A full undergraduate degree at UBCO runs about four years. That's long enough that "should we just buy instead of renting" stops being a hypothetical and starts being worth an actual spreadsheet. Here's that spreadsheet, with every assumption labelled so you can adjust it for your own numbers.
The Straight Rent Number
A studio or one-bedroom on Academy Way currently runs $1,500–$1,900/month. At the midpoint ($1,700/month), four years of rent comes to $81,600. Every dollar of that is gone at graduation. No equity, no asset, no matter how responsible the tenant was.
The Buy Number, Worked Through Honestly
Take a one-bedroom at the middle of Academy Way's typical range ($425,000) and run the actual numbers on owning it for the same four years.
| Monthly Carrying Cost | Amount |
|---|---|
| Mortgage (P&I, $340,000 @ ~5%, 25-yr am.) | ~$1,985 |
| Strata fees (illustrative, confirm per building) | ~$320 |
| Property tax | ~$185 |
| Total monthly cost of owning | ~$2,490 |
That's about $790/month more than renting, call it $37,920 in extra cash over four years, plus roughly $8,300 in one-time closing costs (BC Property Transfer Tax, legal fees, inspection). So the real, all-in "cost of choosing to own instead of rent" over four years is approximately $46,200.
Now the other side of the ledger: what that extra cash actually buys you:
| Equity Built Over 4 Years | Amount |
|---|---|
| Mortgage principal paid down | ~$30,300 |
| Appreciation (conservative 3%/yr assumption) | ~$53,300 |
| Total equity built | ~$83,600 |
Net position after 4 years: ~$83,600 in equity built, against ~$46,200 in extra cost to get there. That's a roughly $37,000 advantage to buying, on top of the fact that your original $85,000 down payment is still your money, sitting in the property as equity, rather than gone. The renter's $81,600 bought four years of housing and nothing else.
What This Doesn't Include, On Purpose
To keep this honest rather than salesy, a few things this math doesn't sand over:
- Selling costs, if you sell immediately at graduation. Realtor commission and legal fees at resale typically run ~5% of sale price. On a ~$478,000 sale, that's roughly $24,000. Subtract that and the buying advantage narrows to roughly $13,000, still ahead, but meaningfully less. If you keep the unit as a rental or hand it to a younger sibling instead of selling, this cost never applies.
- Opportunity cost of the down payment. $85,000 invested elsewhere at a modest return would also grow over four years. That's a real, fair consideration (talk to your accountant or advisor about it), but it's typically smaller than the gap this math already shows, not larger.
- Appreciation isn't guaranteed. 3%/year is a conservative, inflation-tracking assumption, not a promise. Academy Way has a solid track record, but real estate can go flat or dip over any given four-year window.
- Roommate income isn't factored in at all. A 2 or 3-bedroom unit with one or two roommates contributing rent (common on Academy Way) can materially improve these numbers further. This comparison deliberately used a studio/one-bedroom with zero roommate income to keep it conservative.
The Honest Bottom Line
Buying wins this comparison, but only under a specific condition: you have to actually hold for the full four years (ideally longer). The math above assumes that. If there's a real chance your student transfers schools or drops out after a year or two, the closing costs and short-hold risk flip this calculation, and renting is the lower-risk choice. For a four-year commitment on a property with Academy Way's demand fundamentals, the numbers are genuinely in favour of buying, not because it's always true of real estate everywhere, but because this specific comparison, worked through with real figures, comes out that way.
Send us the building and budget you're considering and we'll run the actual current numbers (real strata fees, real taxes, real listings) instead of the illustrative ones above.