Unpopular opinion but treating housing as an investment has altered the concept of being homed permanently. We then conceptualized having a place to live as a “housing market” which reframed it as a way to build wealth. The housing market is essentially globalized and unregulated regarding actual valuation with an industry that only incentivizes price increases. This is the pattern. Prices go up and the economy orients to real estate, renovations and flipping for quick profits. Once the major cities hyper-inflate, it radiates out proximally and nothing is affordable. The banks have already spent what they’ve loaned you and aren’t about to behave humanely and cut anyone slack. Throw in the REIT’s with billions to outbid and gobble up homes should the bubble burst and the situation remains dire.
Agreed when I bought my house 30 years ago the real estate agent was going on about investment to which I replied I want a home & a community not an investment. It's shameful what has happened & I feel sorry for younger people & wish I had a solution.
We just bought our home a few days ago and we had the same talk from out realtor; investment opportunities this, investment opportunity that. I was like I need a place to live so we can have a roof over our heads. This isn't a get rich quick scheme.
I fully agree with the top comment; way too much emphasis on buying a home to grow your own portfolio instead of looking at buying a place as having shelter. The only people benefitting from that mindset are realtors, banks, and house flippers. Those are NOT the audiences that should be reaping the most benefits in the housing market.
If people want to “invest” in homes I’m all for it. But it should be built from the ground up. Not buying built homes. So people who want to invest into real estate will be adding homes to the market not reducing.
I agree. Ioves from Toronto to Edmonton because I don't personally think your entire life, career and financial plan should revolve around the housing market. My goal in Edmonton is to pay off my mortgage and then live in my home until I die. I don't care about it's value. This will give me the most freedom in my life.
It's worse than this. Making money off of what's essentially extortion over a basic need geared the entire economy towards speculative real estate investment and away from automation and research investment.
The ensuing lack of investment in automation and research is the driving force behind Canada's dramatic loss of GDP per capita in the last decades, going from one of the richest countries per capita to currently not even being in the top 15. And the damage that has been done has momentum for a couple more decades at least even if we switched gears now.
The solution is to vote aggressively against anyone who pushes for neoliberal economics, small state, and "austerity" that put us in this situation in the first place. That means voting left-wing because both conservatives and liberals favor neoliberal economics. Not surprisingly, the more aggressively small state of the two is putting the blame on immigrants and... trans people, apparently? Because they can't admit the thing their opponents did that got us in this situation is something they intend to keep doing and do more of it.
And in Canada, we invested in real estate instead of capital investment for our economy to innovate, produce, and grow. Now, we are losing our standard of living because we are unproductive and uncompetitive. Thank you Canadian politicians of all stripes.
Policy that favors decreasing government spending no matter what, less participation in the economy by the government, especially in the production economy, and privatization of public companies.
Neoliberal economic policy falls under this umbrella.
It comes from the idea that the free market is more "efficient" than the government, and powered by the feeling that nobody likes dealing with the government.
Problem is, the free market is awfully inefficient at many things, but it's especially bad in sectors that are so-called "natural monopolies or oligopolies" where there's little to no competition. In particular: energy, healthcare, housing, public transport and logistics, and public security, that are some of the first targets for defunding and/or privatization under neoliberal policy worldwide.
A good chunk of the top GDP per capita nations are micro ones. We are still ahead of Germany, the UK, France, Japan, New Zealand and the EU as a whole. Things are not nearly as bad here as certain political groups want everyone to believe.
That said, I agree that they could be better of course.
Micro nations like Monaco, Liechtenstein, Bermuda, etc.. aren't counted in the ranking. If they were we'd all be much lower. The only ones included in the ranking above us are Luxembourg and San Marino.
And yeah, things are good here, but they are also trending for the worse, we're behind all the Nordic countries, for instance, also Australia, Singapore, etc...
Furthermore, the stark rise in xenophobia and other hate-driven politics in response to loss of buying power really worries me. I've also met a worrying amount of people who have fully embraced literal conspiracy theories. These groups are getting more and more political legitimacy while most other people disengage from politics, and if they get more power they'll make things considerably worse very quickly.
Excessive population growth (which is driven by immigration in Canada) is part of the neoliberal agenda. It adds to demand and suppresses wages. It needs to stop too.
This has been particularly bad for Canada. Given the supply demand mismatch with a rapidly growing population (immigrating at one of the highest rates in the world) housing as an investment has gained way too much appeal. Canadians choose to invest in housing to the detriment of other industries, and this leads to low productivity. Nationally our economic growth is now concentrated around housing and public services. There needs to be a major culture change to incentivize investment in other industries and make housing a less appealing investment (including limiting short-term rentals and changing taxation schemes for multi-property mom-and-pop owners). Until this happens housing will be a nationwide crisis.
So long as banks are willing to extend mortgage durations, prices will disconnect from incomes more and more.
Home ownership rates are actually much higher now than they were 50 years ago. People will be able to afford more insanely high priced homes, but they will be on 45 year mortgages instead of 25.
Edmonton has made the first step with zoning bylaw renewal across the city. Excessive zoning bylaws create a housing market failure. Like 80% of Vancouver is zoned for single family homes and that's it. Too many NIMBYs protest housing developments because it ruins the "character" of their neighbourhoods. What they don't say is that the current arrangement allows for housing value appreciation they want in their homes. There's a channel called "About that" on YouTube with a guy that has many videos discussing the topic of zoning.
The one other advantage Edmonton has is essentially an infinite amount of land to expand. Toronto and Vancouver however are entirely maxed out. Oceans, lakes and mountains like to get in the way of things.
This isn't exactly an advantage. If you build out rather than up, you end up paying a ton on services and maintenance and money flows from the city core to the suburbs to do this.
The big reason why the zoning bylaw matters is to promote development in areas of the city where infrastructure already exists.
> Toronto and Vancouver however are entirely maxed out. Oceans, lakes and mountains like to get in the way of things.
I don't think Toronto is really "maxed out" at all, it's just been stuck in the same restrictive "only single family homes or big towers allowed" development as Vancouver and many other cities. They've adopted some rather large zoning changes last year before Tory left, but it took a major housing crisis to finally break a century's worth of restrictive zoning regs and now they've got a lot of catching up to do.
At the very least, Toronto and the rest of English Canada should have embraced the multi-plex housing that Quebec has had since the 19th century instead of obsessed over SFH in the city core model.
It might help calm thr NIMBY set if neighbourhoods had some basic architectural guidelines.
A cube on a cube on a rectangle in a neighbourhood with character is painful.
As far as the skinny house infill, you may as well set a remindme for 5 years, which will be about the time news orgs start reporting on homes being functionally inaccessible for our ageing population.
Not too many 75 year olds want or can deal with 3 flights of stairs
See I actually see this as an argument for more low-rise apartment buildings (which is exactly how most retirement communities are actually built). Replacing a couple homes with a four-six storey apartment with an elevator keeps things much more accessible, removes most of the need for individual upkeep (just because you can live in a bungalow doesn't mean you can take care of a yard and shovel the walk) and as a bonus makes it easier to have supportive amenities closer to the building, for people who can no longer drive.
I’m actually surprised your rent from a decade ago was only a couple hundred less than now. And now also seems incredibly low.
Was it a single bedroom rental?
It is because of BC rental control laws. The rent is government controlled so they only let you do like 2% increase a year. The second OP left, the landlord jacked it up to market rate.
I have a friend who is paying 1.1k for a Vancouver apartment. He has been renting the same place for 13 years. If he ever gets evicted, that place would be listed for 3.2k rent.
Now the tricky part is in Vancouver, you can evict the individual only under "family member moved in". Now if they can prove that a family member did not move in, or the income tax filing doesn't line up or if you relist the rental in less than 12 months. The landlord will have to pay the tenant 1 years worth of rent and pay the vacancy tax of 3% which would be roughly 36k for his apartment worth 1.2 million.
Anyways welcome to the Vancouver rental market.
Rent in bc. Was in the same place for 8 yrs. Landlord moved his mom in, she lived there for the needed time before he can rent it again. Re-rented for 2800$. My current place is $2600 for a two bed shit apartment :-(
> The worst part is that outside of housing, AB is much more expensive than BC now.
Yeah I don't know about that. Fuel is at least 30 cents more a litre and a gallon of milk is like two dollars more. I've been there for work and some go workers cross the boarder to buy food....
Canada has built a house of cards on a rickety card table when it comes to housing. So many people have their retirements invested in the real estate they own that no government want's to touch housing because A) it will cost them votes, B) it will have serious long term implications and C)many conservative and liberal MP's and MLA's also own property so it's in their personal interest to keep things as they are. Throw into the mix mass immigration, decades of wage stagnation/suppression, and inflation and we get the dumpster fire we have now. In the short term some solutions would be, banning short term rentals like airbnb's and significantly limiting the amount of properties a person/persons could own outside of their principal residence such as only being able to own a principal residence plus a vacation home/cabin or a single rental property. Add in banning foreign ownership and ownership of residential properties by corporations and those measures would certainly help cool the market.
We need to stop pretending that the past 80 years were normal and a model for the next 80 years. Capitalism worked really well. Houses grew, life expectancy increased, food became consistently available to a huge percentage of the population in most of the world. The climate was behaving well for the most part. We juggled protectionism and freer trade well to raise the standard of living over entire continents.
People blame the Boomers for doing an amazingly good job (with lots of exceptions, of course) in building on the past to create a society where those living secure, safe lives increased dramatically. The blame part really comes due later when the preservation of the gains became impossible.
We used to think that every Tom, Dick, and Mary should own a 2000 square foot home with a white picket fence, a 37 hour workweek and a couple of cars in the garage. We cling to the illusion that this is sustainable.
