Real estate in Calgary - another bubble?

[woob]

I can't imagine having CAT6A 10gb in my house right now. I guess if I planned to live here for ever, it might prove to be worthwhile??

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by woob

I can't imagine having CAT6A 10gb in my house right now. I guess if I planned to live here for ever, it might prove to be worthwhile??

Fair. It depends on your typical internet and intranet usage.

The incremental cost of Cat 6A vs Cat 6 or Cat 5e was like $100-150 for the whole house when I did it. So it was worth the extra cost for future proofing since it's a PITA to oull cable. Replacing the cable is not as simple as swapping a modem, so it was worth the up front cost hands down to me.


With a quick glance, right now the difference is about $100-250 for the whole house for a spool of 1000 ft (I used about 400ft for pulling line to around 40-60% of my home). I think it's still worth choosing 6 or 6A over 5e at those incremental prices. Plus, technology moves fast. It's possible I might be able to start taking advantage of the difference in 3-5 years.


With network cards, in theory I'm still bottlenecked at 1 Gbps data transfer so there shouldn't be a difference. But I've noticed the transfer rates seem slightly better (likely due to the shielding) when transferring large amounts of data to a file server when comparing to Cat 5e lines at my office and my old townhouse.


Seems trivial until you attempt to copy 10+ GB of photos after a photo shoot or vacation to a file server and give multiple people a copy. It feels so good to see sustain transfer/copy speeds over 100 Mbps vs the typical 12-22 Mbps of other methods of data transfers.


Plus when the parents and inlaws "want a copy of the best photos" it's faster and worth it to "select all" to their computer and let them delete themselves vs picking and choosing selectively before transferring. (Anyone who fixes or deals with tech for old people understands this a bit more)

[Yoho]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1491984361088077887

[tvp2003]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

When we were house hunting I didn't want anything pre-2000, we didn't like any of the older style layouts and with older houses there's just too many unknowns. Also didn't want brand new, I know too many people that built or bought new builds and ran into multiple issues, fights with the builder over warranty work. I figured 2005-2010 was the sweet spot, still new enough to not need any major work, but lived in enough that any builder issues were identified and resolved. 2 years in to our 2006 house and so far no ugly surprises, so I'm happy

Also our house was pre-wired with ethernet (with multiple lines to the same rooms!), so as an IT nerd I was quite excited about that

The spring of 2006 was when every property in the City went up by like $100k or more -- the last really big real estate boom IIRC. I know people have talked about houses built in 2006-2007 as being shoddy because trades were stretched thin, so but I think that's anecdotal more than anything. Like you said, if there were major issues they would have likely been addressed and resolved by now.

[The Big Chill]

Our neighbours just sold for 50,000 over asking. They sold at a price that means the value went up about 100,000 in the 8 years since we bought.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by The Big Chill

Our neighbours just sold for 50,000 over asking. They sold at a price that means the value went up about 100,000 in the 8 years since we bought.

Our house is probably worth 100-150k more than we paid 14 years ago. But I think 100% of that increase is in the last 13 months and none in the previous 13 years.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by tvp2003

The spring of 2006 was when every property in the City went up by like $100k or more -- the last really big real estate boom IIRC. I know people have talked about houses built in 2006-2007 as being shoddy because trades were stretched thin, so but I think that's anecdotal more than anything. Like you said, if there were major issues they would have likely been addressed and resolved by now.

The construction quality went up substantially in the early 2000s compared to the 1980s/1990s.

Maybe it's not as big of an issue in Calgary, as Vancouver, but if you buy something in the 1990s here, it's almost a certainty that there are major issues with the foundation and envelope that will cost you $50-300k to address.

The "leaky condo" crisis, wasn't just a clever name, legitimately most buildings from that era had serious problems, and not just condos too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaky_condo_crisis

Anything built post-2005 is a lot more trustworthy. However, I wouldn't say that's enough time to address major issues. Now is just about when major issues like foundation and envelope problems from those builds will become apparent.

[red sky]

Seems like more properties are being listed here over the last week. Will be interested to see how quickly things continue to move.

[tvp2003]

Originally Posted by blankall

The construction quality went up substantially in the early 2000s compared to the 1980s/1990s.

Maybe it's not as big of an issue in Calgary, as Vancouver, but if you buy something in the 1990s here, it's almost a certainty that there are major issues with the foundation and envelope that will cost you $50-300k to address.

The "leaky condo" crisis, wasn't just a clever name, legitimately most buildings from that era had serious problems, and not just condos too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaky_condo_crisis

Anything built post-2005 is a lot more trustworthy. However, I wouldn't say that's enough time to address major issues. Now is just about when major issues like foundation and envelope problems from those builds will become apparent.

Fortunately I don't think that was as big an issue in Calgary/Alberta (IIRC), likely due to our drier climate. I'd agree multi-family builds (like condos) definitely have their own issues and circumstances though.

[Gundo]

Originally Posted by red sky

Seems like more properties are being listed here over the last week. Will be interested to see how quickly things continue to move.

We went live Friday at 4pm. Have over 15 showings booked as of noon Saturday and a few offers have already come in. Seems to still be a freight train out there.

