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Maybe I just had a bad experience, but I wouldn't wish living in a wood frame apartment on my worst enemy. Maybe building codes are better now but I could hear EVERYTHING above me, lol.
I think the materials or buildings codes have improved...at least going by my one personal experience. My grandmother was living in a newer wood framed building (built late 90's) and the sound was perfectly fine, but I lived in one that was built in the 1982, and it was horrific. Like really, really bad.
 
Build everything at 3-6 stories everywhere. It’s why there are a billion wood frame (for sale) starts in the burbs but almost no concrete for sale starts in the city. Give me inner city land and low rise prices and everything would explode if everything wasn’t being held by land speculators with zoning for high rise that won’t budge on price and let the land sit waiting for towers to be profitable
shouldn’t the market already correct for this? If we have so much zoned capacity everywhere that’s priced to a typology of growth that isn’t realistic, wouldn’t we see developments occur below the zoned capacity and transactions occur at that lower price reflecting what can development can be realized?

Or is the market assuming speculators are right and there eventually will be the market so prices remain in this weird zone where the value is justified yet it’s not economic to build anything?

Or is the land supply for 6-storey infill developments so limited that there isn’t land available for redevelopment to kick off right now to take advantage of demand?

Or is holding costs just so low, speculative land investments can just wait forever?

Anecdotally, there seems to be tons of infill redevelopment sites on the market right now of various sizes, I assume many of these were smaller speculators getting caught by interest rate increases.

Those are just some ideas I had, Curious for the thoughts of those that know land economics and infill development Better than me to explain these issues
 
shouldn’t the market already correct for this? If we have so much zoned capacity everywhere that’s priced to a typology of growth that isn’t realistic, wouldn’t we see developments occur below the zoned capacity and transactions occur at that lower price reflecting what can development can be realized?

Or is the market assuming speculators are right and there eventually will be the market so prices remain in this weird zone where the value is justified yet it’s not economic to build anything?

Or is the land supply for 6-storey infill developments so limited that there isn’t land available for redevelopment to kick off right now to take advantage of demand?

Or is holding costs just so low, speculative land investments can just wait forever?

Anecdotally, there seems to be tons of infill redevelopment sites on the market right now of various sizes, I assume many of these were smaller speculators getting caught by interest rate increases.

Those are just some ideas I had, Curious for the thoughts of those that know land economics and infill development Better than me to explain these issues
I suspect there's a degree of "holding costs are just so low"... just based on a bunch of relatively "inner city" parcels that have sat for 2-3 decades with no development. The assessed value of bare land keeps the property taxes low-ish and the taxes only go up once they build something on it.
 
My opinion: detached narrow housing/multiplex infill for inner city areas is kind of a failure. The density increase is too marginal. The prices kind of speak to that.
The regulatory barriers still contribute too much to those projects. Not direct costs, but risk and time which for small developers is expensive.
 
The regulatory barriers still contribute too much to those projects. Not direct costs, but risk and time which for small developers is expensive.
Right but the increase in density is too marginal relative to the land costs. Some of this infill is just matching/slightly exceeding the density of what you get in a new suburb on the outer edges. It doesn't make sense really.

It needs to be multi-storey.
 
I suspect there's a degree of "holding costs are just so low"... just based on a bunch of relatively "inner city" parcels that have sat for 2-3 decades with no development. The assessed value of bare land keeps the property taxes low-ish and the taxes only go up once they build something on it.
This @CBBarnett, Holding costs are very low, especially on surface parking lots and there are a lot of folks that have so much money that got into land flipping, and are so bullish on the calgary market they are willing to wait decades and decades for there payday. Crank up the costs of holding unproductive land (surface parking) and watch things turn over.
 
This @CBBarnett, Holding costs are very low, especially on surface parking lots and there are a lot of folks that have so much money that got into land flipping, and are so bullish on the calgary market they are willing to wait decades and decades for there payday. Crank up the costs of holding unproductive land (surface parking) and watch things turn over.
Thanks, that makes sense - would also explain the recent anecdotal evidence along some of the main strips of the popular inner SW - 26 Ave, 37 Street to name a few. In the past 6 months so many lots have been posted on these corridors, highlighting land consolidations and redevelopment opportunities. While at a smaller scale and lower price that the city centre locations that are stuck as parking lots, seems like a whole whack load of land holders got hit with higher holding costs or some set of combined incentives to try to sell now rather than wait.

For example:
https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/25439176/1920-to-1948-26-avenue-sw-calgary-bankview

1685369648394.png
 
Right but the increase in density is too marginal relative to the land costs. Some of this infill is just matching/slightly exceeding the density of what you get in a new suburb on the outer edges. It doesn't make sense really.

It needs to be multi-storey.
This is also true. Look at the failed sale of the parcel on Richmond Green park. The density delta was not enough for land costs of $50,000+ a door, plus levies.

The land sales, whether by the city, or by private assemblers, is a game of chicken where each player is trying to maximize their return. Developers without a pipeline of assembly must buy, but they have a choice. Even better, sophisticated ones can option properties based on approvals, reducing their risk greatly.

What I would like is for there to be little or near to no risk government or utility risk (especially for water). Right now there is a lot of both.
 