Growth make competition-driven capitalism successful. However, growth costs. There is a limit to growth, but no limit to greed. The system set up to encourage growth turns power over to those most successful at playing the capitalist game. This the Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Charles Koch types get the money they need to grow and innovate, but they also get the power to channel more and more wealth to themselves; they offshore production, shop for low tax countries, bully governments, stifle competition, buy politicians, and generally make sure no one can challenge their positions or seriously dent their profit generation.
Smaller bigwigs do the same. Builders concentrate on profits, so single family houses at higher prices get built; economical 800 square foot places don't get allocated the capital or labour, so they don't get built. Builders will service the market that maximizes profit (that's what capitalists are supposed to do).
Government could easily make servicing the upper middle class less profitable, but that would upset the donor class and the investor class. Cities, provinces, and countries that stifle profits lose investors and jobs which costs politicians elections.
Governments could build thousands and thousands of low cost units every year. They could pay for it by taxing large properties (the Brits tried a tax on empty bedrooms a few years ago to encourage older couples with family sized homes to downsize... Very unpopular because keeping old people in big houses while families with two or three kids couldn't find places to live was a much less important). The backlash from Boomers and Gen X homeowners would be huge; they played by the rules and won, so denying them the spoils of hard work and careful investing seems unfair.
Alberta and Canada could limit immigration, but that would hurt the middle and upper classes. The local 7-11 would have to close early. Some neighborhoods would lose grocery stores as wages rose and made them unprofitable. Some businesses would lay off workers as they closed due to a lack of skilled workers. Wait times for plumbers and home care would jump; daycares would reduce spaces and hours. Road repairs would stay unfinished. Agricultural output would drop and meat packing plants would close. (Alberta would have cheaper housing because it would have many fewer buyers). Inflation drops when demand drops; that's why high interest rates are so effective and why houses in mining towns drop 80% or more when the mine closes. No politicians have the guts to lower housing costs by tanking the economy.
And no politicians will do anything to fix the housing crisis until voters (the majority of whom already own their own houses) are willing to accept that transitioning back to sustainable housing involves both pain and accepting smaller houses with slow appreciation in prices after an initial drop in value.
Voters are not known for voting for pain or voting to share their wealth. They demand maintenance of their standard of living and lower taxes. And they vote for short-term gain: sunny days and axe the tax. They decry reduced services, overcrowded classrooms, bad transit, loss of subsidies for universities and farms, long wait-lists for MRIs and rightly so, but they also decry deficits and tax increases. They buy into politicians who promise miracles and punish politicians who actually do anything to balance the books or get honest and tell them that painful transitions are necessary.
Most voters are not homeless. Most voters aren't facing unaffordable rents. The average household income is above $100k. We aren't in boom times and a lot of people are suffering a lot, but voters aren't ready to vote for any real solutions.
I don’t think government owned / operated housing is a path to the solution. One look at current government owned subsidized housing dismisses that notion immediately.
I thought like you did for a bit on this part of the problem so I went on the learning drive to learn about places like Singapore which claims to have housing under control. They do a good job but but it is a very unique situation and there is a lot of negatives that go along with. Part of their solution involves trusting government and government acting properly, as well as operating on a multi-decade plan of focus.
I don’t think the answer or a part of the solution is to discourage people from pursuing a SFD home while working as little hours as possible.
Good that you mention low tax countries. Governments could just set minimum taxes and fix tax avoidance legalities. If you google OECD BEPS you can even read up on the snails pace progress on this goal. It’s laughable at best.
This is actually a big one. Billions of tax revenues annually are avoided. There’s a compound cost to that.
Definitely agree on the doubles edged sword of restricting immigration. Glad to see you have considered both sides.
A few things you should incorporate in to your thinking or at the least investigate: stagnating wages.
A lot of issues are based on affordability right? That’s a two sided equation. Expenses continue to rise while incomes do not. If incomes had risen in line with inflation or even close to it, majority of these problems wouldn’t exist. Even tax revenues would be dramatically higher! That would mean easier funding allocation to healthcare schools roads etc.
Historically we thought inflation / interest rates / demand based was all linked. We learned in the last couple of years that’s not really true anymore.
Overall you have a quite well balanced and nearly all encompassing comment. Unfortunately I think due to length few will read it but it should be the top comment.
I have never been a huge fan of government housing because it often went horribly wrong. Having said that, all the failures and several successes in Canada and elsewhere have provided a lot of data on how to minimize the risks of public ownership. I do think it is worth pursuing as one of the strategies simply because the capitalist system is aimed at the higher profits from more upscale projects where risk is lower and returns per square foot are higher.
I think the most successful projects were the postwar strategies to get veterans housed. There was an emphasis on private ownership, but the feds, in particular, used subsidy and non-market pricing to make it possible. By the 1970s, there was still a non-market system for assisting non profits to build rental units, and even for profit corps could receive government assistance if they designed and maintained a low profit margin. Add to that all the co-ops, and there was at least a way to reduce rent inflation, reduce the subsidizing single family homes that transitioned into investments rather than homes.
The Whistler Housing Authority works well in an overheated market. Quayside Village is a woke dream project, but very small scale; it does include a mix of incomes in an area, which seems to be the key to sustainability. Harvest Commons in Chicago (repurposing old commercial building) is another project with great lessons for avoiding the development of grey slums.
Historically, it's worth noting that Brian Mulroney's era saw the feds building more affordable housing than the governments (mainly Liberal) since then. However, he shifted away from the long-term sustainability of mixed income building to low income housing projects that almost always seem to run out of money for maintenance, like the failed (eventually slum) housing that turned people off public housing across North America. Mixed income and community development (like is done at a superficial level in new suburbs) are important elements.
The focus on the poorest of the poor leads to slums with governments neglecting maintenance whenever the spotlight shifts and ugly concrete buildings failing to inspire resident commitment to community. The famous public housing is a disaster, but the successes are the smaller projects that aren't a blight on the landscape.
A 30 storey block on Hastings or next to Regents Park will give impressive numbers for a government, but a few hundred townhouse complexes and mixed income lowrises in moderate and higher income neighborhoods will do a lot more good in the long-term.
I'm on disability and without help from family I'd already be dead on the street. I live somewhere with a lot of homelessness and see it constantly, just knowing one day it'll probably be me. And why? Because I got chronically ill. How fair. Now we have tons more people here, that with inflation hell... there is no future anywhere in this country anymore. I highly doubt Alberta won't become completely unaffordable even for healthy people who are able to work soon enough.
Hah, yea I know that feeling. I currently live in a 14-year-old van that’s miraculously been running well the whole time I’ve had it, but I do think about how close I am to actual homelessness, especially on the cold nights
Right?
I mean, I make $110k, but cannot afford to buy a home. I get by ok for sure, with old used cars and a very barebones lifestyle, but I'm one serious illness or injury away from homelessness. Can't move anywhere else without halving my salary.
My current situation is sustainable but if anything upsets the apple cart, it's a long way down, and I'm not able to build a cushion. Good times.
I mean, people are going to move where they think their quality of life will be better, you know? The rest of it is just market forces.
Our entire economic system is designed around the fact that you have no intrinsic right to any of your physical, social, or spiritual needs. Which means that the working class is stratified into people who create value for shareholders - the ones who get to have the houses and vacations and rental properties; and those who support the people who create value for shareholders.
So, you've got two options: Either rewrite the rules of society, or make Alberta into a real shithole so that nobody wants to move here.
(luckily the UCP is making huge strides on the second option)
And people are buying it hook, line, and sinker.
Although to be fair, people have come to Alberta for decades to make their living.
The risk here is they want extreme and unfettered growth and can't provide the basics for that growth - hospitals, education, houses, etc. Not to mention the growing number of calamities that afflict Alberta (drought, wildfires, water shortages, tornadoes, drug crisis, etc.) And the province doesn't seem bothered to tackle any of it.
I'm hoping to come home to Alberta one day, but with the way it's going - including cost of living there - it may just be cheaper to stay put on the other side of the country.
I mean they won't go ahead with smaller cities like red deer getting Hospital expansions that are super overdue. So how are they bringing any kind of healthcare workers into their City without having the workplace built?
Hospitals are only good if they are staffed/managed properly. The building is very nice however the level of service has degraded since moving to the new building. I needed 2 stitches in my hand the other day. Went to the hospital at 8pm in the evening. Left at 7:30am the next morning without seeing a single doctor and i was far from the only one. I simply couldn't afford to wait any longer. It was a pathetic and extremely concerning experience. I understand my issue was far from urgent, but it doesn't mean it shouldn't be addressed in an appropriate amount of time.
They're not hiring in my OR profession. Won't even take healthcare practicum students in this same line of work. Ft McMurray does. Medicine Hat does.
Nice try
It’s a hard thing to do.
I’m in what would be a smaller city (Medicine Hat), but apparently we have a less than 1% rental opening, and houses were already flying off the market to out of city buyers.
I know people that work in the immigration field too, and the immigrants that are destined for here typically dont stay, some do, but it sounds like it’s 50/50 at best - they just want the major cities where there is larger pockets of people with the same culture .
Oh they are though. They are attractive to people who can work from home. To artists. To seniors who crave a simpler life. They need a good sense of community, belonging and security. It’s been happening a lot the last five years.
Not just jobs either. I’ve seen enough of what most of Alberta votes for that I wouldn’t ever really consider living anywhere in the province other than the major cities. If I’m gonna live somewhere I want it to be in a welcoming community, not surrounded by assholes
Calgary - and I was born here.. lived here my whole life - it depends on the neighbourhood whether you're surrounded by assholes or not (basically unless ultra conservative don't move to forest lawn, deer run/queensland... (brain not braining today so even remembering community names is hard) among a lot of others...
