Housing in Winnipeg

[Authentic_City]

Winnipeg Free Press - ONLINE EDITION
Winnipeg home sales hit $3 billion

By: Staff Writer

Posted: 12/29/2011 10:17 AM |

"The value of Winnipeg home sales hit $3 billion in 2011, only four years after hitting $2 billion for the first time..."

Full story: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/bre...136375793.html

[cheswick]

Growing pains: The debate over Winnipeg residential development

Developers say more outlying land needed; city says denser developments, rather than sprawl, the answer

By: Bartley Kives

When property developers and employers look at Winnipeg's rising home prices, low rental-apartment vacancy and modest but consistent population growth, they come to a single, inescapable conclusion: This city needs more room and needs it now.

When politicians and public servants look at Winnipeg's rising operating costs, low revenue growth and mounting infrastructure deficit, they come to a single, inescapable conclusion: The city can't afford to continue spreading out.

According to official population projections, 180,000 more people will move into the city over the next two decades. Those new Winnipeggers will require a place to live.

But if the vast majority of them move into single-family homes -- the dominant mode of residential dwelling in 20th-century Winnipeg -- the city will effectively go broke.


http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/loc...207035281.html

[steveosnyder]

Originally Posted by cheswick

When property developers and employers look at Winnipeg's rising home prices, low rental-apartment vacancy and modest but consistent population growth, they come to a single, inescapable conclusion: This city needs more room and needs it now.

When politicians and public servants look at Winnipeg's rising operating costs, low revenue growth and mounting infrastructure deficit, they come to a single, inescapable conclusion: The city can't afford to continue spreading out.

The City has a huge problem and no one knows what to do about it -- this article just scratches the surface of some of the many many of them.

For starters, the current zoning by-law promotes sprawl by not charging enough for greenfield development. Greenfields are just that, green, so they are usually zoned as argicultural land and thus are taxed at a very low rate. This makes it easier on the developer to pay property taxes through the whole planning phase, unlike brownfield and in-fill developments, which are usually expensive to hold onto because they are taxed at a higher rate per sq.ft. With how NIMBY some areas of Winnipeg can be, this process could take a long time and cost the in-fill developer a lot more.

Second, while the permits to build in greenfield are more expensive, it doesn't even come close to equalizing the difference between it and brownfield/in-fill, which often require soil/geotechnical tests.

Third, while many of these suburban developments are being called "complete communities", the area where density occurs (and presumably the areas where you wouldn't need a car) are the same locations that are built to the scale of the automobile.

But what happens when the City makes greenfield development too expensive is the developers just move to exurban areas, building neighbourhoods outside the City's land area.

All in all, it's lose-lose for the City, unless they find a way of capturing value from exurban commuters who use City infrastructure without paying City taxes.

[Cyro]

Suburbia?..Lived in Charleswood/Tuxedo..(borders charleswood)..I did enjoy the at the lake feel,but is it time? Burbanites should love this dev..I had chose to move back to the core area..I loved the wildlife,no sidewalks, etc, in the area but for the life of me I went loopie. Is it sprawl? Or Infill?

Ridgewood South passes vote at city council

City council has taken the first step toward the approval of Winnipeg's largest new residential suburb since Waverley West.


http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/loc...209387821.html

[wags_in_the_peg]

Originally Posted by Cyrodill

Suburbia?..Lived in Charleswood/Tuxedo..(borders charleswood)..I did enjoy the at the lake feel,but is it time? Burbanites should love this dev..I had chose to move back to the core area..I loved the wildlife,no sidewalks, etc, in the area but for the life of me I went loopie. Is it sprawl? Or Infill?

Ridgewood South passes vote at city council

City council has taken the first step toward the approval of Winnipeg's largest new residential suburb since Waverley West.


http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/loc...209387821.html

I think it's good news, hopefully this keeps people IN the city and not in La Salle, Headingly, Oak Bluff, etc.

[Cyro]

Originally Posted by wags_in_the_peg

I think it's good news, hopefully this keeps people IN the city and not in La Salle, Headingly, Oak Bluff, etc.

Yes, I believe so to wags, If Winnipeg's residential component has to expand due to demand, keeping it within the present city limits, rather than bed room communities is the right course to take.

[Cyro]

Winnipeg Free Press - ONLINE EDITION
Report says new housing market future rosy

In its May Metropolitan Housing Starts report, released today, the Ottawa-based think-tank said Winnipeg is one of only five Canadian cities surveyed to have positive expectations for housing starts for both the short and long term.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/bre...210082271.html

Where's the bubble I keep hearing about?

[esquire]

Shout out to Murray McN for explaining why the North End can't have nice things:

A local developer who buys older properties and fixes them up is writing off the older part of the North End after one of his refurbished homes was set on fire, another was stripped down to the bare walls, and a third was tagged with graffiti -- all in the same week.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opi...ce=d-more-news

A depressing story. These houses look great... but honestly, who wants to bother with those kinds of hassles? Even though it's probably just a small minority of area residents who engage in this kind of destructive behaviour, they ruin it for everyone.

