Quote:
Originally Posted by P'tit Renard
Everywhere within a 3-5 drive from downtown Toronto (pretty much the whole Southern Ontario) is ridiculously expensive especially when measured against household income, Ottawa is now expensive, there is no pocket of affordability in BC. Calgary, Montreal and Halifax is seeing their affordability melt away, and that is already more than half the country that is being crushed by this housing bubble.
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Exactly. An example from the Atlantic provinces:
Interprovincial migration to Halifax slowed quite a bit last year. Interprovincial migration to Moncton exploded. Why? It’s not because people from BC and Ontario suddenly decided they didn’t like Halifax, but they loved Moncton. It’s because only one of the two is still cheap. (Halifax is obviously still relatively cheap, compared to many places, but it’s become expensive enough that it’s not functioning as an affordability relief valve as it once did.)
Increasingly, the places that DO serve as relief valves are going to be less and less desirable due to lifestyle, or remoteness, or limited employment. It’s one thing for people in 2021 to flock to Calgary and Halifax, but it’s altogether another to move to Sudbury or Nanaimo, no offence meant to those communities.