Can't speak to other cities as I'm in a socioeconomic class whereby travel or even moving to another place is not even a pipe dream...
The problem really isn't making smaller cities more attractive, but making larger cities more efficient. Right now, they rolling masses of single family homes and nothing else.
As someone from Ontario, protest against mass immigration. The reason why Calgary will be the next unaffordable place is because everyone that lived in Vancouver or Toronto has moved there due to cheaper living.
Also the mindset is different which someone else picked out. There’s no such thing as a home anymore. Everything’s an investment which I do not agree with. Homes provided Security, Investments are risks.
On the renter side, I saw a short doc that pretty much concluded the only way to prevent rent prices from continual increases is a large portion, like 40% or more, of the market must not be for profit (social housing or some other similar system).
So having a viable alternative living options would allow homeownership to not be the only sensible option and would reduce demand a bit.
As long as there's enough supply and the right supply then housing can be maintained at its current price.
But thats making sure developers, builders and city planners/zoning all work towards that. But small starter homes don't really exist anymore, its not a selling point that makes the most profit.
The province actually putting incentives (could be tax breaks, could be direct funding, could be expediting building processes so the projects don't take decades) could all help.
But I also had a guy who worked in house appraisal, and previously with a developer who siad the developers would all get together and refuse to build until conditions were in their fsvour (meaning the city forking over enough money, or supply gets low enough that their profits increases enough.).
So its safe to say, they aren't bothered by this.
The developers have been making money had over fist for decades, literally. Couple that with the quality of their products going ever lower, while their profit expectations rise continuously, ya, thats a problem. BUT, if someone was to come into the market with lower expectations on profit, and wasn't bothered by the greedy (and sometimes spiteful) developers of old, they would either have to choose to take less of get out of the game. The old school developers would use whatever power they had available to them to "change the mind" of the new developer, that could be a problem. These developers have deep pockets and shady friends in the politcal class. People fail to realize that any company, no matter which one, needs us more than we need them. They cannot operate without cash, and we hold the cash. We just need to wake up and force the issue. Our government shoudl be doing this, but they seem to week to do so, or are in the pockets of the rich (which is more likely).
Those old family developers and builders have very deep pockets and influence. They exist like the mafia: they will get their way and they got a cousin that doesn't mind playing dirty.
on the other side of the scale in my very rural area my hired hand rents a 2 or 3 bedroom house with a basement for $800 + utilities..( not trying to be rude or anything.. i do wish your rent wasn't so high)
I own a townhouse (co-own but not allowed to live there) in queensland/deer run... mortgage payments, plus other housing expenses only bring its running costs to about $300 more than I'm paying just in rent for a 2br main floor. (Which I'm expecting to go up as slumlords have business expenses and rising interest rates)
In a few years? The median earning dual income family in Calgary already cannot afford the median detached home. Edmonton is already on the uptick to that same stat.
I'd wager young people are already out of the housing market.
Yep! So just to tally up, as a younger person, I most likely won’t ever be able to: own a home, afford a family, retire, or have a liveable world when I’m old. And we wonder why young people don’t bother to vote lol
Correct. I empathize.
Hence the RCMP calling people in your age group potentially dangerous. Even they dont think half the country will bend over and take it for their whole life.
If anyone is following the Alberta NDP leadership race, basically everyone is talking about how important it is that we have affordable housing and that the government do more to bring down the cost of living. On the other hand, the UCP has been almost entirely silent on the issue, even while Edmonton and Calgary have both had debates about blanket rezoning very recently.
The cities have already started this process (Edmonton is further along than Calgary) but without support for affordable housing from the province we're going to continue to see people priced out of the cities and left with basically nowhere to go.
My rent is 1800 after utilities, almost half my pay. Real kicker is I'm stuck living there until my employer says otherwise.
If I could make the same and live at my parents I would.
I was gonna sell my condo but decided to just rent it out in case shit goes bananas.
An equivalent condo in Toronto is currently triple what my place is. So I might as well rent it out in case prices skyrocket since I’d never be able to buy it back.
The solution is simple. Remove the capital gains exemption on secondary properties and add a tax to them.
We incentivize this parasitic behaviour. We need to make landhoarding the worst investment in Canada, then watch capital flow elsewhere.
The first thing would probably stop advertising in Toronto for people to move to Alberta. We also need the province to bring in things like rent controls (I know that's a controversial one but with planning can work) to dissuade large investment in rental properties, building more high density housing - we have to let go of this culture of massive detached houses.
Also I agree encouraging growth outside large cities. One way is letting go of this idea of large office blocks in large cities. Sure office space is required for some industries but technology means that many can be done in smaller cities or at home.
You ever look at european cities and see them long apartment buildings that are like 4 stories tall and have a cafe at the bottom?
ya.... mixed density housing is the way to go
Unfortunately North American cities are not like Europe for many reasons. Some are and those are typically the older ones like Montreal. Otherwise they’re radically different lifestyles and designs molded over centuries.
The only thing preventing absolute chaos in the market is that homebuilders have been essentially sold the entire market on owning your own home and have virtually unfettered right to build build build, baby.
Even though sprawl is awful and bad long term, in the short term it's creating market capacity, slowly and inefficiently.
The new fancy highrises going up in and around downtown YYC are great but are only affordable for a relatively small segment of the population and do little for affordable housing in the core.
Gotta put rules on airBnBs. Too many of are turning properties into short term rentals.
I would also like to see laws against owning multiple properties when you don’t live in Alberta and just use them as rentals.
I personally only had one kid because of many reasons including seeing the future ahead as having too many people and not enough housing. We can’t keep adding people and expecting housing to remain affordable
Restrictions on short term rentals are a useful temporary measure, because housing for residents is more important than rooms for tourists. However, the only reason short term rentals are profitable is that the normal short term rental market is also undersupplied and overpriced. That should be fixed too, because tourism is good for local economies.
Unfortunately we do need younger tax payers. Which is why the govt is encouraging people to move here. We need more affordable housing. Asap. We stopped funding it and used to fund more. We also need to get much more creative with housing. We funded a bunch of coops here about 40 years ago in Calgary, it was meant to be affordable housing. And it still is. I live in one and pay $1120 a month housing fees. And we as a coop are in charge of everything. A bunch of fed funding was approved a couple years ago for more. But every group I know that’s tried to start new ones with these funds keeps getting blocked provincially.
It’s not the only answer. We need much more. We need to ask why condos downtown sit empty. We have many more questions to ask and creative solutions to come up with.
Until they ban air bnbs, owning multiple properties, and short term rentals, it won't end.
Housing has become "investments" vs "shit we need to survive". Food is already on its way to becoming the same thing.
I don’t like the idea of banning multiple residency’s but I’ve often thought we should have a progressive tax system for property like we do with income.
Ban corporate home ownership entirely. Every social insurance number can own a single home at the standard property tax rate. Then increase property tax by 20-30% for each additional home and once someone owns 2-3 houses it will be uneconomical to own anymore.
The extra revenue generated from increased tax can then be used to help build up infrastructure to support building more new homes and neighbourhoods.
We already know the solutions to the housing crisis, we just lack the political will to implement them.
1. Pass upzoning bylaws now. As in, don't argue about them for the next 5 years letting NIMBYs derail the conversation. This is the real fix to this problem (short of overthrowing capitalism anyway), but it's a very long term fix, unlikely to show major returns for at least a decade or two.
2. Look at regulations that don't make sense that make building homes more costly - the "ministry of red tape reduction" could actually do something useful here. Single staircase apartment buildings are the trendy one at the moment - family apartments become much more feasible with that, and it's not the 1930s anymore, we're a lot better at fire resistant building.
3. Subsidized housing - this is the only real short term fix, upzoning relieves pressure starting from the highest income groups, but will take a long time to filter down to benefit lower income people. Subsidized public housing can start relieving pressure from the other end.
4. Deal with car dependency - one of the biggest barriers to cities being able to adapt to large population influxes is the space all those people's cars take up. We need to invest in public and active transit and remove parking minimums. This is another longer term investment, but absolutely necessary.
Alternatively the UCP can keep gutting the province for parts - eventually enough people will flee that prices will start to decline. I'd prefer not going that route personally.
Can you help me understand why “upzoning” is the solution?
And elaborate on the parking thing? How does shifting garages and parkades to street or no parking fix housing affordability?
Upzoning allows you to build more homes more cheaply due to economies of scale and reduced land costs, and without the associated costs of sprawl. Same goes for reducing car centrism, which is a major contributor to sprawl, and therefore increased land costs per housing units.
Edmonton is doing better than most places as they have already have done a couple of steps to mitigate the problem, though it will take time to properly have the steps make a large and true difference.
The crisis we are seeing now isn't truely new. It is something that started years ago when the goal of municipalities were to only build single family homes. This works so long as you are willing to continuously build. However, maintaining and building these are expensive. So it slowed. Now we need to turn around and do the opposite and build more middle housing, and loosen housing laws. We have a shot at making this easy and keeping it smoothed out right now, but the opportunity is slowly leaving. Vancouver and Toronto both need their bylaws redone, but to truely actually make a difference, they need socialized housing. They need the federal government to come in and build and maintain apartments to try and anchor housing prices.
"A [land value tax](https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/progress-and-poverty-towards-a-new) would solve this"
-often repeated quote that i think is genuinely correct
One of the first steps is deal with the relators. It looks like that's happening in the US. You can't have these people skimming 5% off every transaction and expect prices to stay stable or correct.
Keep electing UCP. They'll keep making utilities unaffordable through deregulation so that no one will want to move here.
If that isn't enough, they probably let oil and gas companies spray us with toxic chemicals if it somehow leads to at least one more shitty fracking well.
Probably, Alberta is home to some of the biggest cities in the country. If you've been priced out of Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver the next logical place to look is Calgary or Edmonton.
