Canada's 'housing bubble' deemed close to bursting

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Wigs

I see developer greed.

Come to Niagara, drive all over the region and then Welland and tell me these houses aren't extremely overpriced.

Can you explain how developers have changed and what made them greedy? Be specific.

All I see is supply and demand. Developers are building what homebuyers want, and what they are constrained by, with current zoning being what it is.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by someone123

..... if you're younger, mostly comes down to whether or not your parents got a real estate windfall and want to share it with you.

This is basically what defines success now for most young Canadians. So much for meritocracy.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

You are ignoring context here. We had a very different mix of housing back then. And no cars, meant even SFD subdivisions there were built along tram lines with retail on main street. Reminder:

Sure but is this not still detached housing? Lots of people had cars in the 1920's era and if you're proposing that people shouldn't be able to live in detached homes you could propose they not own cars. My point is there's nothing bad about detached houses per se, and I don't think it would be unattainable for middle class people if other fixable problems were fixed. They don't have to be on large lots or completely car dependent.

[goodgrowth]

Meh, you can debate the aesthetics but in terms of utilizing space those narrow detached houses are a huge improvement in density over what suburbs use to be. If you built a triplex or quadplex you probably can gain some density but then the distance in space between each multiplex might be larger than each of those narrow detached houses..so maybe only a marginal difference in density overall.

Of course if you are arguing 4-5 floor apartment buildings over this then yeah...

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by someone123

Sure but is this not still detached housing? Lots of people had cars in the 1920's era and if you're proposing that people shouldn't be able to live in detached homes you could propose they not own cars. My point is there's nothing bad about detached houses per se, and I don't think it would be unattainable for middle class people if other fixable problems were fixed. They don't have to be on large lots or completely car dependent.

Read my post. Nowhere did I say that people shouldn't live in detached houses or drive cars. But a mix of housing means that developers don't end up with stupidly narrow lots while still trying to shoehorn as much detached housing as possible into these lots, to meet density and market requirements. Build some towns and quadplexes and land gets freed up to actually build decent detached houses. We'd end up by a more progressive property ladder and better quality homes and neighborhoods. The yellow belt is brutal in so many ways....

[someone123]

Isn't most construction already multi-unit in a lot of Canadian cities?

One problem with townhouse in BC, I think, is that they are all strata or almost all strata (legally have to be?). One reason why I'd pick a townhouse instead of an apartment is to have a little plot of outdoor space I could do with as I pleased.

My complex has townhouses and it's mandatory grass everywhere with strict rules on what can stay outside and no gardening or hot tubs etc. allowed. I already posted this a while back but actually some of the grass does not survive but it's mandatory grass so some people just have mud pits (the landscape people come by with sod every few years which eventually dies). There are other horror stories of tiny townhouse stratas of say 4 units where somebody owns 2 units or somebody just doesn't pay attention and some owners do all kinds of crazy stuff that impacts their neighbours financially.

[Coldrsx]

Some decent supply coming...


https://twitter.com/CMHC_ca/status/15261...onton-real-estate-market.26691%2Fpage-30

[someone123]

The Halifax number is extremely bad and housing starts have not been keeping up with growth for a while. The city has been growing by 10,000 per year in recent years (including 2018-2019, not just covid era). The rental vacancy rate was very low (< 1%).

I think part of what's going on is that there's a lot of multi-unit already under construction that takes multiple years to complete. But it's still not enough, and the multi-unit for future years has to start in the pipeline now.

[goodgrowth]

I'm not sure a single month of housing starts is ever a good metric for overall analysis but the fact that Edmonton is 19K and Toronto is 24K says a lot....

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Can you explain how developers have changed and what made them greedy? Be specific.

All I see is supply and demand. Developers are building what homebuyers want, and what they are constrained by, with current zoning being what it is.

Charging ~$1M for shoddily constructed homes of 1700-1800 sq ft on the East side of Welland, the former heavy industry juggernaut of Niagara that almost suffered a complete American-style rust belt collapse when factories closed one by one

No new companies/ jobs are opening, Niagara isn't a tech hub like Kitchener-Waterloo for example.

