Chapter 63

If you recall, my grandma’s home back in China was an apartment in Shen Yang that my grandma still owned. As a reminder, that property had been in the family since my maternal grandpa was in the war. We’ve had ownership of that place ever since the 1950s when my grandpa was bestowed the rights to the living quarters by the Chinese Communist Party. I’m told this was a fairly common occurrence for military officers of his rank who participated in the Korean War. While the sale of property that was previously owned by a government was messy, this would be sorted out after grandma passed away. This is because everyone in the family had the idea to sell the apartment. No one even lived in China anymore and we had no means to care for it nor manage it. In fact, after grandma had moved back to Canada when I was in university, she had rented it out to a potential buyer of the place. 

The story goes that the renters owned a company of sorts and were using the space as a hub for their operations. They had expressed from the beginning that if they found working in the area comfortable enough after renting, they’d be open to purchasing the spot. They gave a fair bid after renting the place for a year or so and evaluated the cost to be around $400,000 CAD. This was quite high. If you’re wondering why it was such a high price, it was because grandma’s place was located in the heart of downtown Shen Yang. 

This was another reason to sell the place. When I was young, the location was just a small rural town. When I went back in 2012, it was a much bigger urban area. Now, around 2016, it was starting to boom as a crowded high traffic district. My point? It was unfamiliar to me and my extended family also shared this sentiment. Though the apartment by grandma had housed everyone there at one point or other, it was now an unfamiliar place. 

The extended family and mom all discussed this for a while but in the end, it was decided that mom should get to choose what happens to the apartment. She had cared for grandma the most and would have likely been the inheritor of the place. With that out of the way, mom eventually did pull the plug and decide on selling. 

A little while later and with a lot of help from my uncle, the deed was done. Mom tried to split the profit with everyone in the family and extended family but they all rejected it. They had gotten the settlement money from grandma’s case and to be honest, that was already enough for them. The extended family was well off, they had no need for a large stipend. Since mom was definitely the poorest among our family, it was decided that mom should keep all the money from the sale of the apartment in China. 

So now my mom was left with a lot of money. She had settlement money from the lawsuit but that was only a very small fraction of the amount she got from the sale of the apartment in China. When you live in Toronto and have money, what’s the most sound thing to do with it? Invest it in real estate. In particular, there was a nice house near Bathurst and Steeles that was peaking her interest. It was a semi detached old house with a backyard. The biggest draw for mom? It had a garden in the backyard. A very small one but a lively one nonetheless. Mom always wanted to try her hand at growing things but never really had the chance to due to living in a condo. Now that she had the means to manage a garden, she wanted to try and get her hands dirty. 

Before I go any further, let’s do some housekeeping. Why? Because mom already had real estate. Mom wasn’t living at the Bayview condo she bought when I first got into university. While I was in undergrad, my mom had actually rented out all of the Bayview condo and bought another condo at Finch station. This condo was much larger than the Bayview one. My mom said it was close to the TTC and offered more room so that mom and grandma wouldn’t be crammed into the small bachelor pad for which the Bayview condo had been. Considering we were still renting out the first condo we owned in Scarborough and were renting that one out too, this also meant that my mom owned 3 condos with 3 separate mortgages. This was a lot of money and a lot of financial power. I very firmly suggested she should just use the settlement money and China’s apartment sale money to pay off as much of the mortgage as possible. This was mainly in consideration of easing her monthly financial strain. Mom however, had a different idea. She sold our oldest condo. 

Remember how I said it was around $125k when we brought it back in 2004 or so? Now it was being sold around $270k around 2016. This was considered a decent price for the area and my mom used this money with the lawsuit settlement money to put the down payment on a house. The mortgage was a little steep but the thinking was that by the time it would be a bit tight, the money from the sale of the Chinese apartment would arrive. At the time of purchasing the house, that money from the sale of the Chinese apartment was still in China because we hadn’t figured out a way to move it to Canada yet. 

I spoke to her about this and told her it was a horrible idea logistics-wise because she had so much room in her house and lived alone.  Furthermore, she was horrible at house maintenance and this is also not even considering potential roadblocks we may encounter when moving the large sum of money from China to Canada. 

After telling her this, she gave me a counter argument to my claims. She said that a house was a good idea financially and this is why she wanted to do it. I couldn’t dispute this. I was never truly into the Toronto real estate game but it was common knowledge that Toronto housing prices were astronomically high. It was a good decision financially, I just don’t think we should have been thinking financially at that point. I was on route to have a good career after graduation and mom was on route to have enough money to retire in the next 5 years or so if the money from the Chinese apartment came through. I always thought of money as a means to comfortably get by. Anymore beyond that felt greedy. Regardless, mom still went ahead and did it. This essentially meant she would go -1 in condos and +1 in house ownership. Oh and in case you’re wondering, of course after the house was set up, my mom moved in and then rented out the Finch condo. 

I felt uneasy about the whole situation. However, as it would later turn out, it was fine. Throughout the next few years and with no intervention from my end, my mom would cruise by. She continued to rack in the money from the two rental properties and also pay large chunks of the mortgage on the house with her income. She never struggled much and struggled even less when she fully set up means of getting money from the Chinese bank account which housed the money from grandma’s apartment sale. Having this kind of money meant that whenever something went wrong with the house, she could easily just pay someone to fix it for her. 

As it turns out, she had done well. I was glad to be wrong. This made me quite happy. I knew that as the way things were, she could easily retire with want for nothing. It was nice to know that your parents will be okay. For me, this allowed me to focus on my career and my optometry studies. 

I wish I could tell you that while this was going on, my Optometry schooling was all smooth sailing but that’s not at all how it played out. I was struggling. If I had to worry about mom in all that, I’m not sure I would’ve survived in the program at all.