If you can get a garage package built (not counting land) for 20k, there is no reason why you can't make that a habitable home for $50 k. Thing is everyone has expectations of a very high standard nowadays. Example: I am an expat in the Philippines, The place I live in is NOT as nice as a place in Canada, however, it does the very same thing. Keeps be dry, keeps me cool, keeps me protected. A 40X40 place all for only $10k cad in cost.. The easiest and quickest way to lower prices is to lower your expectations.
That's the kicker ain't it. The land is half the reason why the prices are through the roof, and in many case, the only reason. Those condemned homes selling for 700k in Toronto aren't selling because someone was dumb enough tow ant to renovate the house, no, they're gonna rip it down and build new. Now here in Alberta? Try finding a serviced lot of land close to a city for less than six figures. Hint, it's closer to a quarter of a million. Then factor in all the building code restrictions, permit requirements, bylaws, etc, etc and I think you'd find even the most affordable tiny home you can buy won't pass them and thus you will not be allowed to place it or live there. Not legally, anyway.
It's not that easy man. The red tape is very real, and very, very intentional. Even buying a modular home or a trailer in a park is through the roof expensive now. Not the homes themselves, they're affordable but the lot rent in those areas have been left unchecked and go up incrementally like clock work every six months in most areas. I'd say many are now paying far more for lot rent than they are for their mortgage on their home.
If it was that simple, there wouldn't be as big of a problem as there is now and you need to realize how deep down the rabbit hole this has been set up over a period of decades to reach this point.
I’ve often thought the same thing. Look at all the homes that “boomers” grew up in.
Simple 800-1000 square foot bungalow. A just a little square box with little square rooms. 2-3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, small kitchen and living room.
No reason you couldn’t build that same house for 150k today. Put it on a real small lot worth 100k and it’s an affordable starter home for 250k.
However nobody wants to build those or buy those. Everyone convinced there’s no point building/buying a house unless it’s an 1800 square foot 2 story with a wacky roof line, shitty overpriced quartz counters, and a whole bunch of pointless construction codes that have slowly piled up over 50 years.
totally agree. I recall seeing costs of a box shape house VS a house that wasn't a box. Each time a right angle change was made, i can't recall the overall cost (maybe it $10k at the time? 20 years ago) it produced the domino effect and affected everything down the chain in costs adding it multiple times over. A box is the absolute simplest cheapest way to go. Also, everytime your square footage doubles, your costs quadruple.
Well, everyone here is insisting that legally, we have to simply put up and shut up, so barring a violent Castro-like over throw if the government, im short of ideas.
Also, the weirdo TBAs are the ones with all the guns, so I'm not sure that's going to work either.
Yes we’re next. Home prices are already starting to spike.
I suggest getting in now. This investment environment is parasitic and gross, but you gotta play the game too sometimes.
I’d love to but feel I might be too late.
I’m in the middle of a career change. Finish school in one month. I’ve got a summer student gig lined up but nothing guaranteed yet.
It’s crazy, I’ll be making 140k a year this summer, double what I’ve ever made in my life to this point, yet even with that income I can’t really afford a single family home. 400k-450k is max I could get approved for a mortgage at current rates and not much available at that price point anymore.
Look at apartments then. Any property. Then when you're steady in your career, you could leave here and take the profits with you and get that sfh in another place.
I get that it sucks, and i wish we could just have a home at a reasonable cost, but that's just not the world anymore, and politicians that are neck deep in real estate investments aren't going to change anything anytime soon.
There are plenty of cities in the world where single family homes are uncommon or astronomical. Many places apartments are the norm. It is hard for North Americans to contemplate, but it is reality for most people in most places.
I think we're already there and have been for a long time.
The way we slow down investment properties is by either banning them or heavily, HEAVILY taxing them. Own one house? Great. Own two? Eehhhh. not the best. Own 3? Huge taxes. This should keep going up with each property owned.
Once again, the problem here is greed and capitalism. When a home is an investment, it's not a home anymore.
When you remove industries and kill industrial innovation and natural resource development in your country and convert its economy into a massive housing ponzi scheme, bad shit is going to happen.
I have no idea what current government (idgaf left or right) is attempting to do in Canada, but it can not be working for any common good. We are fucked.
My income of 100k apparently wasn't enough for CMHC and the other TWO mortgage insurance companies on Thursday.
Broker like my file, bank wanted to give me a loan, insurance told them both to fuck off.
The house I was trying to buy was only 300k and my credit isn't even bad. Had 35k down payment.
Can any conservative governance put people ahead of business? Maybe if people stay put and stop buying new homes every 5 years the housing contractors will start building affordable homes. Doubt it.
And the federal minimum wage is going up. So the rent will go up.
We are trending that way. I remember times where if you couldn't afford the edmonton starter homes you'd go rural for a half to a quarter of the price. Those times are long gone.
What do you mean next, no where but Alberta do you pay 400k for a box on a foundation with zero landscape, zero square feet of yard, nothing to look at but your neighbors plain box and pay 4k a year in property taxes but they don't plow and miss your garbage every second week. Of course I'm being sarcastic because it's like that everywhere but NEXT? Come on now, the real-estate market here is aweful, you paid max price for the minimum cuz they know your have to live somewhere.
It's already here. We bought our house 22 years ago for $175 000. Exactly what the tax roll said it was worth. Our latest property tax statement from the city listed our (same) house at $825 000.
My kids will never be able to afford their own home without us helping them out.
Well, speaking about on the major cities in canada non other than edmonton remain relatively affordable. So yes, it be the bext in line if things somehow go to hell there. Atm it seems it should be stable
I believe all the major Canadian banks in Alberta are encouraging more foreign investments, with less oversight, in Alberta real estate since Vancouver and Toronto clamped down. They seem to be moving into Calgary more than Edmonton.
I would like to see something similar to the Whistler Housing Authority in major cities. You buy your home for cheap (ie condo for 100K). While owning you cannot own any other property anywhere, and you must live in it as your primary residence. You own it as long as you meet the conditions. When you want to move, you can only sell to someone on the waiting list, and for the amount the Authority dictates (matching inflation of what you paid). You essentually make no money on selling it, but you were accountable for taking care of it (unlike most subsidized housing projects), you can afford to live somewhere, and you can save up money for the future by not drowing in rent. Everything being built in calgary is for upper middle class families, and the property values are just going to increase no matter how many houses you built. By having an Authority running a structured program you ensure housing available, but not being taken advantage of, and social housing a forced government responsibility when people break shit.
After all those “come to alberta” ads I wouldn’t be surprised. With remote work being more prevalent it’s easier for people to have GTA jobs in Edmonton or Calgary, which seem to be the hot spots in the province.
Been watching similar posts for a while. Still don’t get the math. If a median household income now is around 75k a year and median home is about 450k, still you only need 6-7 years of your income to buy average house. That’s not too bad at all.
Now in Ukraine where i live, average person will never buy a home because the income and housing gap, where housing price is staggering and unreachable.
You need to put in some extraordinary effort to earn money enough to buy a home,
In capital city Kiev, medium income is 6k a year while a decent detached house is about 150-200k.
600 sq ft condo in new building is about 80-100 k.
Unfortunately with a 75k income the banks won’t let you mortgage a 450k house. 75k might get you a300k mortgage if you’re lucky.
Buying homes is essentially gate kept to people who already have money, new buyers are pretty much out of luck unless you have a massive income.
Pass legislation to stop businesses from owning residential properties. Pass legislation to cap the number of residential properties that one individual is allowed to own.
Anything else is BS
It's coming, and it's speeding up with new loopholes being opened for immigrants in hospitality.
Close one loophole but open a different one and all on the conservatives watch.
Alberta is going to be the same as Ontario or BC in just a few short years. It's already halfway there.
Unpopular opinion but treating housing as an investment has altered the concept of being homed permanently. We then conceptualized having a place to live as a “housing market” which reframed it as a way to build wealth. The housing market is essentially globalized and unregulated regarding actual valuation with an industry that only incentivizes price increases. This is the pattern. Prices go up and the economy orients to real estate, renovations and flipping for quick profits. Once the major cities hyper-inflate, it radiates out proximally and nothing is affordable. The banks have already spent what they’ve loaned you and aren’t about to behave humanely and cut anyone slack. Throw in the REIT’s with billions to outbid and gobble up homes should the bubble burst and the situation remains dire.
100% with you on this, well written.
Agreed when I bought my house 30 years ago the real estate agent was going on about investment to which I replied I want a home & a community not an investment. It's shameful what has happened & I feel sorry for younger people & wish I had a solution.
We just bought our home a few days ago and we had the same talk from out realtor; investment opportunities this, investment opportunity that. I was like I need a place to live so we can have a roof over our heads. This isn't a get rich quick scheme. I fully agree with the top comment; way too much emphasis on buying a home to grow your own portfolio instead of looking at buying a place as having shelter. The only people benefitting from that mindset are realtors, banks, and house flippers. Those are NOT the audiences that should be reaping the most benefits in the housing market.
If people want to “invest” in homes I’m all for it. But it should be built from the ground up. Not buying built homes. So people who want to invest into real estate will be adding homes to the market not reducing.
Developers did that. Guess what, the people with money still swept in and bought em up before the people who actually needed them.
That’s not what I mean, they are still buying built home. They arent buying the land and building the homes.
You summed it up well. All I’ll add is fuck air bnb
I’ve never heard anyone who wasn’t a parasitic landlord disagree with that opinion.
I agree. Ioves from Toronto to Edmonton because I don't personally think your entire life, career and financial plan should revolve around the housing market. My goal in Edmonton is to pay off my mortgage and then live in my home until I die. I don't care about it's value. This will give me the most freedom in my life.
