Real estate in Calgary - another bubble?

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

78 per cent of young urban families (20-45) in major cities (Van, Cal, Tor, Mon) express a preference for detached homes. In Calgary, it’s 91 per cent.

http://www.newgeography.com/content/...-condos-survey

That’s not really an accurate picture though because most people would rather live in a single detached home with a yard if they could. Whatever misgivings people have about house maintenance, yard work and additional costs are offset by the advantages of our city design and the space that suburban living offers.

Most people I know see a long commute as a necessary trade off because inner city living means a two bed, one bath condo for the same price as a house in the burbs. And there’s no yard and it’s hard to get around and there’s no parking etc.

The difference comes down to people being able to commute from their suburban home since hardly anyone can afford to live in a SFH in the inner city. The value of inner city multi family living is low and it’s low because our planners and politicians have designed cities to cater to the burbs and car culture.

WFH has only made demand higher as many people expect to rarely or never have to commute again.

Our cities are built to heavily favour people living in the suburbs. Our infrastructure and neighborhoods are built to meet their demands. Nowadays each community has almost every thing you need in those giant anti pedestrian big box commercial zones that are only accessible via car.

The reason why places with high density work is because that becomes a fundamentally better option than a SFH. But as long as people can keep buying cheep houses way out in the burbs, condos and townhouses will continue to be less attractive when our inner city lacks the infrastructure to tilt the scales.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

78 per cent of young urban families (20-45) in major cities (Van, Cal, Tor, Mon) express a preference for detached homes. In Calgary, it’s 91 per cent.

http://www.newgeography.com/content/...-condos-survey

Straight out, if people can afford a detached home, all other things being the same, sure...of course. Why wouldn't you want the vastly more valuable and versatile piece of property.

If you were to reword the survey, what would you prefer, a detached home, with an extra 20-30 minute+ commute every single day, or a townhouse, the results would be dramatically different. If you're telling me that townhouse demand close to city centres is less than the demand for detached housing in the burbs, I know from recently spending the last year buying a home that simply isn't true.

[blankall]

Also a study done by a real estate company that comes to the conclusion that everyone really just wants really expensive real estate should raise a few eyebrows. People's demand needs to be taken within the context of what they can actually afford. Most people would love a sprawling mansion within 20 minutes drive from downtown....hence why the cost of homes in Mount Royal is so high. When people are faced with choices that are realistic to their circumstances (IE ones that involve trade offs), we see different results.

[jwslam]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

It turns out that what planners and developers think buyers should want is not what they actually want. Millennials are following in the footsteps of every generation before them and moving to detached homes in the burbs to start families.

The condos near me have some 3BR offerings along with 2BR and 1BR and they're fully sold out even during prebuild stage.
(this is in suburbia... 3BR are $350k+ range. Even the 1BR are $190k+)

[peter12]

Preferences don't really matter when land availability and economic opportunity become issues. Yeah, I would prefer to live in a giant modernist house on an acreage somewhere warm rather than my medium-sized 2br on a Vancouver sidestreet, but uhhhh, I can't.

[Winsor_Pilates]

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.

[peter12]

I personally don't have much preference for detached housing. I like urban environments, parks, shops, cafes, restaurants, schools, and my work are all nice to have within a 15-30 minute walk. The most I would ever want is a townhouse or something, but I don't even care that much for that. Condos are great. Our building has spacious suites in it and plenty of families.

[81MC]

Condos are great if you’re okay with severely restricting your hobbies. Want to play an instrument? Nope. Want to get into wood working? Nope. Fixing up motorbikes? Not a chance. Gardening? Maybe if there’s an open spot at a community garden. And with a family? Where’s the nearest park, and what are your kids experienced going there? Stepping over human #### and crossing roadways just to throw a ball around? Yeah, no #### people want single family homes.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Oh yeah, wood working is the reason people move to the suburbs. I’ve been saying that for years.

There are more family and kid friendly green spaces near me than anyone who lives in the suburbs. More parks, more family entertainment options, better schools, a better life for children all around. Just no street hockey unfortunately. But there are some places nearby they can play in a rink.

And no human #### on the sidewalks.

[cam_wmh]

Originally Posted by Winsor_Pilates

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.

Which inner city communities don't allow MDU at the moment?
* Elbow Park
* Mount Royal
* Elboya
* Brittania
* Bel Aire
* Mayfair
* St Andrews


No Sliver, your half hour drive from Lake Bonaventure to anything urban, isn't under this consideration.

[cam_wmh]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

Oh yeah, wood working is the reason people move to the suburbs. I’ve been saying that for years.

There are more family and kid friendly green spaces near me than anyone who lives in the suburbs. More parks, more family entertainment options, better schools, a better life for children all around. Just no street hockey unfortunately. But there are some places nearby they can play in a rink.

And no human #### on the sidewalks.

The best covered, and longest lasting shinny rink in Calgary is inner city.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by 81MC

Condos are great if you’re okay with severely restricting your hobbies. Want to play an instrument? Nope. Want to get into wood working? Nope. Fixing up motorbikes? Not a chance. Gardening? Maybe if there’s an open spot at a community garden. And with a family? Where’s the nearest park, and what are your kids experienced going there? Stepping over human #### and crossing roadways just to throw a ball around? Yeah, no #### people want single family homes.

