Quote:
Originally Posted by MonctonianSentinel01
Brand new building or not that is a lot of money for a single bedroom micro apartment. Furnished or not it is a cubby hole. $1150/month for 314sq ft.? Plus heating and power. Plus renters insurance. I mean even if housing insurance is a little more you can get a $200,000 mortgage for $1314/month and that's at a high 6.3%. Property tax will make it more expensive and there will be a little maintenance but the point is that you can at least quadruple your square footage and build some equity plus have a nest for a future family. Just doesn't make much sense. This is probably what you would find in a crowed Asian city or something. Doesn't make sense for wide open Canada. You would think that they are paying 25 million dollars just for the lot to build on. These would be ok maybe for a student who didn't want to stay in a dorm or something, but even then could a student afford this unless they were working as well?
Prices need to come down including the construction materials. Prices are way too high.
I'm not trying to attack the project or our great capital city. Just want things more affordable for everyone. Sorry I don't have a solution to bring to the table but something needs to be done. Not sure if there is bad policy making in the government or not. I know that with all of the immigration that is happening (not necessarily against immigration) that there is massive need to put all of these people. However the feds don't want to do anything about regulating prices (or perhaps some other method that would be less invasive), when it comes to prices or construction materials. We have the most resources of all of the G7 nations and the most space but the highest housing prices for material cost and land. Definitely something seriously wrong here folks.
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I share your concern for the cost of housing but a lot of what you're talking about is not new. Inflation has obviously exacerbated some of these issues though. But consider the following:
- New construction has always been expensive relative to existing housing.
Today's luxury housing is tomorrow's affordable housing. What has perhaps happened is that the delta between the two has grown closer because in more recent times we have not been able to keep up with the demand for housing (for various reasons). That's a problem we need to solve.
- You're comparing a mortgage to a rental, but again, that difference has always been there. A $1314 mortgage is realistically more like $1900 with property taxes, utilities, and insurance. That $1150 rent becomes something like $1300 with electricity and insurance, so the monthly costs is still nearly 50% more before we consider the time and money spent on maintaining your own property. There are advantages to both types of housing and some people will want one and not the other.
- "Wide open Canada" doesn't make much difference in terms of the costs to service infrastructure, and in order to make our cities sustainable we need to be more compact and dense. These micro units are simply one more option that is on the market and again, they work for some people. On the flip side of the coin are the plethora of newer units on the market that are oversized for what they offer, because the developers are bumping up against the current density limits and can justify two bedroom apartments that are close to or even larger than 1500 sq ft. Part of the answer is that we need more diversity in housing options and that's what micro units provide.
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