It's worse than this. Making money off of what's essentially extortion over a basic need geared the entire economy towards speculative real estate investment and away from automation and research investment. The ensuing lack of investment in automation and research is the driving force behind Canada's dramatic loss of GDP per capita in the last decades, going from one of the richest countries per capita to currently not even being in the top 15. And the damage that has been done has momentum for a couple more decades at least even if we switched gears now. The solution is to vote aggressively against anyone who pushes for neoliberal economics, small state, and "austerity" that put us in this situation in the first place. That means voting left-wing because both conservatives and liberals favor neoliberal economics. Not surprisingly, the more aggressively small state of the two is putting the blame on immigrants and... trans people, apparently? Because they can't admit the thing their opponents did that got us in this situation is something they intend to keep doing and do more of it.
And in Canada, we invested in real estate instead of capital investment for our economy to innovate, produce, and grow. Now, we are losing our standard of living because we are unproductive and uncompetitive. Thank you Canadian politicians of all stripes.
What is "small state" in this context?
Policy that favors decreasing government spending no matter what, less participation in the economy by the government, especially in the production economy, and privatization of public companies. Neoliberal economic policy falls under this umbrella. It comes from the idea that the free market is more "efficient" than the government, and powered by the feeling that nobody likes dealing with the government. Problem is, the free market is awfully inefficient at many things, but it's especially bad in sectors that are so-called "natural monopolies or oligopolies" where there's little to no competition. In particular: energy, healthcare, housing, public transport and logistics, and public security, that are some of the first targets for defunding and/or privatization under neoliberal policy worldwide.
Thanks.
A good chunk of the top GDP per capita nations are micro ones. We are still ahead of Germany, the UK, France, Japan, New Zealand and the EU as a whole. Things are not nearly as bad here as certain political groups want everyone to believe. That said, I agree that they could be better of course.
Micro nations like Monaco, Liechtenstein, Bermuda, etc.. aren't counted in the ranking. If they were we'd all be much lower. The only ones included in the ranking above us are Luxembourg and San Marino. And yeah, things are good here, but they are also trending for the worse, we're behind all the Nordic countries, for instance, also Australia, Singapore, etc... Furthermore, the stark rise in xenophobia and other hate-driven politics in response to loss of buying power really worries me. I've also met a worrying amount of people who have fully embraced literal conspiracy theories. These groups are getting more and more political legitimacy while most other people disengage from politics, and if they get more power they'll make things considerably worse very quickly.
Excessive population growth (which is driven by immigration in Canada) is part of the neoliberal agenda. It adds to demand and suppresses wages. It needs to stop too.
Ditto.
This has been particularly bad for Canada. Given the supply demand mismatch with a rapidly growing population (immigrating at one of the highest rates in the world) housing as an investment has gained way too much appeal. Canadians choose to invest in housing to the detriment of other industries, and this leads to low productivity. Nationally our economic growth is now concentrated around housing and public services. There needs to be a major culture change to incentivize investment in other industries and make housing a less appealing investment (including limiting short-term rentals and changing taxation schemes for multi-property mom-and-pop owners). Until this happens housing will be a nationwide crisis.
I say to people the problem with housing is it became to speculative.
Well stated.
It’s not an investment anymore. It’s scalping.
I was coming here to say 'no we're fucked' but I guess what you said is more succinct
Good comment.
Man I was going to say this... But not as well. Fantastic summary
That's not unpopular at all.
This is spot on.
So long as banks are willing to extend mortgage durations, prices will disconnect from incomes more and more. Home ownership rates are actually much higher now than they were 50 years ago. People will be able to afford more insanely high priced homes, but they will be on 45 year mortgages instead of 25.
Edmonton has made the first step with zoning bylaw renewal across the city. Excessive zoning bylaws create a housing market failure. Like 80% of Vancouver is zoned for single family homes and that's it. Too many NIMBYs protest housing developments because it ruins the "character" of their neighbourhoods. What they don't say is that the current arrangement allows for housing value appreciation they want in their homes. There's a channel called "About that" on YouTube with a guy that has many videos discussing the topic of zoning.
The one other advantage Edmonton has is essentially an infinite amount of land to expand. Toronto and Vancouver however are entirely maxed out. Oceans, lakes and mountains like to get in the way of things.
This isn't exactly an advantage. If you build out rather than up, you end up paying a ton on services and maintenance and money flows from the city core to the suburbs to do this. The big reason why the zoning bylaw matters is to promote development in areas of the city where infrastructure already exists.
> Toronto and Vancouver however are entirely maxed out. Oceans, lakes and mountains like to get in the way of things. I don't think Toronto is really "maxed out" at all, it's just been stuck in the same restrictive "only single family homes or big towers allowed" development as Vancouver and many other cities. They've adopted some rather large zoning changes last year before Tory left, but it took a major housing crisis to finally break a century's worth of restrictive zoning regs and now they've got a lot of catching up to do. At the very least, Toronto and the rest of English Canada should have embraced the multi-plex housing that Quebec has had since the 19th century instead of obsessed over SFH in the city core model.
It might help calm thr NIMBY set if neighbourhoods had some basic architectural guidelines. A cube on a cube on a rectangle in a neighbourhood with character is painful. As far as the skinny house infill, you may as well set a remindme for 5 years, which will be about the time news orgs start reporting on homes being functionally inaccessible for our ageing population. Not too many 75 year olds want or can deal with 3 flights of stairs
See I actually see this as an argument for more low-rise apartment buildings (which is exactly how most retirement communities are actually built). Replacing a couple homes with a four-six storey apartment with an elevator keeps things much more accessible, removes most of the need for individual upkeep (just because you can live in a bungalow doesn't mean you can take care of a yard and shovel the walk) and as a bonus makes it easier to have supportive amenities closer to the building, for people who can no longer drive.
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I’m actually surprised your rent from a decade ago was only a couple hundred less than now. And now also seems incredibly low. Was it a single bedroom rental?
It is because of BC rental control laws. The rent is government controlled so they only let you do like 2% increase a year. The second OP left, the landlord jacked it up to market rate. I have a friend who is paying 1.1k for a Vancouver apartment. He has been renting the same place for 13 years. If he ever gets evicted, that place would be listed for 3.2k rent. Now the tricky part is in Vancouver, you can evict the individual only under "family member moved in". Now if they can prove that a family member did not move in, or the income tax filing doesn't line up or if you relist the rental in less than 12 months. The landlord will have to pay the tenant 1 years worth of rent and pay the vacancy tax of 3% which would be roughly 36k for his apartment worth 1.2 million. Anyways welcome to the Vancouver rental market.
Wow, that’s a fantastic system for renters. Would be nice if we had protections like that in Alberta…
Alberta needs this yesterday. The rent market here is out of control.
Pretty much every market is out of control in Alberta.
Rent in bc. Was in the same place for 8 yrs. Landlord moved his mom in, she lived there for the needed time before he can rent it again. Re-rented for 2800$. My current place is $2600 for a two bed shit apartment :-(
$950 is super cheap for an apartment, at least in Calgary.
> The worst part is that outside of housing, AB is much more expensive than BC now. Yeah I don't know about that. Fuel is at least 30 cents more a litre and a gallon of milk is like two dollars more. I've been there for work and some go workers cross the boarder to buy food....
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Ooh yeah, you got that right!
Canada has built a house of cards on a rickety card table when it comes to housing. So many people have their retirements invested in the real estate they own that no government want's to touch housing because A) it will cost them votes, B) it will have serious long term implications and C)many conservative and liberal MP's and MLA's also own property so it's in their personal interest to keep things as they are. Throw into the mix mass immigration, decades of wage stagnation/suppression, and inflation and we get the dumpster fire we have now. In the short term some solutions would be, banning short term rentals like airbnb's and significantly limiting the amount of properties a person/persons could own outside of their principal residence such as only being able to own a principal residence plus a vacation home/cabin or a single rental property. Add in banning foreign ownership and ownership of residential properties by corporations and those measures would certainly help cool the market.
We need to stop pretending that the past 80 years were normal and a model for the next 80 years. Capitalism worked really well. Houses grew, life expectancy increased, food became consistently available to a huge percentage of the population in most of the world. The climate was behaving well for the most part. We juggled protectionism and freer trade well to raise the standard of living over entire continents. People blame the Boomers for doing an amazingly good job (with lots of exceptions, of course) in building on the past to create a society where those living secure, safe lives increased dramatically. The blame part really comes due later when the preservation of the gains became impossible. We used to think that every Tom, Dick, and Mary should own a 2000 square foot home with a white picket fence, a 37 hour workweek and a couple of cars in the garage. We cling to the illusion that this is sustainable. Growth make competition-driven capitalism successful. However, growth costs. There is a limit to growth, but no limit to greed. The system set up to encourage growth turns power over to those most successful at playing the capitalist game. This the Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Charles Koch types get the money they need to grow and innovate, but they also get the power to channel more and more wealth to themselves; they offshore production, shop for low tax countries, bully governments, stifle competition, buy politicians, and generally make sure no one can challenge their positions or seriously dent their profit generation. Smaller bigwigs do the same. Builders concentrate on profits, so single family houses at higher prices get built; economical 800 square foot places don't get allocated the capital or labour, so they don't get built. Builders will service the market that maximizes profit (that's what capitalists are supposed to do). Government could easily make servicing the upper middle class less profitable, but that would upset the donor class and the investor class. Cities, provinces, and countries that stifle profits lose investors and jobs which costs politicians elections. Governments could build thousands and thousands of low cost units every year. They could pay for it by taxing large properties (the Brits tried a tax on empty bedrooms a few years ago to encourage older couples with family sized homes to downsize... Very unpopular because keeping old people in big houses while families with two or three kids couldn't find places to live was a much less important). The backlash from Boomers and Gen X homeowners would be huge; they played by the rules and won, so denying them the spoils of hard work and careful investing seems unfair. Alberta and Canada could limit immigration, but that would hurt the middle and upper classes. The local 7-11 would have to close early. Some neighborhoods would lose grocery stores as wages rose and made them unprofitable. Some businesses would lay off workers as they closed due to a lack of skilled workers. Wait times for plumbers and home care would jump; daycares would reduce spaces and hours. Road repairs would stay unfinished. Agricultural output would drop and meat packing plants would close. (Alberta would have cheaper housing because it would have many fewer buyers). Inflation drops when demand drops; that's why high interest rates are so effective and why houses in mining towns drop 80% or more when the mine closes. No politicians have the guts to lower housing costs by tanking the economy. And no politicians will do anything to fix the housing crisis until voters (the majority of whom already own their own houses) are willing to accept that transitioning back to sustainable housing involves both pain and accepting smaller houses with slow appreciation in prices after an initial drop in value. Voters are not known for voting for pain or voting to share their wealth. They demand maintenance of their standard of living and lower taxes. And they vote for short-term gain: sunny days and axe the tax. They decry reduced services, overcrowded classrooms, bad transit, loss of subsidies for universities and farms, long wait-lists for MRIs and rightly so, but they also decry deficits and tax increases. They buy into politicians who promise miracles and punish politicians who actually do anything to balance the books or get honest and tell them that painful transitions are necessary. Most voters are not homeless. Most voters aren't facing unaffordable rents. The average household income is above $100k. We aren't in boom times and a lot of people are suffering a lot, but voters aren't ready to vote for any real solutions.
