Weird story. Of course people prefer detached housing.
What matters is whether they can afford it, where they're willing to go to afford it and what municipalities/developers can do to keep people in the city cores by providing attractive alternative options.
Keeping people in the city is good in many ways. It's good for traffic, transit planning, pollution, infrastructure, culture, local businesses.
Vancouver has finally rezoned a few areas to create much more townhouse type development, typically 3 bedrooms. A good move, but 15 years later than it should have been.
Now the land value in those areas is $4M+ per lot and the townhouses have to sell at $1.7M.
A city like Calgary should get ahead of this and rezone inner city single family neighbourhoods to townhouse developments now while young families will be able to afford the end product.
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