Homeownership in Calgary can be tricky to attain, and one report has revealed that if you were able to ditch your vehicle, you could put some of that money toward a mortgage.
Zoocasa crunched the numbers and found that the average cost of car ownership in Canada reached approximately $1,427 per month—covering payments, insurance, fuel, maintenance, and parking.
It then looked into whether you ditched car ownership and, with that extra cash, funnelled it into housing and how that could improve your finances.
The report examined how transitioning from a two-car household to one or eliminating a car could improve housing affordability across different regions in Canada.
By analyzing average car-related expenses, Zoocasa looked at how these savings could be redirected to help cover mortgage or rent. When it came to mortgage calculations, Zoocasa based its estimates on a 25-year term, with a 20% down payment and a 3.99% interest rate. Average rental prices were sourced from Zumper.
To get its car ownership methodology, it used data from Autotrader, detailing that a new car’s average selling price in September 2024 was $66,187. Meanwhile, Statistics Canada’s October 2024 data shows that the average APR on new auto loans is now 6.87%. Based on these figures, Zoocasa found that financing a brand-new car over an eight-year term would cost approximately $898 monthly.
Zoocasa
In Calgary, the average price of a home was $631,527, with the monthly mortgage payment over 25 years working out to be $2,655.
The additional money required landed at $1,288, with the percentage of the mortgage covered by allocating monthly car expenses towards a mortgage sitting at 54%.
The Canadian city that you would see the least benefit from going car-free is Vancouver, with the savings only reducing the average $5,290 monthly mortgage by 27%.