General Consensus of the Project

  • Great

    Votes: 54 83.1%
  • Very Good

    Votes: 10 15.4%
  • Good

    Votes: 1 1.5%
  • So-So

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Terrible

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    65
Wasn't everyone freaking out earlier in the year when Bucci said they were pulling out of the Calgary market? Don't think they like doing rentals and the condo market is still pretty soft...
As far as I know, they don't have anything else planned for Calgary after Dominion is finished. It is true that rentals are not their forte. I can't help but think we are getting close to the saturation point for premium rentals in the core. Coming to the market now and over the next 6 months.
Blvd Beltline (One Properties ) - 650 units
The Oliver Ph 1 - 450 units
11 & 11 th - 370 units
The Bridge (Jemm Properties) - 285 units
plus assorted smaller ones

All this on top of the 6-10 buildings that opened in the last 18 months and are not yet fully rented
 
As far as I know, they don't have anything else planned for Calgary after Dominion is finished. It is true that rentals are not their forte. I can't help but think we are getting close to the saturation point for premium rentals in the core. Coming to the market now and over the next 6 months.
Blvd Beltline (One Properties ) - 650 units
The Oliver Ph 1 - 450 units
11 & 11 th - 370 units
The Bridge (Jemm Properties) - 285 units
plus assorted smaller ones

All this on top of the 6-10 buildings that opened in the last 18 months and are not yet fully rented
Maybe. I'm not in real estate. But in a city of 1.5 million is ~1,800 units a really big amount? Isn't the Beltline alone adding about a 1000 new people per year? It's hard to know how much population growth is driven by demand of people who want to move downtown and how much of it is driven by supply of (attractive) units.
 
Maybe. I'm not in real estate. But in a city of 1.5 million is ~1,800 units a really big amount? Isn't the Beltline alone adding about a 1000 new people per year? It's hard to know how much population growth is driven by demand of people who want to move downtown and how much of it is driven by supply of (attractive) units.
Also considering we lost something like 20,000 dedicated rentals to condo conversions in the late 90s and 2000s. We have still a pretty paltry dedicated rental stock for a city our size.
 
Wholeheartedly agree, what we in Calgary describe as normal isn't normal for other large Canadian cities, let alone cities outside of North America. Most are geographically constrained.

That space is great for picket fences and the automotive industry, but sprawl is enormously inefficient, especially for spending tax dollars. Think about how much it costs per person to add utility service to a highrise in the core vs. a SFH 20km outside of downtown - it's orders of magnitude, which is a lot for a province that touts 'fiscal responsibility.' Transit, schools, roadways, the list goes on.

The harsh reality of our future state consists of two extremely important things:
1). There isn't a plausible method to continue to sprawl.
2). Housing demand outpaces supply, by a large margin.

Both lead to us building more housing in and around the core, but that isn't a bad thing. A reasonably high population density has been factually proven to be more cost-effective, more sustainable, and better for the wellbeing of people. But, we have to do it properly with active transport, pedestrian, urban greenery. Planning our streets as 90% roadway has the opposite effect.

Which is to say - we need to stop building out and start building up, and I'm firmly confident that the market will reflect that reality.
 
Also considering we lost something like 20,000 dedicated rentals to condo conversions in the late 90s and 2000s. We have still a pretty paltry dedicated rental stock for a city our size.
Those days were crazy, I remember vacancy rates in the area of 0.5% in the inner city like 10 years ago.
 
Those days were crazy, I remember vacancy rates in the area of 0.5% in the inner city like 10 years ago.
Yeah competitive apartment bidding was wild, where landlords had more applications than apartments. Plus the high year-over-year rent increases. A brief taste of regular life in Toronto and Vancouver.

Thinking of the scale of growth, Calgary recently is averaging 15,000-25,000 net population growth per year. That works out to about 7,000-10,000 new households formed per year. So to stay even to today in a supply/demand sense, we'd need to produce 7,000 - 10,000 units per year, every year at this growth rate.

I forget where we are at, but inner city has like 4,000 ish units under construction? Let's say on average 1,000 units are completed each year, every year, forever (3 - 5 towers worth). That's still only 10 - 15% of the overall households needed to keep even (if that's the goal). That's actually a lot of development to always have in the pipeline.

Of course, it's more complex than what I just said. Other factors that impact supply and demand :
  • It's not just number of households by type; not every new house is the same and wants the same amenities, location, price (young/old, owner/renter, housing type, family size etc.)
  • Growth trends - as the city grows, commutes stretch, location premiums start getting more apparent. This would impact demand in new ways.
  • Lifestyle trends - better apartments with more amenities and better urban communities with more amenities are influencing location and housing choice trade-offs. Generational shifts between ownership, renting and the timing of household formation can influence what people afford, when and where.
  • Economic trends - household incomes and housing prices are a big factor. Even with Calgary's relative affordability compared to other bigger Canadian cities there's still a lot of people that aren't entering the house ownership market today, let alone in the future if prices go up. Taken to the extreme, Toronto doesn't really have any new households that are formed buying houses on their own - the entire market is captured by condos as home ownership is locked largely into the market that has multi-generational wealth to spend. This is completely reverse from 40 years ago.
Taken together, I think the premium rental in the core thing isn't as much of a premium as it might appear. Depending on the situation it can still be cheaper than owning, but with more amenities and features than an older, much cheaper apartments in the area. All the regular benefits of renting still apply, albeit at a higher monthly price. It's also provided a different housing choice that didn't really exist 10 years ago, except on the condo rental secondary market. Plus every premium rental today becomes the more affordable option in 20 years as those amenities age.

TL/DR: fears of saturation seem a bit overblown, more choice and supply of units are good things for the inner city.
 
The other factor is that Calgary has a ton of well paid, young professionals to soak up demand for higher end rentals in the core. Maybe not to the extent of where we were at in the 2000s, but we still remain a major center for service industry jobs right up there with Montreal and Vancouver and with a fraction of the population.
 
There are some studies that have demonstrated how the construction of new apartments (which almost always charge higher rents than existing apartments) actually suppress rents in older buildings. If this indeed holds true, then building new "premium" rentals also indirectly increases the supply of lower-cost rentals as well.
 
IMG_20211216_085054.jpg
My wife and I stayed at an airb&b. Thought I'd snap a photo. 😊
 

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