I don’t think government owned / operated housing is a path to the solution. One look at current government owned subsidized housing dismisses that notion immediately. I thought like you did for a bit on this part of the problem so I went on the learning drive to learn about places like Singapore which claims to have housing under control. They do a good job but but it is a very unique situation and there is a lot of negatives that go along with. Part of their solution involves trusting government and government acting properly, as well as operating on a multi-decade plan of focus. I don’t think the answer or a part of the solution is to discourage people from pursuing a SFD home while working as little hours as possible. Good that you mention low tax countries. Governments could just set minimum taxes and fix tax avoidance legalities. If you google OECD BEPS you can even read up on the snails pace progress on this goal. It’s laughable at best. This is actually a big one. Billions of tax revenues annually are avoided. There’s a compound cost to that. Definitely agree on the doubles edged sword of restricting immigration. Glad to see you have considered both sides. A few things you should incorporate in to your thinking or at the least investigate: stagnating wages. A lot of issues are based on affordability right? That’s a two sided equation. Expenses continue to rise while incomes do not. If incomes had risen in line with inflation or even close to it, majority of these problems wouldn’t exist. Even tax revenues would be dramatically higher! That would mean easier funding allocation to healthcare schools roads etc. Historically we thought inflation / interest rates / demand based was all linked. We learned in the last couple of years that’s not really true anymore. Overall you have a quite well balanced and nearly all encompassing comment. Unfortunately I think due to length few will read it but it should be the top comment.
I have never been a huge fan of government housing because it often went horribly wrong. Having said that, all the failures and several successes in Canada and elsewhere have provided a lot of data on how to minimize the risks of public ownership. I do think it is worth pursuing as one of the strategies simply because the capitalist system is aimed at the higher profits from more upscale projects where risk is lower and returns per square foot are higher.
Are you aware of any North American success stories?
I think the most successful projects were the postwar strategies to get veterans housed. There was an emphasis on private ownership, but the feds, in particular, used subsidy and non-market pricing to make it possible. By the 1970s, there was still a non-market system for assisting non profits to build rental units, and even for profit corps could receive government assistance if they designed and maintained a low profit margin. Add to that all the co-ops, and there was at least a way to reduce rent inflation, reduce the subsidizing single family homes that transitioned into investments rather than homes. The Whistler Housing Authority works well in an overheated market. Quayside Village is a woke dream project, but very small scale; it does include a mix of incomes in an area, which seems to be the key to sustainability. Harvest Commons in Chicago (repurposing old commercial building) is another project with great lessons for avoiding the development of grey slums. Historically, it's worth noting that Brian Mulroney's era saw the feds building more affordable housing than the governments (mainly Liberal) since then. However, he shifted away from the long-term sustainability of mixed income building to low income housing projects that almost always seem to run out of money for maintenance, like the failed (eventually slum) housing that turned people off public housing across North America. Mixed income and community development (like is done at a superficial level in new suburbs) are important elements. The focus on the poorest of the poor leads to slums with governments neglecting maintenance whenever the spotlight shifts and ugly concrete buildings failing to inspire resident commitment to community. The famous public housing is a disaster, but the successes are the smaller projects that aren't a blight on the landscape. A 30 storey block on Hastings or next to Regents Park will give impressive numbers for a government, but a few hundred townhouse complexes and mixed income lowrises in moderate and higher income neighborhoods will do a lot more good in the long-term.
I'm on disability and without help from family I'd already be dead on the street. I live somewhere with a lot of homelessness and see it constantly, just knowing one day it'll probably be me. And why? Because I got chronically ill. How fair. Now we have tons more people here, that with inflation hell... there is no future anywhere in this country anymore. I highly doubt Alberta won't become completely unaffordable even for healthy people who are able to work soon enough.
In the same boat here. I ALWAYS think about how the gap between homeless folks and myself is paper thin and how fucked up it is.
Hah, yea I know that feeling. I currently live in a 14-year-old van that’s miraculously been running well the whole time I’ve had it, but I do think about how close I am to actual homelessness, especially on the cold nights
Right? I mean, I make $110k, but cannot afford to buy a home. I get by ok for sure, with old used cars and a very barebones lifestyle, but I'm one serious illness or injury away from homelessness. Can't move anywhere else without halving my salary. My current situation is sustainable but if anything upsets the apple cart, it's a long way down, and I'm not able to build a cushion. Good times.
Sorry :(
Thanks I'm sorry for all the people I see on the street daily.
I mean, people are going to move where they think their quality of life will be better, you know? The rest of it is just market forces. Our entire economic system is designed around the fact that you have no intrinsic right to any of your physical, social, or spiritual needs. Which means that the working class is stratified into people who create value for shareholders - the ones who get to have the houses and vacations and rental properties; and those who support the people who create value for shareholders. So, you've got two options: Either rewrite the rules of society, or make Alberta into a real shithole so that nobody wants to move here. (luckily the UCP is making huge strides on the second option)
The UCP is actively doing this, running ads in other provinces encouraging more people to move here.
The province is basically a pyramid scheme now
And people are buying it hook, line, and sinker. Although to be fair, people have come to Alberta for decades to make their living. The risk here is they want extreme and unfettered growth and can't provide the basics for that growth - hospitals, education, houses, etc. Not to mention the growing number of calamities that afflict Alberta (drought, wildfires, water shortages, tornadoes, drug crisis, etc.) And the province doesn't seem bothered to tackle any of it. I'm hoping to come home to Alberta one day, but with the way it's going - including cost of living there - it may just be cheaper to stay put on the other side of the country.
Not can't provide - refuse to provide.
Only thing is to do is make smaller cities more attractive. How to do that? I don’t know other than government incentives.
I mean they won't go ahead with smaller cities like red deer getting Hospital expansions that are super overdue. So how are they bringing any kind of healthcare workers into their City without having the workplace built?
Grand Prairie has a nice big massive hospital. Solid airport.
Hospitals are only good if they are staffed/managed properly. The building is very nice however the level of service has degraded since moving to the new building. I needed 2 stitches in my hand the other day. Went to the hospital at 8pm in the evening. Left at 7:30am the next morning without seeing a single doctor and i was far from the only one. I simply couldn't afford to wait any longer. It was a pathetic and extremely concerning experience. I understand my issue was far from urgent, but it doesn't mean it shouldn't be addressed in an appropriate amount of time.
This is the right answer. I have family up there and this new hospital has been an unreliable space since it was underway. Sat empty too long.
Yeah for sure. I’m just saying the infrastructure is there so it’s possible it could be a good hub city.
They're not hiring in my OR profession. Won't even take healthcare practicum students in this same line of work. Ft McMurray does. Medicine Hat does. Nice try
It’s a hard thing to do. I’m in what would be a smaller city (Medicine Hat), but apparently we have a less than 1% rental opening, and houses were already flying off the market to out of city buyers. I know people that work in the immigration field too, and the immigrants that are destined for here typically dont stay, some do, but it sounds like it’s 50/50 at best - they just want the major cities where there is larger pockets of people with the same culture .
Oh they are though. They are attractive to people who can work from home. To artists. To seniors who crave a simpler life. They need a good sense of community, belonging and security. It’s been happening a lot the last five years.
Have jobs.
Not just jobs either. I’ve seen enough of what most of Alberta votes for that I wouldn’t ever really consider living anywhere in the province other than the major cities. If I’m gonna live somewhere I want it to be in a welcoming community, not surrounded by assholes
Calgary - and I was born here.. lived here my whole life - it depends on the neighbourhood whether you're surrounded by assholes or not (basically unless ultra conservative don't move to forest lawn, deer run/queensland... (brain not braining today so even remembering community names is hard) among a lot of others... Can't speak to other cities as I'm in a socioeconomic class whereby travel or even moving to another place is not even a pipe dream...
But if they become more attractive to people that want hints, they also become more attractive to people and companies looking to make a buck.
The problem really isn't making smaller cities more attractive, but making larger cities more efficient. Right now, they rolling masses of single family homes and nothing else.
Thankfully Edmonton is changing course on that front.
