What do you think of this project?

  • Total voters
    64
Yeah, our market will grow into it. Need more DT, high paying employers though and more limitations on cheap detached home construction in the burbs. As long as you can buy a brand new infill for under 700k, itll be hard to sell condos this small for 750k.
 
While I agree overall lower prices here do put a cap on things such as this, I am not sure detached homes are really directly competing against this. I doubt that most potential buyers here are considering detached homes.

Given the unit sizes, I would see this project as being for people who already want a more central location, people who are downsizing and people looking for a second property including some out of town buyers.

More DT high paying employers would increase demand for downtown condos overall and so would help this project too. Unfortunately, good paying white collar jobs never have seemed to be much of a focus for this city over the years, except occasionally every once and while when people notice they can be quite beneficial.
 
It always was a hare-brained idea to convert them from rental to condos. The layouts just weren't right for the condo market or price point. And selling individual units is way more expensive + the building cannot then be sold as a whole to an institutional investor.
 
ChazYEG said:
They're up, but Sky Residences is still overpriced by a large margin.
If they cut 75~100k on average, it'd still be overpriced, but I could see them marketing the exclusivity and the "unique" factors to sell it some 50k above market prices.
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I've met a couple people who own units in in Sky Res while having drinks in the lobby bar, both are people with a lot of money and only come to Edmonton periodically for business. not too sure who else own those. I could see the oilers owning a couple units for players when they come up from Bako?
 
Vacs said:
I've met a couple people who own units in in Sky Res while having drinks in the lobby bar, both are people with a lot of money and only come to Edmonton periodically for business. not too sure who else own those. I could see the oilers owning a couple units for players when they come up from Bako?
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I know a couple of people who own there, mostly people who work downtown (some work in the tower itself). They paid the overpriced units out of necessity, but are not exactly super thrilled about it.
 
David A said:
While I agree overall lower prices here do put a cap on things such as this, I am not sure detached homes are really directly competing against this. I doubt that most potential buyers here are considering detached homes.

Given the unit sizes, I would see this project as being for people who already want a more central location, people who are downsizing and people looking for a second property including some out of town buyers.

More DT high paying employers would increase demand for downtown condos overall and so would help this project too. Unfortunately, good paying white collar jobs never have seemed to be much of a focus for this city over the years, except occasionally every once and while when people notice they can be quite beneficial.
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At a macro scale, less cheap detached housing does lead to more DT condo living. I work in Vancouver and lived in Toronto and almost all my friends lived in condos/apartments for a portion of their 20s. In edmonton, many go straight from their parents to a basement suite rental or a home they buy.

I dont think its because of "want" so much as whats affordable and culturally the norm due to prices and stock. When homes in Toronto are over a mil, young people happily pay 600k for a condo close to transit because its their best option.
 
I have beat this drum numerous times, but again consider the workforce in EDM. Lots of well paid blue collar/oilfield/in-the-field workers, who often work not centrally. Nisku, Fort Sask, Acheson, Leduc, Spruce Grove, Aurum, refinery row--employ hundreds of thousands here, nevermind all the out-of-town work. Not all but a lot of those jobs do require a work truck, or work van, which don't fit in the majority of downtown underground condo parking.

And even if one partner does work downtown, if the other doesn't, they probably won't be living downtown.
 
I would be VERY surprised to learn that any of TO, MTL, Van or Calgary have a workforce as decentralized as Edmonton's.

Our downtown is government and satellite offices with a few small startups in the mix. Compare that to the number of HQs in the aforementioned cities. See below... lowest # of HQ jobs, lower than Winnipeg, QC and Ottawa..

2019_02_HeadOffices_Tbl2.PNG
 
I think everyone recognizes that industrial/manufacturing areas are important employment nodes in every city, but Edmontons industrial employment is also undeniably larger per capita than other Cities, meaning not as many people are employed in office jobs. That's not a bad thing, but when it comes to attracting people to live downtown, it does make things more difficult.
 
nv96 said:
I would be VERY surprised to learn that any of TO, MTL, Van or Calgary have a workforce as decentralized as Edmonton's.

Our downtown is government and satellite offices with a few small startups in the mix. Compare that to the number of HQs in the aforementioned cities. See below... lowest # of HQ jobs, lower than Winnipeg, QC and Ottawa..

2019_02_HeadOffices_Tbl2.PNG
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Cut at least 2/3rd’s off of YYC’s HO #’s
 
IanO said:
The GTA has an immense amount of employers outside of the Downtown core, as does the GVRD, MTL and Calgary.

Calgary per capita probably has the lowest in comparison to the Downtown, but the manufacturing/logistics and service industries outside of the cores of our major centres are often forgotten as very real and important employment nodes. Why people don't see that continues to amaze me.

The issue with Edmonton is that our Downtown employment numbers are rather low vis a vis the top 4 but in line with other tier 2 cities as per your chart.
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Good point. In particular, not all head offices in the GTA are located in downtown TO. There are quite a number of head offices spread out through other areas of the GTA.

It is not completely clear to me, but I also suspect the head offices jobs are referring mostly to private sector companies, not including all government downtown office jobs. If so, that would increase the Edmonton numbers somewhat.

I think it is important to consider this too, as the market for such condo's really includes anyone with a fairly well paid, stable job working downtown, not just private sector.
 
me personally. I lived in Edmontons downtown from 05-08 and back then I'll be honest dt was not that desirable then, hidden lofts were the most sought after which I had. Then I moved all around Canada, lived in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, sometimes in downtown, sometimes in the out skirts.

When I moved back to Edmonton, I had to give the city credit. Downtown had improved and is still improving big time. However now that I am older, settled down, got a dog, I bought a home outside of Edmonton and commute into downtown for work mostly because I didn't want to live in the fast pace that downtown can bring. I like going home to silence and having a back yard for my dog to run around.
 
Vacs said:
me personally. I lived in Edmontons downtown from 05-08 and back then I'll be honest dt was not that desirable then, hidden lofts were the most sought after which I had. Then I moved all around Canada, lived in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, sometimes in downtown, sometimes in the out skirts.

When I moved back to Edmonton, I had to give the city credit. Downtown had improved and is still improving big time. However now that I am older, settled down, got a dog, I bought a home outside of Edmonton and commute into downtown for work mostly because I didn't want to live in the fast pace that downtown can bring. I like going home to silence and having a back yard for my dog to run around.
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If I get the suburb/rural silence, I'll shoot myself between the ears, hahaha. We're looking into buying either a bigger condo (1300sqft+) or a row house in the core/Oliver/Grandin or Garneau, because we want a dog.
I find it that the units this size are so hard to come by that it is borderline ridiculous. And for me, that is one of the problems with Stantec, too. I can see families, especially those with both adults working Downtown, taking really good advantage of the amenities, including kids and pets, but the units are either too small or too overpriced.
 
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