Nearby one can literally buy an older quality built bungalow on a large lot for hundreds of thousands less

When you ask locals about these 1M homes they gasp
"Dear God, that's almost criminal. People must be insane to pay these prices for that crap"

I have no hard data to show exactly how much profit margin they are making

One thing is for sure, local Realtors are laughing all the way to the bank. Houses sell in 10-12 days.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by goodgrowth

I'm not sure a single month of housing starts is ever a good metric for overall analysis but the fact that Edmonton is 19K and Toronto is 24K says a lot....

Wow.
And the fact Edmonton has more housing starts than bigger brother Calgary too.

[jamincan]

Originally Posted by someone123

Sure but is this not still detached housing? Lots of people had cars in the 1920's era and if you're proposing that people shouldn't be able to live in detached homes you could propose they not own cars. My point is there's nothing bad about detached houses per se, and I don't think it would be unattainable for middle class people if other fixable problems were fixed. They don't have to be on large lots or completely car dependent.

The huge swaths of early 20th century SFHs in Toronto isn't a reflection of the market at the time, it is a reflection of exclusionary zoning that banned apartment buildings in 1912. This ban was largely racist (due to an influx of Eastern Europeans), and in cities where bans were not implemented, you can see a much more diverse housing stock that includes more townhouses and walk-up apartments.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

You are ignoring context here. We had a very different mix of housing back then. And no cars, meant even SFD subdivisions there were built along tram lines with retail on main street. Reminder:

• Video Link

I'd love to live in a place like Riverdale. I'd love to see new developments made to look like Riverdale.

We're sort of trying with some of these imitations in Oakville and Markham, I guess. Though the streets are still too wide.

[rbt]

Originally Posted by goodgrowth

I'm not sure a single month of housing starts is ever a good metric for overall analysis but the fact that Edmonton is 19K and Toronto is 24K says a lot....

Toronto's March number was 2x the April number.

You can grab monthly data here. Multiply by 10x to match the tweet?

https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/professio...-housing-starts-construction-data-tables

[goodgrowth]

Originally Posted by Wigs

Wow.
And the fact Edmonton has more housing starts than bigger brother Calgary too.

I think the fact Edmonton is almost double Ottawa says more...

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Wigs

Charging ~$1M for shoddily constructed homes of 1700-1800 sq ft on the East side of Welland, the former heavy industry juggernaut of Niagara that almost suffered a complete American-style rust belt collapse when factories closed one by one

No new companies/ jobs are opening, Niagara isn't a tech hub like Kitchener-Waterloo for example.

Nearby one can literally buy an older quality built bungalow on a large lot for hundreds of thousands less

When you ask locals about these 1M homes they gasp
"Dear God, that's almost criminal. People must be insane to pay these prices for that crap"

I have no hard data to show exactly how much profit margin they are making

One thing is for sure, local Realtors are laughing all the way to the bank. Houses sell in 10-12 days.

Again. None of this speaks to any particular developer greed. It's the free market at work. Developers don't work for free. They will build whatever makes them the most profit. If you want to incentivize them to build in certain directions, then regulate to that effect.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by someone123

Sure but is this not still detached housing? Lots of people had cars in the 1920's era and if you're proposing that people shouldn't be able to live in detached homes you could propose they not own cars. My point is there's nothing bad about detached houses per se, and I don't think it would be unattainable for middle class people if other fixable problems were fixed. They don't have to be on large lots or completely car dependent.

I'd say there's nothing bad about fully detached housing on an individual level, but there definitely is at scale. They just don't scale well enough to be a practical solution for cities. They require so much land relative to the number of people they house that covering large swathes of a city/metro with them smothers out the possibility for other housing forms except highrises. Although tightly pack detached houses don't have this issue in the same way as large lot housing, and back in the 1920s, household sizes tended to be much larger meaning that the density of people per unit of land wouldn't be as low with detaches housing as it is now.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by rousseau

I'd love to live in a place like Riverdale. I'd love to see new developments made to look like Riverdale.

We're sort of trying with some of these imitations in Oakville and Markham, I guess. Though the streets are still too wide.

They also lack the transit and accessible retail of The old streetcar suburbs.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by goodgrowth

I think the fact Edmonton is almost double Ottawa says more...

Ontario already is bad. Ottawa is half of Toronto, which given the size of Toronto is terrible.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by goodgrowth

I think the fact Edmonton is almost double Ottawa says more...

oh I missed that!