If Canadians Want Houses, Give Them Houses!

[whatnext]

Interesting article showing that the strongest housing demand is for detached housing and townhouses, yet governments seem intent on encouraging condos. It's like a car salesman telling a customer looking for an Escalade, "that's sounds nice, can I interest you in this Honda Fit"!

If it's an issue of traffic congestion, than levy each house a couple grand for new transit to serve these areas.

...Frank Clayton, senior research fellow at Ryerson University’s Centre for Urban Research and Land Development, examined a handful of recent surveys of consumer housing preferences in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). He found that despite provincial policies that have encouraged a dramatic shift toward building condos rather than houses, most prospective buyers in the region say they prefer a detached house or other low-rise properties, such as townhouses.

Millennial home buyers prefer condos in slightly higher numbers, but most also say they are looking to purchase a low-rise house, according to Mr. Clayton’s research....

...Both Mr. Clayton and the CIBC economists point the finger at provincial policies aimed at curbing urban sprawl that have restricted the amount of new land available for low-density housing developments and driven up the costs of building new houses. The Ontario government recently proposed even higher density targets for municipalities, which will also add to the shortage of land for detached homes, the CIBC economists say...
http://www.tsn.ca/toronto-housing-su...s-say-1.546673

[240glt]

Did the apartment condo thing for years, liked it in my 20's, now I have a hard time seeing myself in anything but a SFH until I'm much older

[Riise]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Interesting article showing that the strongest housing demand is for detached housing and townhouses, yet governments seem intent on encouraging condos. It's like a car salesman telling a customer looking for an Escalade, "that's sounds nice, can I interest you in this Honda Fit"!

I think it is more like parents offering their teenage child who works at McDonalds help buying their first car. The kids fancies a BMW but their parents push them toward a VW.

[240glt]

^ except the vast majority if those who buy houses can afford them. I've never heard of anyone looking for a condo being upsold to a house

They'll be upsold to higher end finishes and more square footage in a condo, but not to another dwelling type altogether

[Mikemike]

^It's not the realtor or condo sales person doing the up-sell. There's a whole bunch of influences from TV home shows to new neighbourhood adds to peer/family influence. Just like the fast and the furious and Car adds that show only open roads influence buyers toward performance vehicles whether they make sense or not. And, like the BMW, many of us can afford it but don't need it - in a non-speculative/transitioning market with only normal equity growth they would have more resources for other things if they rented or bought smaller.

Most SFH dwellers have had neighbours who never (ever) use their yards, except to mow. Most of those people don't need houses.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Mikemike

Most SFH dwellers have had neighbours who never (ever) use their yards, except to mow. Most of those people don't need houses.

Part of what's going on is that housing is standardized and you can't get some things without others. For example, if you want to be able to play loud music and have late parties you pretty much need to have a house (or live in a generally crummy building where everyone is partying all the time). There aren't a lot of condos out there with good soundproofing. A lot of newer buildings are actually worse than some buildings from the 1980's.

It's also hard to find affordable condos beyond a certain size. There a large and fancy penthouses for a lot of money but there aren't a lot of cheap 2,000 square foot condos. I think this is mostly because Canadian cities generally either have plentiful single family dwellings or a scarcity of both detached housing and multi-unit zoning. Even condo space in Vancouver is unaffordable because relatively little well-located land is zoned for cost-efficient midrise condo construction.

If I could get a 1,500 square foot condo in a good neighbourhood with a decent layout with good enough soundproofing to not hear the neighbours I'm not sure I'd ever want a house. I don't actually want to deal with the added maintenance of a house and other issues like ground-floor entry that makes break-ins more common.

[240glt]

Originally Posted by Mikemike

^It's not the realtor or condo sales person doing the up-sell. There's a whole bunch of influences from TV home shows to new neighbourhood adds to peer/family influence. Just like the fast and the furious and Car adds that show only open roads influence buyers toward performance vehicles whether they make sense or not. And, like the BMW, many of us can afford it but don't need it - in a non-speculative/transitioning market with only normal equity growth they would have more resources for other things if they rented or bought smaller.

Most SFH dwellers have had neighbours who never (ever) use their yards, except to mow. Most of those people don't need houses.

Oh I think realtors upsell more than you'd think.

I suppose you could blame TV for romanticizing fancy cars and expensive homes, but in reality I think that those who want a house have some pretty legitimate reasons for wanting one, just as condo buyers have legitimate reasons for wanting one.

[someone123]

There are other separate, deeper issues that are probably worth thinking about as well. For example, why do we expect that so much population growth should be concentrated in the most expensive cities? That is not true in the US; the fastest metropolitan areas are cheap places like Dallas, and expensive areas like San Francisco don't grow much.