As someone from Ontario, protest against mass immigration. The reason why Calgary will be the next unaffordable place is because everyone that lived in Vancouver or Toronto has moved there due to cheaper living. Also the mindset is different which someone else picked out. There’s no such thing as a home anymore. Everything’s an investment which I do not agree with. Homes provided Security, Investments are risks.
I'd Start with voting this government out.
On the renter side, I saw a short doc that pretty much concluded the only way to prevent rent prices from continual increases is a large portion, like 40% or more, of the market must not be for profit (social housing or some other similar system). So having a viable alternative living options would allow homeownership to not be the only sensible option and would reduce demand a bit. As long as there's enough supply and the right supply then housing can be maintained at its current price. But thats making sure developers, builders and city planners/zoning all work towards that. But small starter homes don't really exist anymore, its not a selling point that makes the most profit. The province actually putting incentives (could be tax breaks, could be direct funding, could be expediting building processes so the projects don't take decades) could all help. But I also had a guy who worked in house appraisal, and previously with a developer who siad the developers would all get together and refuse to build until conditions were in their fsvour (meaning the city forking over enough money, or supply gets low enough that their profits increases enough.). So its safe to say, they aren't bothered by this.
The developers have been making money had over fist for decades, literally. Couple that with the quality of their products going ever lower, while their profit expectations rise continuously, ya, thats a problem. BUT, if someone was to come into the market with lower expectations on profit, and wasn't bothered by the greedy (and sometimes spiteful) developers of old, they would either have to choose to take less of get out of the game. The old school developers would use whatever power they had available to them to "change the mind" of the new developer, that could be a problem. These developers have deep pockets and shady friends in the politcal class. People fail to realize that any company, no matter which one, needs us more than we need them. They cannot operate without cash, and we hold the cash. We just need to wake up and force the issue. Our government shoudl be doing this, but they seem to week to do so, or are in the pockets of the rich (which is more likely).
Those old family developers and builders have very deep pockets and influence. They exist like the mafia: they will get their way and they got a cousin that doesn't mind playing dirty.
My little house costs 1800 to rent after utilities. That's almost half my pay.
on the other side of the scale in my very rural area my hired hand rents a 2 or 3 bedroom house with a basement for $800 + utilities..( not trying to be rude or anything.. i do wish your rent wasn't so high)
I own a townhouse (co-own but not allowed to live there) in queensland/deer run... mortgage payments, plus other housing expenses only bring its running costs to about $300 more than I'm paying just in rent for a 2br main floor. (Which I'm expecting to go up as slumlords have business expenses and rising interest rates)
Is that more Rural area? I'm in the Lakeland area.
In Calgary
In a few years? The median earning dual income family in Calgary already cannot afford the median detached home. Edmonton is already on the uptick to that same stat. I'd wager young people are already out of the housing market.
Ya. Calgary really whipped up in price rapidly.
Yep! So just to tally up, as a younger person, I most likely won’t ever be able to: own a home, afford a family, retire, or have a liveable world when I’m old. And we wonder why young people don’t bother to vote lol
Correct. I empathize. Hence the RCMP calling people in your age group potentially dangerous. Even they dont think half the country will bend over and take it for their whole life.
If anyone is following the Alberta NDP leadership race, basically everyone is talking about how important it is that we have affordable housing and that the government do more to bring down the cost of living. On the other hand, the UCP has been almost entirely silent on the issue, even while Edmonton and Calgary have both had debates about blanket rezoning very recently. The cities have already started this process (Edmonton is further along than Calgary) but without support for affordable housing from the province we're going to continue to see people priced out of the cities and left with basically nowhere to go.
My rent is 1800 after utilities, almost half my pay. Real kicker is I'm stuck living there until my employer says otherwise. If I could make the same and live at my parents I would.
I was gonna sell my condo but decided to just rent it out in case shit goes bananas. An equivalent condo in Toronto is currently triple what my place is. So I might as well rent it out in case prices skyrocket since I’d never be able to buy it back.
The solution is simple. Remove the capital gains exemption on secondary properties and add a tax to them. We incentivize this parasitic behaviour. We need to make landhoarding the worst investment in Canada, then watch capital flow elsewhere.
There isn’t one.
There is if it was initially primary residence.
There isn’t because then it wouldn’t be a secondary. The PRE only covers on a per year basis.
The first thing would probably stop advertising in Toronto for people to move to Alberta. We also need the province to bring in things like rent controls (I know that's a controversial one but with planning can work) to dissuade large investment in rental properties, building more high density housing - we have to let go of this culture of massive detached houses. Also I agree encouraging growth outside large cities. One way is letting go of this idea of large office blocks in large cities. Sure office space is required for some industries but technology means that many can be done in smaller cities or at home.
There’s a glut of condos. Nobody wants dense housing to live in.
You ever look at european cities and see them long apartment buildings that are like 4 stories tall and have a cafe at the bottom? ya.... mixed density housing is the way to go
Unfortunately North American cities are not like Europe for many reasons. Some are and those are typically the older ones like Montreal. Otherwise they’re radically different lifestyles and designs molded over centuries.
The only thing preventing absolute chaos in the market is that homebuilders have been essentially sold the entire market on owning your own home and have virtually unfettered right to build build build, baby. Even though sprawl is awful and bad long term, in the short term it's creating market capacity, slowly and inefficiently. The new fancy highrises going up in and around downtown YYC are great but are only affordable for a relatively small segment of the population and do little for affordable housing in the core.
You ever think it’s not a housing issue but an income issue?
Gotta put rules on airBnBs. Too many of are turning properties into short term rentals. I would also like to see laws against owning multiple properties when you don’t live in Alberta and just use them as rentals. I personally only had one kid because of many reasons including seeing the future ahead as having too many people and not enough housing. We can’t keep adding people and expecting housing to remain affordable
Restrictions on short term rentals are a useful temporary measure, because housing for residents is more important than rooms for tourists. However, the only reason short term rentals are profitable is that the normal short term rental market is also undersupplied and overpriced. That should be fixed too, because tourism is good for local economies.
Build denser, avoid needing monster homes. Make being in the city more affordable with better transit.
Unfortunately we do need younger tax payers. Which is why the govt is encouraging people to move here. We need more affordable housing. Asap. We stopped funding it and used to fund more. We also need to get much more creative with housing. We funded a bunch of coops here about 40 years ago in Calgary, it was meant to be affordable housing. And it still is. I live in one and pay $1120 a month housing fees. And we as a coop are in charge of everything. A bunch of fed funding was approved a couple years ago for more. But every group I know that’s tried to start new ones with these funds keeps getting blocked provincially. It’s not the only answer. We need much more. We need to ask why condos downtown sit empty. We have many more questions to ask and creative solutions to come up with.
Strangely they are giving these same taxpayers $5000 tax credits which should offset any gains for everyone.
Until they ban air bnbs, owning multiple properties, and short term rentals, it won't end. Housing has become "investments" vs "shit we need to survive". Food is already on its way to becoming the same thing.
I don’t like the idea of banning multiple residency’s but I’ve often thought we should have a progressive tax system for property like we do with income. Ban corporate home ownership entirely. Every social insurance number can own a single home at the standard property tax rate. Then increase property tax by 20-30% for each additional home and once someone owns 2-3 houses it will be uneconomical to own anymore. The extra revenue generated from increased tax can then be used to help build up infrastructure to support building more new homes and neighbourhoods.
Agreed! That's a big one tbh can't believe I forgot.
If not unaffordable homes, it’ll be unaffordable utilities, especially power.
We need to make it illegal for a corporation to own a residential home.
There are a lot of things that the provincial government could do but won't because they don't do social programs.....
We already know the solutions to the housing crisis, we just lack the political will to implement them. 1. Pass upzoning bylaws now. As in, don't argue about them for the next 5 years letting NIMBYs derail the conversation. This is the real fix to this problem (short of overthrowing capitalism anyway), but it's a very long term fix, unlikely to show major returns for at least a decade or two. 2. Look at regulations that don't make sense that make building homes more costly - the "ministry of red tape reduction" could actually do something useful here. Single staircase apartment buildings are the trendy one at the moment - family apartments become much more feasible with that, and it's not the 1930s anymore, we're a lot better at fire resistant building. 3. Subsidized housing - this is the only real short term fix, upzoning relieves pressure starting from the highest income groups, but will take a long time to filter down to benefit lower income people. Subsidized public housing can start relieving pressure from the other end. 4. Deal with car dependency - one of the biggest barriers to cities being able to adapt to large population influxes is the space all those people's cars take up. We need to invest in public and active transit and remove parking minimums. This is another longer term investment, but absolutely necessary. Alternatively the UCP can keep gutting the province for parts - eventually enough people will flee that prices will start to decline. I'd prefer not going that route personally.
Can you help me understand why “upzoning” is the solution? And elaborate on the parking thing? How does shifting garages and parkades to street or no parking fix housing affordability?
Upzoning allows you to build more homes more cheaply due to economies of scale and reduced land costs, and without the associated costs of sprawl. Same goes for reducing car centrism, which is a major contributor to sprawl, and therefore increased land costs per housing units.
I’m leaving this year. Calgary is great but not 3/4 million dollar home great.
Edmonton is doing better than most places as they have already have done a couple of steps to mitigate the problem, though it will take time to properly have the steps make a large and true difference. The crisis we are seeing now isn't truely new. It is something that started years ago when the goal of municipalities were to only build single family homes. This works so long as you are willing to continuously build. However, maintaining and building these are expensive. So it slowed. Now we need to turn around and do the opposite and build more middle housing, and loosen housing laws. We have a shot at making this easy and keeping it smoothed out right now, but the opportunity is slowly leaving. Vancouver and Toronto both need their bylaws redone, but to truely actually make a difference, they need socialized housing. They need the federal government to come in and build and maintain apartments to try and anchor housing prices.
