Europe and the Middle East. When he returned he decided to change careers. Through business contacts, he landed a job selling ads for the Canadian edition of Time. Later he became associate publisher of Toronto Life and then returned to Time, this time as publisher. Today, he’s a consultant helping small and medium-sized businesses develop online revenue streams.
He had remarried in 1994 and he and his wife, Lise, an artist, rented a one-bedroom overlooking the lake in the Beach. Their daughter, Leila, was born a year later so they moved into a two-bedroom on the second floor of a house on a street nearby. In 1999, their son, Zane, was born. Until that time, White had never considered buying although he’d never ruled it out. “I’d always said, if there was a home I really wanted to live in, I’d buy it,” he explains. “But to live in it, not to flip it just to make money.”
Then, in 2002, the couple spotted a 2,400-square-foot, three-storey-plus-basement house for sale on their street. After a bit of negotiating, White bought it. “You have to understand something,” he says. “As a kid, if I’d ever dreamed of a perfect street on which to raise a family, this was it. A dead end, across from a park and a 30 second walk to the beach.”
Then White’s second marriage ended and he sold the house last year. Looking for a place to live with the kids, he heard that a friend had a bungalow to rent. It has two upstairs bedrooms for Leila and Zane while White’s bedroom and office are downstairs, off the family room. Out back there’s a lovely garden and fish pond. His friend, knowing that she has stable tenants who will look after her investment for her, rents the house for slightly less than $2,000 a month.
Did he consider buying another house or a condo?
“No,” he says firmly. “My wife and I split up and my kids are teenagers. Given my age, it didn’t make sense to me to take on another mortgage. Besides, except for the brief time I owned the house, I’d always believed I could make as much money, or more, investing.”
Asked to explain his philosophy about renting-versus-owning, he says: “When I owned, I didn’t just have a mortgage. I was worrying about all the utility bills, taxes and maintenance. It was a lot of money and a lot of responsibility dealing with everything. It’s significantly different from writing 12 postdated cheques. And I’ve always found that as a renter, I could live in a place and a neighbourhood much nicer than I could have afforded if I was buying a home.”
I asked White about our culture’s inclination to equate home ownership with success. “It’s completely misplaced,” he says. “My value system is based on people. Years ago I was taught that the mark of a true gentleman was someone who acted the same whomever they were with, irrespective of their place in society. I’ve never evaluated anyone by where they lived or even assumed whether they owned or rented.”
David Hayes is an author and award-winning feature writer who has been a renter most of his life. If you have stories or information to share about renting, he can be reached at lifelong_renter@sympatico.ca.
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