There are in fact alternatives to living in Toronto and Vancouver. Lots of Canadian cities have (or could have) plentiful housing.

Immigration is also at odds with the housing issue. We are told on the one hand that Canada has lots of resources and that we will all be better off if there is more immigration. But in practice provincial governments have been blocking off development of new housing for fear of encroachment on small and dwindling reserves of farmland.

If you already own land, population growth is great. If you hire workers, a growing labour pool is great. If you are a worker, increasing the labour market is not necessarily great and if you are a renter population growth may not be your friend. I don't think it's an accident that well-off politicians favour pro-growth agendas; either they or their patrons are the main beneficiaries of those policies.

[O-tacular]

No one is saying you can't buy a SFH. The name of this thread and that article is misleading. It's the same thing in Calgary when they opted to make developers account for the cost of utilities and infrastructure in their pricing for new homes. Sure everyone wants a SFH but the fact is land is not infinite. Urban sprawl has a cost. This just smacks of more reactionary baby boomer nostalgia for the dream of the 50's with a sfh occupied by a nuclear family with a patch of lawn and a white picket fence.

[Mikemike]

Originally Posted by 240glt

Oh I think realtors upsell more than you'd think.

I suppose you could blame TV for romanticizing fancy cars and expensive homes, but in reality I think that those who want a house have some pretty legitimate reasons for wanting one, just as condo buyers have legitimate reasons for wanting one.

Oh, I agree, there are good reasons for having a house, and I have one.

I guess a better parallel than the sport car no one needs is the SUV that some need for seats, some need for cargo, but for another segment it's just a bigger platform for the heated seats.

[240glt]

^^^ that's why I declined the offer to move to Vancouver to run a couple of office towers a few years back. It would have been a fantastic opportunity and being from BC I'd love to be closer to home but we simply can't get what we have here in Edmonton in Vancouver without either being house poor or living way out in the middle of nowhere

15 years ago I would have done it, not now though..

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by 240glt

^ except the vast majority if those who buy houses can afford them. I've never heard of anyone looking for a condo being upsold to a house

They'll be upsold to higher end finishes and more square footage in a condo, but not to another dwelling type altogether

The issue of cost is of course much more complex than the simple issue of buying the actual property at market prices. So much of the costs of housing was previously externalized that it's impossible to say what is and isn't affordable simply looking at the property price. There are both costs that are externalized from the cost of the home but still borne by the buyer such as increased transportation and energy costs, but also costs externalized away from the home buyer altogether and carried by wider society. We simply have so much of our planning policy and regulation that are anachronisms from a bygone era when everyone thought that low density sprawl was sustainable and desirable in the long term that there are still hidden subsidies and enticements for that model. But eliminating these things is in no way an attack on choice. It's simply showing people the true, rather than distorted choices.

Like I said in another thread, the idea that this is all just a matter of personal preference between different objectively equal options is simply false.

[Mikemike]

Originally Posted by someone123

Part of what's going on is that housing is standardized and you can't get some things without others. For example, if you want to be able to play loud music and have late parties you pretty much need to have a house (or live in a generally crummy building where everyone is partying all the time). There aren't a lot of condos out there with good soundproofing. A lot of newer buildings are actually worse than some buildings from the 1980's.

It's also hard to find affordable condos beyond a certain size. There a large and fancy penthouses for a lot of money but there aren't a lot of cheap 2,000 square foot condos. I think this is mostly because Canadian cities generally either have plentiful single family dwellings or a scarcity of both detached housing and multi-unit zoning. Even condo space in Vancouver is unaffordable because relatively little well-located land is zoned for cost-efficient midrise condo construction.

If I could get a 1,500 square foot condo in a good neighbourhood with a decent layout with good enough soundproofing to not hear the neighbours I'm not sure I'd ever want a house. I don't actually want to deal with the added maintenance of a house and other issues like ground-floor entry that makes break-ins more common.

That applies here too. Not a lot of condo options, and many are expensive for the space you get. In the long run that shouldn't always be the case in places like toronto where the baseline house is heading towards $1m even in the surrounding area, it's not as hard to build a solid, spacious condo for less than the cost of a house when a house costs so much.

[240glt]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

No one is saying you can't buy a SFH. The name of this thread and that article is misleading. It's the same thing in Calgary when they opted to make developers account for the cost of utilities and infrastructure in their pricing for new homes. Sure everyone wants a SFH but the fact is land is not infinite. Urban sprawl has a cost. This just smacks of more reactionary baby boomer nostalgia for the dream of the 50's with a sfh occupied by a nuclear family with a patch of lawn and a white picket fence.

