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Anecdote: My brother owns construction companies in Dallas and Calgary focused on commercial buildings, mostly warehouses. His opinion is that building in Dallas is much easier due to:
-predictable timelines. He has to put deposits down to cover inspection fees. If he isn't ready for the inspection, he forfeits the deposit. If the local government or its contract inspectors do not complete the inspection on the agreed upon date, they pay a penalty
-approvals and inspections happen in parallel. The assumption is that everything will be approved, allowing the builder to schedule activities in parallel rather than gating them based on approval gates
 
Vancouver definitely is, haven't done a building in any of the eastern cities. I did a few in Winnipeg and they seem much more critical of your drawings if you are from out of town. My boss let his registration lapse because of how difficult they were to deal with.
 
Mountain Man said:
Vancouver definitely is, haven't done a building in any of the eastern cities. I did a few in Winnipeg and they seem much more critical of your drawings if you are from out of town. My boss let his registration lapse because of how difficult they were to deal with.
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Part of the problem is cultural. In hyper competitive markets like Texas, developers won't accept regulatory delays and municipalities are scared of being branded as antibusiness. I've seen developers sue municipalities and even activist groups that cause delays.
 
My understanding is that the American court system moves much faster than the Canadian one. Perhaps that makes this type of litigation more effective and feasible - if it will take six years for your claim to get to trial, oftentimes it isn't even worth it to bring an action. Or settling out of court becomes much more attractive.
 
In my experience, conducting business in the US is considerably faster/smoother than in Canada. I personally have about 60/40 split in terms of US/Canadian clients, and the Americans are a well oiled machine in comparison. They are more goal focused, there's less dicking around, and while expectations are higher, I find them to be pretty great to work with. The exchange rate doesn't hurt either!
 
outoftheice said:
Not sure if these are new projects or ones we already knew about?

globalnews.ca

Downtown Calgary office towers to be converted into affordable housing with new grant - Calgary | Globalnews.ca

The grant is funded through the Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF), in which future installments may be at risk depending on whether Calgary city council repeals citywide rezoning.
globalnews.ca globalnews.ca
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The prices seem quite high for relatively few units. The 2nd project is getting 64 units/$27 million. That’s approximately $410,000 per unit. These are studios and one bedrooms. I’m sure you could build a heck of a lot more units in a new build somewhere out of downtown. IMHO I don’t see the cost/benefit of these conversions. I’ve been a big fan of most of the conversions and the program in general. These ones seem odd though.
 
I agree, that makes no sense. For some reason there's an appetite for programs like this, but not, for example, the city buying rental buildings or some of the many sub-$300k condos for sale in downtown and Beltline.

Maybe maintenance costs are lower this way, and they don't need to budget for renovation/repairs?
 
I'm more curious about where the revenue from the eventual sales flows...seems like tax payers should get back like 70-80 cents on the dollar, but I've never seen any indication that that's true.
 
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