[Riverman]

Even though we live almost beside the Redwood Bridge we don't use it except to go north on Main. No one in my family does. The North End is simply horrible.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Riverman

Even though we live almost beside the Redwood Bridge we don't use it except to go north on Main. No one in my family does. The North End is simply horrible.

I love the North End... it was an important part of my formative years during the 80s and early 90s. But honestly, I have a hard time disagreeing with your post. There are positive things going on in most other "inner city" neighbourhoods around town, but the North End has just been getting progressively worse through the years. The stretch between the CP yards and Redwood in particular is a shambles these days. Where do you even begin?

[Riverman]

East of Main it is still fairly respectable but that's about it.

[esquire]

The sad thing from an urbanist standpoint is that Selkirk is the best, most urban street in Winnipeg outside of the downtown area... to see it reduced to a line of social agencies and vacant lots where buildings once stood is painful.

[biguc]

I actually see a lot of interest in the North End from some of the more pioneering kids these days. A lot of people are cluing into what a great street Selkirk really is, and when you get up around Burrows you can get some amazing houses for a song. Too bad the streets around Selkirk are some of the worst. We'll see how many of these kids make the jump, and if they're actually willing to stick it out to make a difference.

I always figured that once West Broadway reached critical mass its gentrification would spill northward into the West End. I supposed that may still happen, but the West End has gotten out in front of that pressure by becoming an improving immigrants' community. Notre Dame, in particular, has been pleasantly surprising. That leaves would-be Rob Galstons to crossing Main into the heart of the North End.

[esquire]

^ Yeah, the West End has really benefitted from the northward creep of the Wolseley/West Broadway crowd... a good number of first time homebuyers who can't find something in their price point in Wolseley proper are moving into the blocks just north of Portage (the joke is that the stretch between Portage and Sargent is now known as "Wolseley North"). And the immigrant presence further to the north by Notre Dame is also helping to keep the area in good shape.

Unfortunately the North End doesn't have this going on... intrepid middle class white kids are still very rare in the area, and it's not even that popular with immigrants. My brother in law bought a place not too far from the Mountain 7-Eleven, and from what I can tell a lot of the tidy-looking blocks even in this "good" part of the North End have something in common: the one slumlord-owned house which is a constant headache for everyone in the area. Plus a lot of the other small headaches like petty crime/vandalism, the endless dumping in the lanes, that sort of thing. A lot of people just don't want to put up with that, so they look elsewhere. Eventually the proportion of responsible homeowners starts getting pretty low.

[Tacheguy]

Was talking to a cop I know who told me a story. They pulled over some dealers in a car a few weeks ago. In the back seat was a woman doing drugs and trying to hide the coke or whatever it was. She is 31 and has ten children. She had her first child at the age of thirteen.
I found this story, and today's article in the free press quite discouraging. I worked on those old tripartite core area agreements and a lot of more recent initiatives, and while they achieved some positive results they are/were very small band aids. No idea what the answer is, but I do know that Winnipeg is on the frontline of our national crisis regarding First Nations wellbeing.

[Riverman]

My son and his wife recently were shopping for houses nearer to work as it is quite a long bus ride from Elmwood to Corydon for him and a far farther drive for her. They were looking in Fort Rouge and south River Heights and all around that area. The conclusion was either no yards or the house was a "slanty shanty" as my DIL put it. They ended up buying a beautiful house in EK.

[Riverman]

Originally Posted by Tacheguy

Was talking to a cop I know who told me a story. They pulled over some dealers in a car a few weeks ago. In the back seat was a woman doing drugs and trying to hide the coke or whatever it was. She is 31 and has ten children. She had her first child at the age of thirteen.

More kids = more welfare. Until that changes this will continue.

[CoryB]

Winnipeg has a huge "no go" zone basically west of the Red River, east of Route 90 and north of Portage Ave. If it falls into that general zone it is the "north end". It seems that for the middle and upper class of people they would rather never set foot inside that zone and view border areas like downtown as risky to venture into.

We are a long way from fixing it and it would need a huge cultural change.

[Biff]

I would think that area is quite a bit smaller than you would suggest. I would more or less put it the rail yards on the south, Main St to the east, Cathedral to the north and Arlington to the west.

[Phil's neighbour]

That's vastly overstating the situation, IMO. There are some very nice areas north of Inkster that represent great housing bargains for families. They're safe, with excellent bilingual schools and plentiful parks. I owned houses in the area and two of my kids do now. It's a good place to raise kids. In my mind, the real no go zone is in south Winnipeg on a Saturday with endless lanes of clogged traffic, acres upon acres of vapid shopping malls and bored kids roaming the streets at night smashing out car windows. Each neighbourhood has its issues. There's no denying that the heart of the North End up to maybe Mountain and bounded by the river and McGregor is a hell-hole. I wouldn't paint West Kildonan/Garden City/Maples with that brush at all.

Originally Posted by CoryB

Winnipeg has a huge "no go" zone basically west of the Red River, east of Route 90 and north of Portage Ave. If it falls into that general zone it is the "north end". It seems that for the middle and upper class of people they would rather never set foot inside that zone and view border areas like downtown as risky to venture into.

We are a long way from fixing it and it would need a huge cultural change.