Quote:
Originally Posted by worldlyhaligonian
As for the condos... boomers are beginning the process of downsizing from their homes. The biggest economic secret in Halifax is probably that their is alot of money that has been brought back here from other places and there are large numbers of older and relatively wealthy people. Money comes home because this is one of the most beautiful places in the country.
|
I think people in Halifax, as a rule, tend to be a bit too negative about the outlook for the city. The current round of construction is no doubt partly due to low interest rates and some other things but I don't think stagnation is the "norm" for the city. If you look farther back, the period around 1990-2000 was really the aberration and steady construction activity in the core was the norm going back all the way to the 1940's.
Something else to consider is that the number of residential units coming on board isn't as large as it may seem. There are a lot of developments in the pipeline at any given time but they tend to proceed as there is demand and planning and construction are slow. King's Wharf has turned out to be 4 new buildings over a span of maybe 6 years. Southwest is building their projects on a much less aggressive schedule than they originally announced to the media. On any given year only a handful of substantial residential buildings are completed in the urban core, and the overall population increases by 4,000-5,000 people. There's also the Nova Centre right now but that's a one-time sort of deal.
All that being said if there is overbuilding downtown the consequences won't be too bad for most people. They'll just get a deal on downtown condos if they want them. It's overheating and poor affordability that are bad, not high volumes of construction. If all the planned condos suddenly materialized tomorrow there probably would be a kind of nuclear winter for new residential construction downtown but tons of people would move in during that time and shops and restaurants would thrive.