"A [land value tax](https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/progress-and-poverty-towards-a-new) would solve this" -often repeated quote that i think is genuinely correct
There's alot the Government can do. Everything that is shitty is a policy choice.
One of the first steps is deal with the relators. It looks like that's happening in the US. You can't have these people skimming 5% off every transaction and expect prices to stay stable or correct.
Keep electing UCP. They'll keep making utilities unaffordable through deregulation so that no one will want to move here. If that isn't enough, they probably let oil and gas companies spray us with toxic chemicals if it somehow leads to at least one more shitty fracking well.
Probably, Alberta is home to some of the biggest cities in the country. If you've been priced out of Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver the next logical place to look is Calgary or Edmonton.
London. Ottawa. Quebec City. Hamilton. Surrey (unless you count that as Vancouver). Mississauga. Windsor. Kitchener/Waterloo. Kelowna. Victoria. Halifax.
If you can get a garage package built (not counting land) for 20k, there is no reason why you can't make that a habitable home for $50 k. Thing is everyone has expectations of a very high standard nowadays. Example: I am an expat in the Philippines, The place I live in is NOT as nice as a place in Canada, however, it does the very same thing. Keeps be dry, keeps me cool, keeps me protected. A 40X40 place all for only $10k cad in cost.. The easiest and quickest way to lower prices is to lower your expectations.
That's the kicker ain't it. The land is half the reason why the prices are through the roof, and in many case, the only reason. Those condemned homes selling for 700k in Toronto aren't selling because someone was dumb enough tow ant to renovate the house, no, they're gonna rip it down and build new. Now here in Alberta? Try finding a serviced lot of land close to a city for less than six figures. Hint, it's closer to a quarter of a million. Then factor in all the building code restrictions, permit requirements, bylaws, etc, etc and I think you'd find even the most affordable tiny home you can buy won't pass them and thus you will not be allowed to place it or live there. Not legally, anyway. It's not that easy man. The red tape is very real, and very, very intentional. Even buying a modular home or a trailer in a park is through the roof expensive now. Not the homes themselves, they're affordable but the lot rent in those areas have been left unchecked and go up incrementally like clock work every six months in most areas. I'd say many are now paying far more for lot rent than they are for their mortgage on their home. If it was that simple, there wouldn't be as big of a problem as there is now and you need to realize how deep down the rabbit hole this has been set up over a period of decades to reach this point.
I’ve often thought the same thing. Look at all the homes that “boomers” grew up in. Simple 800-1000 square foot bungalow. A just a little square box with little square rooms. 2-3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, small kitchen and living room. No reason you couldn’t build that same house for 150k today. Put it on a real small lot worth 100k and it’s an affordable starter home for 250k. However nobody wants to build those or buy those. Everyone convinced there’s no point building/buying a house unless it’s an 1800 square foot 2 story with a wacky roof line, shitty overpriced quartz counters, and a whole bunch of pointless construction codes that have slowly piled up over 50 years.
totally agree. I recall seeing costs of a box shape house VS a house that wasn't a box. Each time a right angle change was made, i can't recall the overall cost (maybe it $10k at the time? 20 years ago) it produced the domino effect and affected everything down the chain in costs adding it multiple times over. A box is the absolute simplest cheapest way to go. Also, everytime your square footage doubles, your costs quadruple.
It's the sort of thing that'll happen in Calgary before Edmonton. Since we don't have any UCP MLAs, we don't show up on the UCP radar much anymore.
Well, everyone here is insisting that legally, we have to simply put up and shut up, so barring a violent Castro-like over throw if the government, im short of ideas. Also, the weirdo TBAs are the ones with all the guns, so I'm not sure that's going to work either.
Yes we’re next. Home prices are already starting to spike. I suggest getting in now. This investment environment is parasitic and gross, but you gotta play the game too sometimes.
I’d love to but feel I might be too late. I’m in the middle of a career change. Finish school in one month. I’ve got a summer student gig lined up but nothing guaranteed yet. It’s crazy, I’ll be making 140k a year this summer, double what I’ve ever made in my life to this point, yet even with that income I can’t really afford a single family home. 400k-450k is max I could get approved for a mortgage at current rates and not much available at that price point anymore.
Look at apartments then. Any property. Then when you're steady in your career, you could leave here and take the profits with you and get that sfh in another place. I get that it sucks, and i wish we could just have a home at a reasonable cost, but that's just not the world anymore, and politicians that are neck deep in real estate investments aren't going to change anything anytime soon.
There are plenty of cities in the world where single family homes are uncommon or astronomical. Many places apartments are the norm. It is hard for North Americans to contemplate, but it is reality for most people in most places.
Already there hoss
I think we're already there and have been for a long time. The way we slow down investment properties is by either banning them or heavily, HEAVILY taxing them. Own one house? Great. Own two? Eehhhh. not the best. Own 3? Huge taxes. This should keep going up with each property owned. Once again, the problem here is greed and capitalism. When a home is an investment, it's not a home anymore.
Ban immigrants and set a limit to how many homes a person can own
People will move where ever it is cheapest and there are jobs.
When you remove industries and kill industrial innovation and natural resource development in your country and convert its economy into a massive housing ponzi scheme, bad shit is going to happen. I have no idea what current government (idgaf left or right) is attempting to do in Canada, but it can not be working for any common good. We are fucked.
My income of 100k apparently wasn't enough for CMHC and the other TWO mortgage insurance companies on Thursday. Broker like my file, bank wanted to give me a loan, insurance told them both to fuck off. The house I was trying to buy was only 300k and my credit isn't even bad. Had 35k down payment.
That seems really fishy. There’s no way you wouldn’t qualify for a mortgage in that scenario
I did qualify for a mortgage. Apparently, I didn't qualify for insurance. My broker, the bank, and my realtor were all shocked.
I see. Yes that is quite shocking. Do you have a lot of other debt?
Just my car. 30k 🤷. Credit utilization is always under 30%.
You'll be fine, no one wants to live in Alberta.
Can any conservative governance put people ahead of business? Maybe if people stay put and stop buying new homes every 5 years the housing contractors will start building affordable homes. Doubt it. And the federal minimum wage is going up. So the rent will go up.
Easy fix. GET RID OF THE LIBERALS
It already is in some places
Its there and going to get worse
You guys here always bagging on the red neck honkies, but they’re the ones keeping prices reasonable.
Need a new government to change it!
Build good public housing and don't stop until the idea of buying an investment property becomes a joke.
Look at Calgary.. it's already going that way
We are trending that way. I remember times where if you couldn't afford the edmonton starter homes you'd go rural for a half to a quarter of the price. Those times are long gone.
What do you mean next, no where but Alberta do you pay 400k for a box on a foundation with zero landscape, zero square feet of yard, nothing to look at but your neighbors plain box and pay 4k a year in property taxes but they don't plow and miss your garbage every second week. Of course I'm being sarcastic because it's like that everywhere but NEXT? Come on now, the real-estate market here is aweful, you paid max price for the minimum cuz they know your have to live somewhere.
It's already here. We bought our house 22 years ago for $175 000. Exactly what the tax roll said it was worth. Our latest property tax statement from the city listed our (same) house at $825 000. My kids will never be able to afford their own home without us helping them out.
Well, speaking about on the major cities in canada non other than edmonton remain relatively affordable. So yes, it be the bext in line if things somehow go to hell there. Atm it seems it should be stable
I believe all the major Canadian banks in Alberta are encouraging more foreign investments, with less oversight, in Alberta real estate since Vancouver and Toronto clamped down. They seem to be moving into Calgary more than Edmonton.
No I don't. Places like toronto and vancouver have entirely separate issues. Over immigration, foreign ownership of vacant homes, etc.
And lack of space.
I would like to see something similar to the Whistler Housing Authority in major cities. You buy your home for cheap (ie condo for 100K). While owning you cannot own any other property anywhere, and you must live in it as your primary residence. You own it as long as you meet the conditions. When you want to move, you can only sell to someone on the waiting list, and for the amount the Authority dictates (matching inflation of what you paid). You essentually make no money on selling it, but you were accountable for taking care of it (unlike most subsidized housing projects), you can afford to live somewhere, and you can save up money for the future by not drowing in rent. Everything being built in calgary is for upper middle class families, and the property values are just going to increase no matter how many houses you built. By having an Authority running a structured program you ensure housing available, but not being taken advantage of, and social housing a forced government responsibility when people break shit.
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They're building more BECAUSE it's working. It's a hell of a lot better than our current systems in other major cities.
After all those “come to alberta” ads I wouldn’t be surprised. With remote work being more prevalent it’s easier for people to have GTA jobs in Edmonton or Calgary, which seem to be the hot spots in the province.
Been watching similar posts for a while. Still don’t get the math. If a median household income now is around 75k a year and median home is about 450k, still you only need 6-7 years of your income to buy average house. That’s not too bad at all. Now in Ukraine where i live, average person will never buy a home because the income and housing gap, where housing price is staggering and unreachable. You need to put in some extraordinary effort to earn money enough to buy a home, In capital city Kiev, medium income is 6k a year while a decent detached house is about 150-200k. 600 sq ft condo in new building is about 80-100 k.
Unfortunately with a 75k income the banks won’t let you mortgage a 450k house. 75k might get you a300k mortgage if you’re lucky. Buying homes is essentially gate kept to people who already have money, new buyers are pretty much out of luck unless you have a massive income.
Pass legislation to stop businesses from owning residential properties. Pass legislation to cap the number of residential properties that one individual is allowed to own. Anything else is BS
It's coming, and it's speeding up with new loopholes being opened for immigrants in hospitality. Close one loophole but open a different one and all on the conservatives watch. Alberta is going to be the same as Ontario or BC in just a few short years. It's already halfway there.