I am an immigrant to Canada. Been here three years. Used to dream of buying a condo/house, but honestly, despite the skyrocketing prices, how does the mortgage actually work in your favour if you are making $90k a year?

Assuming I want to buy a $600k house, the banks would only allow me a mortgage of say 3-4x my salary which comes up to $270-360k. If the bank were generous, I’d get $360k as my mortgage amount and I’d have to pay the difference in cash ($240k), is that right? What’s the point of “allowing” 5% or 20% down on a $500k or over property respectively if the bank won’t ever get you that much of a mortgage? Like how do you save up $240k in cash? Wouldn’t it take a decade? Or am I going about the house buying process all wrong?

EDIT: wow i was not expecting all these responses. Thank you, everyone. This was very informative. I was always under the impression that single income households (especially immigrants) were able to buy a condo/house. Thought maybe I wasn’t doing good enough managing my finances. Thank you for all the information here!! 😊😊

EDIT#2: added “condo”

EDIT#3: so many awards – wow, i am off to a great start. Thank you, you generous award granting people. Love y’all.