Thanks, that makes sense - would also explain the recent anecdotal evidence along some of the main strips of the popular inner SW - 26 Ave, 37 Street to name a few. In the past 6 months so many lots have been posted on these corridors, highlighting land consolidations and redevelopment opportunities. While at a smaller scale and lower price that the city centre locations that are stuck as parking lots, seems like a whole whack load of land holders got hit with higher holding costs or some set of combined incentives to try to sell now rather than wait.

For example:
https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/25439176/1920-to-1948-26-avenue-sw-calgary-bankview

View attachment 481122
If it is wood-frame and appropriately priced, the site will happen in the short to medium term. It's the downtown and beltline sites holding out for 8-20 FAR that are priced for that, that aren't moving. If any of these surface parking lots in East Victoria Park, Beltline or Downtown were priced similarly to the site you just posted it would be built out at 6-stories within 5 years. The alternative is let them be gravel parking lots until average $psf is north of ~$700psf and condo demand explodes. So enjoy waiting for those lots to turn over slowly over the next 10-60 years, with no guarantees. Price the land for what is economical to build today not what could be, and the City should make the holding costs for surface parking lots very, very high and increasingly so at each DP renewal for temp parking lot. Longer you hold the higher the tax burden, and they should force them to do public realm improvements at the DP renewals (ie. sidewalk improvements to the southside of 9th Avenue sidewalks along the Impark lots, for example).
 
Those are just some ideas I had, Curious for the thoughts of those that know land economics and infill development Better than me to explain these issues

This @CBBarnett, Holding costs are very low, especially on surface parking lots and there are a lot of folks that have so much money that got into land flipping, and are so bullish on the calgary market they are willing to wait decades and decades for there payday. Crank up the costs of holding unproductive land (surface parking) and watch things turn over.

It's definitely a part of the problem, but it's more of a symptom. Here's my experience as someone in the industry, who is also passionate about thriving communities.

It's fun to see new things get built, but the design decisions we critique are often near the end of a long development process. When people want to build anything, they borrow money. The investor wants an acceptable rate-of-return; everyone wants to make money on their investments. They buy land, hire an architect, set a budget to ensure that rate-of-return, and together they figure out what they can build in order to make money. During this process, we realize a bunch of things:
  • Relative to other costs, material is cheap.
  • Labour is really expensive.
  • It's really hard to sell a unit above market $/sqft.
  • Finishes provide returns.
  • Holding land while you figure it out is easy.
The takeaway is this: there's a ceiling on what you can sell units for, and there's a floor on what you can build them for. In Calgary specifically, units are cheap and labour is expensive, which makes the window of productive investment in housing is much narrower compared to other places. Overall, the difference in labour costs and unit selling prices will show you how much development happens.

Do we tax based on land value to spur development? No, taxing your way out of an affordability crisis is not a great long term solution. Although I'd concede holding taxes would certainly help in the near term.

What is the solution? We need an organization that is okay with building housing without requiring a monetary return on investment. There actually used to be one that most people over the age of 45 benefitted from, that built tens of thousands of units in Alberta for people to live in, and kept housing affordable*. Then, once those people got their cheap homes, they stopped building them and relied on the "free market" to build them instead. Now we are here - where housing is unaffordable for most people not already wealthy, and the only way to increase supply to to give wealthy people more money. We need a strong public housing policy to return, and it's not a right-vs-left wing idea, it's just math. Go vote today.

*I can find statistics to back all of this up, but it's not being peer reviewed, and I post anonymously, so that's too much effort when I should be working.
 
Do we tax based on land value to spur development? No, taxing your way out of an affordability crisis is not a great long term solution. Although I'd concede holding taxes would certainly help in the near term.
Most land value tax proponents call for a corresponding decrease in taxes to improvements (or other taxes), so I disagree with this characterization as "taxing your way out of an affordability crisis". There is no net increase in taxes, it’s just slightly shifting the setup to encourage investments in productive assets (improvements) rather than unproductive ones (unimproved land).

While I support public housing, I think it’s just one piece of the pie, and it’s a bad mistake to dismiss market-based solutions as completely infeasible when we haven’t even tried them. Even if a split-tax system only increased construction by 5% it would likely be worth doing.

Sadly North American implementations of LVTs are rather rare but we do have promising evidence from Pennsylvania. In Allentown, a 5x-building LVT caused construction and renovation to increase by 32% (1.8 times more than a baseline comparison), while 70% of households saw their tax bill decrease. In Harrisburg, a 4x-building LVT helped reduce vacancy by 90% and 90% of property owners saved money. It’s frustrating because the majority of top economists have been pointing out the merits of LVT and split-tax rates for decades but activists and politicians just aren’t listening.
 
I love the mid-century vibe. I wouldn't want the whole downtown to be mid-century, but I find there is more character to that era than the era from the 70's or 80's. When I look at buildings like Fifth Ave Place, Sun life Buildings or 5th & 5th my first thought is, 'did someone actually paid to design this junk?'
One thing I find about those non-descript towers is they only look interesting if surrounded by older early 20th century masonry buildings. It's the contrast that makes them 'pop'. But once the downtown is all like that they lose the appeal

For example the Seagram building vs the older towers around it

07SEAGRAM1-superJumbo.jpg
 

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