Except that's not really true at all. i think that's just what the urbanazis say when someone says they want to own a house

We are the furthest thing from fitting that stereotype, and there are many like us. It's very simple, much more simple than you think. Some (many) prefer a SFH

Modern subdivisions are far better designed than my mature central suburb, so in fact what's being built is far more dense, and in areas like mine, developers have the opportunity to double the density of a parcel like mine.

Trying to engineer change like you and Nouvellecosse are suggesting is a recipe for disaster and will only serve to drive people to find less sustainable alternatives

[240glt]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

The issue of cost is of course much more complex than the simple issue of buying the actual property at market prices. So much of the costs of housing was previously externalized that it's impossible to say what is and isn't affordable simply looking at the property price. There are both costs that are externalized from the cost of the home but still borne by the buyer such as increased transportation and energy costs, but also costs externalized away from the home buyer altogether and carried by wider society. We simply have so much of our planning policy and regulation that are anachronisms from a bygone era when everyone thought that low density sprawl was sustainable and desirable in the long term that there are still hidden subsidies and enticements for that model. But eliminating these things is in no way an attack on choice. It's simply showing people the true, rather than distorted choices.

Like I said in another thread, the idea that this is all just a matter of personal preference between different objectively equal options is simply false.

100% disagree, but we'll leave it at that

[lio45]

Originally Posted by someone123

If you already own land, population growth is great.

There was a fascinating thread (to me at least as a real estate investor) about real estate in Japan not too long ago in the City Discussions subforum.

People in general tend to accept the dogma that real estate goes up in value with time but that's only true if population goes up with time. The latter isn't a given forever.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

The issue of cost is of course much more complex than the simple issue of buying the actual property at market prices. So much of the costs of housing was previously externalized that it's impossible to say what is and isn't affordable simply looking at the property price. There are both costs that are externalized from the cost of the home but still borne by the buyer such as increased transportation and energy costs, but also costs externalized away from the home buyer altogether and carried by wider society. We simply have so much of our planning policy and regulation that are anachronisms from a bygone era when everyone thought that low density sprawl was sustainable and desirable in the long term that there are still hidden subsidies and enticements for that model. But eliminating these things is in no way an attack on choice. It's simply showing people the true, rather than distorted choices.

Like I said in another thread, the idea that this is all just a matter of personal preference between different objectively equal options is simply false.

At first sight, I don't think it's even possible to have a true user=payer system for all aspects of living in society. Nor would it be efficient generally to do so, I suspect.

[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by 240glt

Except that's not really true at all. i think that's just what the urbanazis say when someone says they want to own a house

We are the furthest thing from fitting that stereotype, and there are many like us. It's very simple, much more simple than you think. Some (many) prefer a SFH

Modern subdivisions are far better designed than my mature central suburb, so in fact what's being built is far more dense, and in areas like mine, developers have the opportunity to double the density of a parcel like mine.

Trying to engineer change like you and Nouvellecosse are suggesting is a recipe for disaster and will only serve to drive people to find less sustainable alternatives

Just so you know, I'm no 'urbanazi'. I live in the far SE of Calgary in a 2 floor townhome. It was a good option for us as our first home we bought and it has room for growth when we have kids. One day we'd like to renovate a house in a 60's era suburb closer the centre of the city. Your black or white choices are false. I accept that land is more expensive the more central you are in a city and accept the added costs of one day owning a sfh. By no means do I prescribe condo living to everyone. It didn't work for us. I won't deride it though simply because I don't live in one. The same reason I don't attack bike lanes because I don't personally benefit from them. These types of initiatives are necessary for long term sustainability. Also, I hardly think new suburbs are better designed than old ones. Street grids are much more efficient and many of the newer neighbourhoods are ridiculous with the way their roads are built.

[240glt]

Who's deriding condos ? They're a fine choice for those who want one

If anything it's the other way around

I love my central burb for a variety of reasons but the main one being the 10 minute commute to work. Eventually my neighbourhood will look nothing like it does now as higher density targets allow for lot splitting, duplexes and garden suites, all of which are in the works. My main argument is that you can't just force it to happen, it needs to be done organically, and the choices and values of the people who originally bought my house 50 years ago as a greenfield development are much different than ours

I like grids, my first house I bought downtown is on a grid, but I've heard enough counterpoints to believe that maybe there are some downsides to that as well

[manny_santos]

Obviously I can't speak for all demographics of Canadians, but working in Downtown Toronto, I'd say among my fellow millennials, there is little or no desire to own a house. Even the married people in my office are vocally against SFH living and are vocally in favour of walkability over space.

In my office, out of 55 or 60 people, I am one of the only people who owns a car, and more telling, I'm one of the few who has a TTC monthly pass. Many of my colleagues do not even have drivers licenses. This is what I'm seeing in Toronto, but it is a very, very different viewpoint from my friends in other Ontario cities where car and house ownership are valued highly.