News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 02, 2020
 9.6K     0 
News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 01, 2020
 41K     0 
News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 01, 2020
 5.4K     0 

8,699 units u/c is good, but we’re going to need a lot more or it’s going to be a crisis here. If people think it’s a crisis now, wait until it’s really a crisis.
these numbers are just “inner city” brownfield like developments. The suburbs have thousands of new greenfield units under construction as well. My area (Evanston,SageHill, Nolan hills, Carrington etc) probably 3-5 thousand multi-family units just finished or are under construction alone.
To me the problem is the lack of trades. Every construction site has help wanted signs hanging on the fences. Plus a building material shortage on top of that. Think developers would do more if they had more to work with
 
Yep, those are just numbers to track inner city development. For Calgary as a whole it's quite different, and the number for units still u/c is difficult to track. For the first 8 months of this year (Jan-Aug) Calgary has seen 11,407 housing starts. Extrapolating that over 12 months we should be looking at ~17,110 units. Assuming 2.5 people per household it's less than required to keep up with the likely increase of 50-60K people to the city this year, but not at crisis levels. At least not yet. It's hard to tell how much of the new population is staying with relatives, or friends and how much existing inventory is being taken up. For example my neighbors behind me have rented their basement to a family from Ukraine. I'm pretty sure it's not a legal suite, and doesn't factor into Calgary's vacancy rate.
 
these numbers are just “inner city” brownfield like developments. The suburbs have thousands of new greenfield units under construction as well. My area (Evanston,SageHill, Nolan hills, Carrington etc) probably 3-5 thousand multi-family units just finished or are under construction alone.
To me the problem is the lack of trades. Every construction site has help wanted signs hanging on the fences. Plus a building material shortage on top of that. Think developers would do more if they had more to work with
Good point. I forgot these are brownfield only developments.
 
Great to see plenty of units still u/c. It feels like there is a definitive shift from high rise concrete towers to smaller 5/1 style builds.
There are only two high rise builds at or below grade (fourth Street lofts, and First and Park), and both of those are a ways along, there are no new towers on the way unless I’m forgetting any.
 
Great to see plenty of units still u/c. It feels like there is a definitive shift from high rise concrete towers to smaller 5/1 style builds.
There are only two high rise builds at or below grade (fourth Street lofts, and First and Park), and both of those are a ways along, there are no new towers on the way unless I’m forgetting any.
No new towers starting. Those two will be the only ones moving into the skyline for the next while. If I had to take an educated guess, I would go with Gallery First & Tenth, just because they've evicted the tenants and supposedly it's sold out. Outside of that I have no idea.
 
Great to see plenty of units still u/c. It feels like there is a definitive shift from high rise concrete towers to smaller 5/1 style builds.
There are only two high rise builds at or below grade (fourth Street lofts, and First and Park), and both of those are a ways along, there are no new towers on the way unless I’m forgetting any.
There has been for sure. Probably a combination of things, as @MichaelS pointed out, interest rates are higher and has probably affected large builds. The advent of 6 floors wood frame has made it quite economical for the smaller developers to build a decent sized project. Here's some cost comparisons, using figures from the Alberta Government. I can't speak 100% to the accuracy of the costs, but there's a definite trend there. Building a tower with concrete is going to be more money, but will last longer and appreciate differently than a 6 floor wood frame building, but those upfront costs are big. I imagine Interest rates would make a difference for sure.
Also those costs don't include the upfront cost of the land, which is higher for the inner city locations with higher zoning. For the near future I suspect we'll see a lot of 6 storey wood frame.

Concrete
Sunalta207$50.7M$245K/unit
That Hat 14th279$75M$269K/unit
First & Park211$44M$209K/unit
Wood Frame
Trail 1978$10.2M$131K/unit
Glenmore Apts264$42M$160K/unit
Hudson125$19.4M$155K/unit
Skyview Point100$15.2M$152K/unit
 
Last edited:
There has been for sure. Probably a combination of things, as @MichaelS pointed out, interest rates are higher and has probably affected large builds. The advent of 6 floors wood frame has made it quite economical for the smaller developers to build a decent sized project. Here's some cost comparisons, using figures from the Alberta Government. I can't speak 100% to the accuracy of the costs, but there's a definite trend there. Building a tower with concrete is going to be more money, but will last longer and appreciate differently than a 6 floor wood frame building, but those upfront costs are big. I imagine Interest rates would make a difference for sure.
Also those costs don't include the upfront cost of the land, which is higher for the inner city locations with higher zoning. For the near future I suspect we'll see a lot of 6 storey wood frame.

Sunalta207$50.7M$245K/unit
That Hat 14th279$75M$269K/unit
First & Park211$44M$209K/unit
Trail 1978$10.2M$131K/unit
Glenmore Apts264$42M$160K/unit
Hudson125$19.4M$155K/unit
Skyview Point100$15.2M$152K/unit
Unfortunately, an average of 2-4 midrises equate to roughly one 30-35 storey tower, in terms of units, and we're definitely not building enough midrises in the inner city/downtown to make up for this ratio. I know ppl are loving the midrise momentum on the forum but in terms of providing sheer density and pumping out more units, we need more towers!
 
Rent up an average of 25% in Calgary, demand higher than ever, vacancy rates under 2% but there are many projects on hold.

Are there different interest rates in other cities?
High rise construction has slowed in other cities as well. Vancouver and Toronto are strong but have slowed, and they’re strong in the high rise dept mainly because housing is so expensive and there’s more incentive to build as many units as you can.
 
Unfortunately, an average of 2-4 midrises equate to roughly one 30-35 storey tower, in terms of units, and we're definitely not building enough midrises in the inner city/downtown to make up for this ratio. I know ppl are loving the midrise momentum on the forum but in terms of providing sheer density and pumping out more units, we need more towers!
It’d be nice to have more towers, and as a lover of skylines, it would great to have a few clusters here and there and a few more downtown.
Having said that, I don’t want Calgary become Toronto or Vancouver where your choices are a $2million SFH or an apartment unit on the 50th floor of some tower.
We need more low rise builds and more row home type projects. And more towers too, but not just towers. We need more missing middle.
I really like what’s happening at University District, West District and Springbank Hill, I only wish we had more of those kind of developments in the areas just outside of the core.
 
Rent up an average of 25% in Calgary, demand higher than ever, vacancy rates under 2% but there are many projects on hold.

Are there different interest rates in other cities?
No. Other cities are in it even worse.

The rent surge in Calgary needs to be viewed in context, even though that context provides no comfort for those who may need to pay higher rents: rents in Calgary were far below trend, and rents decreased in 4 of the last 15 years.

Plenty of new supply in the last 5 years was rented at far below its economic rate of return knowing the lack of rent control meant that the buildings could catch up later. With rent control those buildings likely wouldn't have been built.
 

Back
Top