Quote (Pharaohmon @ Jan 23 2024 09:28am)
With land being scarce resource and population growing everyday... im afraid this is the new norm
We’ll just have to figure out how to make more money to afford it
We can all make more money, which means more can afford, which means there's more pressure / demand for the short supply and prices rise accordingly!
Canada has a massive landmass. Even really around our major cities, it does not take that long to drive out and its undeveloped land. I mean look at the size of our country and it has 39M people. A tiny fraction of the USA.
Few major road blocks though:
1) Public infrastructure is horrendous which includes public transportation. We don't use trains like the EU does. To get to and from those outer areas people have to commute several hours per day on our terrible highway system. You take some of our old cities which are the first in North America, they were built in the day of horse and buggy, narrow streets, poor accessibility, no parking.
2) The permit process. As a person involved in building, the permitting process is disgusting. It is highly time consuming, and very costly. Land use permits, electrical permits, architectural permits, tipping fees for the landfill, the list goes on and on with all the drawings having to be rubber stamped by an architectural firm / engineer.
3) Lack of trades workers. Canada has a huge deficit of trades workers, and our schools are doing a poor job, if not doing anything at all to try to get people in those careers. The increase in tech in kids lives is not helping that matter. No one wants to swing a hammer or wire homes after growing up with an Ipad in hand. This probably is only going to get worse.
4) There's been huge changes over the year to building codes. The increase in building codes makes doing your own work near impossible, and makes new builds very expensive, having to have GFI outlets everywhere now, increase in zone valves, all these little things that really prop up the cost of mechanical and electrical. The price per square foot is ever increasing because of code changes which is some dick head engineer that has nothing better to do.
This post was edited by SBD on Jan 23 2024 11:04am