Canada Housing/Debt: Trust me, I'm a landlord.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Canada Housing/Debt: Trust me, I'm a landlord.

lonelywurm: Aug 10, 2009

Cultural Imperial posted:

Jesus a housing boom in Lethbridge? What is going on there economically?

Health care, education, agriculture and processing industries from agriculture, and transport-related industries, especially trucking. I mean it's not a bad place in a lot of ways, but it really hasn't seen the same level of upward wage pressure from the petro-chemical industry as the rest of the province has - which is why it shocks the hell out of me to see housing go up like it has. When my parents sold their place there it went for $280,000 (1400 sq feet main floor with finished basement, smack dab between the hospital and Mayor Magrath) in '07 - but 3 years earlier they bought it for $160,000.

lonelywurm fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Feb 16, 2013

# ¿ Feb 16, 2013 22:47

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 17:22

lonelywurm: Aug 10, 2009

PT6A posted:

Just helped a friend score a two-bedroom apartment in Calgary yesterday. The rent is pretty insane, the building had some damage (though not to his unit) from our floods, and it was still the last one offered by any of the major rental companies anywhere in the city (for a halfway reasonable price, that is).

As long as rental availability rates are well under 1%, as is the case here, can it really be called a bubble even if prices are exploding? Obviously it's a response to supply and demand as much as it's speculation.

I was helping a friend find a new place before the floods occurred, and while it wasn't easy to find a great place (it's not in any large city), I got her around a dozen possible options with a day of googling (and she ended up renting one). So I'm not sure it's fair to say, "well, things are bad right now [because of the floods], so it can't be a bubble [even though housing costs in Calgary have grown massively for years before the floods]." Yes, the lack of rental stock due to water damage is going to have an effect, but it's not the only factor that's gone to making properties in, for example Erin Woods, increase in value 1.5 times in a decade (a smaller house on the same street I grew up on is selling for $110,000 more than my parents sold for in 2004).

# ¿ Aug 13, 2013 16:30

lonelywurm: Aug 10, 2009

Fine-able Offense posted:

That's a pretty bog standard "delusional landlord wanting to rent a furnished apartment" listing.

For instance, this.

Yeah. Renting in Calgary isn't great, but there's no way that place should be taken as remotely representative. Hell, just going through the other ads in there, I'm seeing places that are nicer than my first apartment in Calgary for less (by around $50/mo, but still).

# ¿ Aug 13, 2013 22:16

lonelywurm: Aug 10, 2009

Gorewar posted:

At one point, Vancouver was seen as such a nice place for young people from Midwestern Canada to move. It, after all, was a place where you could have tattoos, listen to punk rock, and maybe even practice homosexuality if you wanted without the fear of discrimination or persecution. Sure, employment possibilities were limited, but there you had the chance to be free for once in your life. Then everyone else joined in and hosed up the housing market more and increased the competition for work. It was time, then, for the young libertine youth to move on for greener pastures.

This was exactly how it was seen when I graduated high school in AB, and I have quite a few former classmates who left for Vancouver not long after. Perhaps not coincidentally, I graduated right in the middle of that massive rise in the 2000s.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2013 04:46

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