Quote:
Originally Posted by Truenorth00
I don't think I disputed that Calgary will grow faster than Ottawa. See above. I question whether Calgary's current growth rate is sustainable given recent trends in employment in the O&G sector. Having a cheap house is great and all. But it's useless if you can't find work.
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It absolutely isn't, in large part because the feds are going to pull back on non-permanent migration, which last year was biggest single contributor to the city's population growth. Of course that's true for a lot of places, so it won't just be Calgary that slows.
But I also expect Calgary's affordability advantage will keep narrowing, especially for homeownership. The Canadian Real Estate Association's benchmark price for a detached house in Calgary was about $515,000 in January 2022; now it's closing in on $700,000. That's no longer competitive with some of the affordability escape hatches that were popular two years ago (KWC, London, Halifax, etc) and it's significantly more expensive than the cheapest cities (Winnipeg, Saskatchewan's two, even somewhere like Moncton, which was last year's fastest-growing city, proportionally).
There's no question that Calgary will continue to post strong growth, but its reputation as an affordable city, except relative to Toronto/Vancouver, is quickly going to disappear.