What are the best tech companies in Canada?
Canada has offices of some the top companies in the world.Google has offices in Waterloo and Montreal.Amazon and Microsoft have large engineering offices mainly in Vancouver and some in Toronto.Cisco has offices in Ottawa and few other regions.Ottawa has pretty much every big name company in telecommunications. Besides Cisco, it has Ericsson, RIM, IBM.There are many Valley based tech companies with offices in Canada such as Palantir and several other well reputed start ups.Waterloo and Vancouver have a good local start up scene. Vancouver has more gaming industry where as Waterloo has more focus on general tech influenced by Valley.Toronto has lots of tech companies from all over the world but generally is more inclined towards finance / high frequency trading and similar kind of industries.Perks of big companies are of course much better than small ones. But bigger cities are expensive too e.g. housing in Vancouver is very expensive. Toronto also comes close. Ottawa is much cheaper and still has great quality of life, while Montreal is the cheapest city to live in in terms of cost of living. However, Quebec has the highest tax rate too so bigger salaries don't get you as much benefit there as it would in other provinces.
If I make $120,000 how much house can I afford?
Almost everyone who has written an answer has given incorrect or incomplete information. Here are some facts for your consideration.The first thing you should be aware of is that almost all lenders will have essentially the same lending standards and very close to the same rates. The reason for this is that almost all loans are ultimately sold to one of three investors: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or Ginnie Mae (the latter buys government insured loans, such as VA and FHA loans).It’s not possible to answer your question conclusively because you don’t provide enough information. I’ll give you an idea of how lenders approve loans, so at least you’ll have some idea.The single most important figure for qualifying a borrower is the Debt To Income ratio (DTI). We calculate this by taking the total monthly payment (including taxes, insurance and mortgage insurance if any) and adding to it any monthly debt payments that will go on for 10 months or more. This number generally cannot exceed 45% for conventional loans.With an income of $120,000 annually ($10,000 per month), your total outgo for house payment and other debt service could not exceed $4,500. If you have total debt service of $500, you’d have $4,000 available for a house payment. If you get a rate of 4.5% and make a down payment of 20%, you’d qualify for a purchase of $770,000. This would involve a total payment of almost exactly $4,000 per month.If you were making a down payment of 10%, you’d have to include mortgage insurance, which would amount to around $325 per month. Everything else being equal, you’d qualify for a purchase of $643,000.Your credit score will determine the interest rate you’ll get. A borrower with a 620 score will pay about .75% more in rate than one with a score of 740 or higher.I hope this is helpful. If you’d like to get more specific information, just comment and I’ll do my best to accommodate.