How do you afford something that high? Were you coming into this with a trust fund or are you one of those 300k+ per year engineers? I make 130k and feel my 220k mortgage (7.5% interest sadly) is scary.
Every time I watch one of those House Hunter type shows in Canada or just look at the home prices in my old home in Charleston I’m boggled by purchases.
But we're a double STEM couple with no kids (at the time). We're also the most boring people you'll ever meet, so our expenses are low.
We saved up a 20% down payment after a few years together. And interest rates were 2.5% at the time, so the payments were manageable.
The long and short is "make lots of money and live like you don't".
(That said, a year ago I was a 300+ developer, which is part of how we paid off the rest of the mortgage in 7 years.)
There's the typical Amazon, Google, Uber who pay decently (though Google is only in Waterloo and no remote). Shopify was paying well because they wanted to grow quickly and outbid on top talent elsewhere, but that blew up in their face (I was in the 20% laid off in May).
2 years ago Instacart offered me a ridiculous total comp for remote Canada, but it was mostly paper money- pre-IPO stock that will be worth something, someday, maybe.
Your family wealth didn't increase by 72,000 CAD/year it increased by 135,000 CAD/year
but I see, you paid it off. you didn't have to, the option was to just make the minimum payments and sell, could have used your big income for other things but now I'm just reminded why its not interesting to listen to boring (your words) mortgage holders.
Another simple answer is to have renters. It's not glamorous, it means people are in your space, but when it's necessary, it's necessary.