[Calgary14]

Originally Posted by Gundo

We went live Friday at 4pm. Have over 15 showings booked as of noon Saturday and a few offers have already come in. Seems to still be a freight train out there.

Sold by Saturday night?

[Locke]

Originally Posted by stampsx2

I don’t understand the whole older houses were better built. You mean a hand saw back then did a better cut than a table saw today? I can tell you that if someone gave me a hammer, nails and a hand saw to build a house i would be taking shortcuts everywhere.

Purely anecdotal I'll grant you that, but I think the build-quality in that ~2006ish era was dodgy not just because of tools or scarcity of skilled trades.

Houses were selling at an insane rate so in order to maximize on that they were being built incredibly fast.

People wanted houses, the price was more or less the price so quality of materials could be downgraded to increase margins.

And then of course, and this is the part where the anecdotal element comes in, the people doing the work were themselves not of the highest caliber.

Anyone with a pulse who showed up for work could get a job in the Residential Construction industry at the time.

Proof = Me.

I worked construction from 2006-2008 to pay for my tuition.

Now if any of you have been lucky enough to have seen me swing a hammer or had the pleasure of me dazzling you with my handyman skillz you would realize that I really shouldnt be allowed anywhere near the construction of anything.

And, sadly, I was one of the better ones at the time.

[you&me]

Originally Posted by Locke

Purely anecdotal I'll grant you that, but I think the build-quality in that ~2006ish era was dodgy not just because of tools or scarcity of skilled trades.

Houses were selling at an insane rate so in order to maximize on that they were being built incredibly fast.

People wanted houses, the price was more or less the price so quality of materials could be downgraded to increase margins.

And then of course, and this is the part where the anecdotal element comes in, the people doing the work were themselves not of the highest caliber.

Anyone with a pulse who showed up for work could get a job in the Residential Construction industry at the time.

Proof = Me.

I worked construction from 2006-2008 to pay for my tuition.

Now if any of you have been lucky enough to have seen me swing a hammer or had the pleasure of me dazzling you with my handyman skillz you would realize that I really shouldnt be allowed anywhere near the construction of anything.

And, sadly, I was one of the better ones at the time.

Yep, I framed houses during my summer break in high school. I had way more responsibility than anyone with my level of skill(read: none) had any business having.

I'd get a call Sunday night with a new address, we'd frame the whole house by Friday and repeat the next week. Fair warning to any home owners in West Springs

[Gundo]

Originally Posted by Calgary14

Sold by Saturday night?

We were presented all offers at 7pm Sunday night. Sold for 8% over list with no conditions and 140 day possession so the buyers didn’t need to have bridge financing on their old place.

Had 26 showings and 8 offers in about 48 hours, ridiculous.

[Gundo]

Nvm

[kcin]

Originally Posted by Gundo

We were presented all offers at 7pm Sunday night. Sold for 8% over list with no conditions and 140 day possession so the buyers didn’t need to have bridge financing on their old place.

Had 26 showings and 8 offers in about 48 hours, ridiculous.

What do you think is driving the intense competition for homes all of a sudden? Fear of rising interest rates? Fear of missing out because they heard house prices are going up? Confidence boost because of the improvement in the local economy? I don't understand why the market is suddenly so short of inventory and so long on buyers willing to pay any price.

I get it some people absolutely need to relocate for myriad of reasons but if the market is going crazy why not sit it out if you don't need a different house?

[Fuzz]

I suspect some of it was people waiting for the pandemic to be over, and being able to build up a down payment due to lower costs over the past 2 years. Also, realizing Toronto and Vancouver are totally out of reach, and prices here are much more reasonable. Or were.

[boogerz]

Originally Posted by kcin

What do you think is driving the intense competition for homes all of a sudden? Fear of rising interest rates? Fear of missing out because they heard house prices are going up? Confidence boost because of the improvement in the local economy? I don't understand why the market is suddenly so short of inventory and so long on buyers willing to pay any price.

I get it some people absolutely need to relocate for myriad of reasons but if the market is going crazy why not sit it out if you don't need a different house?

Besides local FOMO and ultra-low interest rates, out of province buyers are definitely a factor. By out of province buyers, I'm referring to both the 16000 people that moved to Alberta last year via inter-provincial migration and residents of Vancouver/GTA looking to buy investment properties.

January had 1146 detached home sales. It wouldn't take more than a couple dozen out of province buyers to disrupt our market or compound the other issues given the low number of active detached listings (inventory is currently around 1300 homes).

[GomerPile]

It was an interesting experience last week. We had a duplex rental that we bought 11 years ago. I got it rezoned last year for up to 4 units on the lot. We listed at noon on Thursday and reviewed offers Friday at 7pm.

- 9 offers
- all over list
- 6 no conditions
- top offer was 12% over list, handover in a month

I have only read about this sort of thing, I am pretty sure that several of the offers were from out of the country. It really couldn’t have gone better for us.

[Gundo]

I have absolutely no idea what might be driving it. I do know in our instance of the offers we received 5 were from out of province and 1 out of country. Of those 5 offers from outside Alberta 4 were unconditional.

We have even had 1 realtor reach out this morning asking if we had gone firm because their clients would like to table another offer this morning after sleeping on it.