The last condo i lived in actually had a wood working room and garden plots you could reserve. I wasn't into these things, but the people who were seemed to really enjoy having other people also into the hobbies to chat with.

I did really like the communal gym. Having use of a relatively large gym without having to go outside was great. Obviously I would have preferred a house with a large private gym, but would rather share a gym than commute an extra 1.5 hours a day. If I was single without children, I'd be all over the condo life. I actually liked having people within close quarters, but not actually in my space, too.

Having work a 5 minute skytrain ride away was fantastic too.

Everyone is different, but the convenience of being close to where I need and want to be, vastly outweighs the negatives of not having more space.

[burn_this_city]

Freeways exist so Sliver can take Deerfoot to Memorial and be at Eau Claire in 22 mins. I swear inner city folks are so used to plodding along one block at a time they think it takes us an hour to get in from the boonies.

[calgarywinning]

Originally Posted by Winsor_Pilates

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.

Problem is a restrictive covenant. The area trades like bitcoin, it's not supposed to be turned into something else.

[CliffFletcher]

At 30, my friends and I all lived in the inner city. Worked in the inner city. Loved the nightlife. Did the cafe culture thing on weekends. Walked or rode bikes everywhere (I didn’t own a car until I was 36). We were never going to live in the suburbs like our lame parents.

At 40 we all lived in the suburbs like our lame parents - some of us in the same neighbourhoods we had grown up in.

People’s wants and priorities change dramatically when they have kids. They want schools and soccer fields and neighbourhoods kids can ride bikes in. They want a yard big enough for a trampoline and a garage big enough for two cars. They want leisure centres and hockey rinks and tobogganing hills. They may not love malls and big box shopping complexes, but they find them convenient because getting all your weekly shopping done in a 50 minute trip in the Dodge Grand Caravan beats pushing a stroller up and down curbs and onto buses.

And terrible as it sounds, parents aren’t as sanguine about encountering homeless people and drug addicts outside their door as they were in their 20s. Most couples want to raise their kids in neighbourhoods like the ones they grew up in.

They aren’t all that bothered that you need a car for all that stuff because if you’re middle-class and have kids, then you have a car. Probably two of them, and one is a minivan or SUV.

Suburbs are popular because they meet the needs of families and most people genuinely like them.

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

That’s not really an accurate picture though because most people would rather live in a single detached home with a yard if they could. Whatever misgivings people have about house maintenance, yard work and additional costs are offset by the advantages of our city design and the space that suburban living offers.

Most people I know see a long commute as a necessary trade off because inner city living means a two bed, one bath condo for the same price as a house in the burbs. And there’s no yard and it’s hard to get around and there’s no parking etc.

The difference comes down to people being able to commute from their suburban home since hardly anyone can afford to live in a SFH in the inner city. The value of inner city multi family living is low and it’s low because our planners and politicians have designed cities to cater to the burbs and car culture.

WFH has only made demand higher as many people expect to rarely or never have to commute again.

Our cities are built to heavily favour people living in the suburbs. Our infrastructure and neighborhoods are built to meet their demands. Nowadays each community has almost every thing you need in those giant anti pedestrian big box commercial zones that are only accessible via car.

The reason why places with high density work is because that becomes a fundamentally better option than a SFH. But as long as people can keep buying cheep houses way out in the burbs, condos and townhouses will continue to be less attractive when our inner city lacks the infrastructure to tilt the scales.

So what you’re saying is SFH is preferable in places they are available? Shocking.

The majority of people will choose a SFH when reasonably available. That’s never going to change in a city like Calgary.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by 81MC

Condos are great if you’re okay with severely restricting your hobbies. Want to play an instrument? Nope. Want to get into wood working? Nope. Fixing up motorbikes? Not a chance. Gardening? Maybe if there’s an open spot at a community garden. And with a family? Where’s the nearest park, and what are your kids experienced going there? Stepping over human #### and crossing roadways just to throw a ball around? Yeah, no #### people want single family homes.

I have lots of hobbies I do in my 1000sq ft condo.

[Mr.Coffee]

Originally Posted by peter12

I have lots of hobbies I do in my 1000sq ft condo.

But do you have kids?

I think having children is really the difference at play here. Cliff isn’t wrong.

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by burn_this_city

Freeways exist so Sliver can take Deerfoot to Memorial and be at Eau Claire in 22 mins. I swear inner city folks are so used to plodding along one block at a time they think it takes us an hour to get in from the boonies.

I live right on the west edge of the city and it’s 22 minutes door to desk (driving). I moved from west hillhurst and it was 20 minutes walking or 18 minutes by train door to desk. Will never regret the move.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by Weitz

So what you’re saying is SFH is preferable in places they are available? Shocking.

The majority of people will choose a SFH when reasonably available. That’s never going to change in a city like Calgary.

No it isn’t shocking. That’s literally my reply to cliff is that it is expected for a multitude of reasons.

To make inner city living more attractive and seen as better value, cities like Calgary need to prioritize inner city infrastructure. It’s all right there in my post. And the posts from blankall.