Calgary and Edmonton are the two main centers but not everyone wants to pay the price for living in a big city. There are lots of jobs in smaller centers.
But here’s the thing. You can move to Calgary but you’re going to need to buy a house for at least 600,000. OR you can move to a smaller center and get a house for one tenth of that price.
Now look at the difference in mortgage payments at 5.25%. The Calgary house is going to be 3400. The small town mortgage is going to be $340.
Which means in the small town, you can buy a house paying your mortgage working a minimum wage job and still have money to spare, but in Calgary you better be making over 100k if you hope to qualify for that 600k house.
Sometimes small town living just makes far more financial sense. Especially when youre in driving distance to a bigger city.
I just looked for property in Alberta under 100k, and could only find a handful of places under 100k that were not inside mobile home parks (where you don’t own the land) most of them are court ordered sales and are also mobile homes(on private lots) that essentially need to be replaced entirely.
The only reasonable one I found in the entire province which wasn’t in terrible shape, had it’s own land, and was drivable to what I consider a city was in Elnora, which is about an hour outside red deer. Unfortunately it’s unlikely you could get even a minimum wage job there, because the population is only 288 people and they have only 18 total businesses in the town, and that includes some public places like the post office and library.
The thing to remember about this though, is that it can’t support a larger population choosing this option. A few people could move there, but the moment you get more than a few moving in the prices go way up since there isn’t just a million houses sitting empty in these small towns. There’s maybe hundreds, total in the province.
Yes there arent thousands of them. I had to hunt around and keep my eye open for a good deal for several months to find the ones I bought. But they do exist in centers much bigger than Elnora.
If you have a problem that affects 10 million people, and you build 100,000 units. Have you alleviated anything?
The simple answer is no.
You’re right that solving the housing crisis is going to take time and a whole lot of changes. The problem is that none of the changes we’re making right now will do a damn thing but prolong the suffering. The whole lot of changes that will actually fix it will happen once the ownership rate has dropped so much that enough people are willing to actually harm (economically hopefully) the remaining landlords. That process is going to take decades.
The simple way to understand this is by doing some math. There are already more bedrooms in this country than there are citizens, by a reasonable margin. (You can confirm this with numbers from statscan if you want). Given that lots of people share bedrooms (couples, children, etc.) that means we don’t actually have a supply issue with housing. We have a demand and distribution issue.
You sure as shit didn’t buy a property for $60k in Calgary or Edmonton, which is where most of the jobs are, and where people want to live.
And, on top of that, housing prices are STILL rising in those two cities compared to last year.
I will say it again, we CANNOT build ourselves out of the housing issue we’re in right now. It simply isn’t possible.
Calgary and Edmonton are the two main centers but not everyone wants to pay the price for living in a big city. There are lots of jobs in smaller centers.
But here’s the thing. You can move to Calgary but you’re going to need to buy a house for at least 600,000. OR you can move to a smaller center and get a house for one tenth of that price.
Now look at the difference in mortgage payments at 5.25%. The Calgary house is going to be 3400. The small town mortgage is going to be $340.
Which means in the small town, you can buy a house paying your mortgage working a minimum wage job and still have money to spare, but in Calgary you better be making over 100k if you hope to qualify for that 600k house.
Sometimes small town living just makes far more financial sense. Especially when youre in driving distance to a bigger city.
I just looked for property in Alberta under 100k, and could only find a handful of places under 100k that were not inside mobile home parks (where you don’t own the land) most of them are court ordered sales and are also mobile homes(on private lots) that essentially need to be replaced entirely.
The only reasonable one I found in the entire province which wasn’t in terrible shape, had it’s own land, and was drivable to what I consider a city was in Elnora, which is about an hour outside red deer. Unfortunately it’s unlikely you could get even a minimum wage job there, because the population is only 288 people and they have only 18 total businesses in the town, and that includes some public places like the post office and library.
The thing to remember about this though, is that it can’t support a larger population choosing this option. A few people could move there, but the moment you get more than a few moving in the prices go way up since there isn’t just a million houses sitting empty in these small towns. There’s maybe hundreds, total in the province.
Yes there arent thousands of them. I had to hunt around and keep my eye open for a good deal for several months to find the ones I bought. But they do exist in centers much bigger than Elnora.
So how exactly can they solve the housing crisis?
Alleviate, not necessarily SOLVE the housing crisis. Thats a long term thing thats going to take time and a whole lot of changes.
If you have a problem that affects 10 million people, and you build 100,000 units. Have you alleviated anything?
The simple answer is no.
You’re right that solving the housing crisis is going to take time and a whole lot of changes. The problem is that none of the changes we’re making right now will do a damn thing but prolong the suffering. The whole lot of changes that will actually fix it will happen once the ownership rate has dropped so much that enough people are willing to actually harm (economically hopefully) the remaining landlords. That process is going to take decades.
The simple way to understand this is by doing some math. There are already more bedrooms in this country than there are citizens, by a reasonable margin. (You can confirm this with numbers from statscan if you want). Given that lots of people share bedrooms (couples, children, etc.) that means we don’t actually have a supply issue with housing. We have a demand and distribution issue.