Halifax Population & Growth

[kzt79]

Originally Posted by fatscat

This is a good chart on that topic:



(via https://twitter.com/DenySully/status...23293122347008)

Thanks. No magic here, the rise in prices appears to be a very simple matter of excess demand overwhelming limited supply, as should be obvious to anyone thinking about it for a minute. It's amazing how people try to obfuscate...

[q12]

Approx. 10% of homes in Halifax are now priced over $1M.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-...2023-1.6925834

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by kzt79

Thanks. No magic here, the rise in prices appears to be a very simple matter of excess demand overwhelming limited supply, as should be obvious to anyone thinking about it for a minute. It's amazing how people try to obfuscate...

Exactly. People can move here far more quickly than housing can be constructed so prices go way up. Govt can control immigration to some extent but has far fewer tools at its disposal to deal with housing.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

Exactly. People can move here far more quickly than housing can be constructed so prices go way up. Govt can control immigration to some extent but has far fewer tools at its disposal to deal with housing.

No they can't control immigration to some extent but they can (nearly) completely control it.

Sure family especially spouse and some refugee intake is unavoidable. But all the rest including students are completely in the Federal Government's control. Stop all immigration for 30 months and problem solved. Certainly there are potential downsides with employment and we'd need to support universities to make up for lost revenue. (Maybe fund and force them to build residences during this time?) The rent crisis would end instantly with by year two 10,000 less students competing for rentals.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

No they can't control immigration to some extent but they can (nearly) completely control it.

Sure family especially spouse and some refugee intake is unavoidable. But all the rest including students are completely in the Federal Government's control. Stop all immigration for 30 months and problem solved. Certainly there are potential downsides with employment and we'd need to support universities to make up for lost revenue. (Maybe fund and force them to build residences during this time?) The rent crisis would end instantly with by year two 10,000 less students competing for rentals.

I was referring to in-country immigration. I don't think govt can do much if someone decides to escape Toronto or Vancouver and move here.

As for universities and residences, you might not have been here then but a few years ago there were plans to build a true high-rise residence near SMU on Inglis St, which resulted in some shenanigans by Waye Mason and his Council friends in order to derail it. No wonder we are in such a state with types like him in political leadership positions.

[Kittle]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

I was referring to in-country immigration. I don't think govt can do much if someone decides to escape Toronto or Vancouver and move here.

As for universities and residences, you might not have been here then but a few years ago there were plans to build a true high-rise residence near SMU on Inglis St, which resulted in some shenanigans by Waye Mason and his Council friends in order to derail it. No wonder we are in such a state with types like him in political leadership positions.

The proposal must have included a late night pizza spot on the ground floor?

It's a real catch-22 that they fight against building up, yet also want to see heritage buildings preserved. Though I've heard NIMBYism used to be much worse (only been in Halifax 7 years, always lived in NS though).

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Kittle

It's a real catch-22 that they fight against building up, yet also want to see heritage buildings preserved. Though I've heard NIMBYism used to be much worse (only been in Halifax 7 years, always lived in NS though).

I am not sure the NIMBYism has changed much but my impression is that the planning rules have changed such that it is less common for small community groups to have the option to appeal to the NS Utility and Review Board. There was a time when it seemed any development downtown (over the 40 foot or so as-of-right limit) would be appealed for months or years. It was a very wasteful system where modest apartment buildings and the like would go through a a court-like review process.

In the end while they might have slowed things down I don't think they have been that successful and Halifax has one of the highest rates of urban infill of any North American city. It had the fastest downtown population growth in Canada during the last census period.

I still think there are a lot of unnecessary or arbitrary height reductions and that the ramparts bylaw isn't a good trade-off. But it probably doesn't make a huge difference. These days I wonder if development is constrained mostly by the capacity of the builders.

[IanWatson]

Originally Posted by someone123

These days I wonder if development is constrained mostly by the capacity of the builders.

This certainly seems to be the bigger issue at the moment. There are still annoying permitting delays and such, but overall the approval process is leaps and bounds ahead of what it was 10 years ago.

Paradoxically, I think part of the big push for immigration is to build construction capacity. With an aging population we needed young people to come in to fill the workforce to build houses and such... but then you need to build houses to accommodate the new population. I don't know how you untie that knot.

On the positive side of the "big city" evolution, I checked out the new Commons Pool with my daughter on the weekend. What an incredible facility! Halifax has definitely levelled up when it comes to the ambition and quality of its public facilities.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by IanWatson

Paradoxically, I think part of the big push for immigration is to build construction capacity. With an aging population we needed young people to come in to fill the workforce to build houses and such... but then you need to build houses to accommodate the new population. I don't know how you untie that knot.

I'm not sure what percentage of immigration is targeting construction workers, but my impression is that it's not that large. If somebody wants to find and post stats I'd be happy to be corrected on that point.

I think part of the issue is that a lot of young people have tended to focus on getting a university degree rather than take the less-glamorous path of trades, where the work can be physically more demanding and often dirty. Add in the fact that for many years construction demand has been relatively low, so the demand for trades had been historically low for some time, though anecdotally I've had construction managers tell me it was difficult to get trades for local projects even 20 years ago (when western jobs and money were luring many local workers away from home).

I think another factor that slows down construction and drives up prices on new builds are supply chain issues, which have shown their limitations more in the past few years than I can ever remember.

However you just can't ignore the massive influx of people brought about by the federal government. One million new Canadians in 2022 alone does not help supply/demand for housing, and anybody with a brain would have to realize that this is only going to make the housing situation worse. People in more expensive parts of the country are naturally going to want to move to areas with more reasonable real estate prices, creating supply/demand issues in places where they didn't previously exist. Add in pandemic impressions, plus that Nova Scotia is just a nice place to live (a fact previously unknown to most people west of New Brunswick), and here we are.

[Antigonish]

The province's artificial growth plan will be the writing on the wall. You cannot say you want to double the population in just 2 generations without any concrete development plans to make it work. You need industry to invest first to attract any population growth. Dumping people here on a whim just destroys what's left for everybody already here.

As for the trades, I know lots of people who work in the trades and more who went to university only to switch over for job opportunities but the pay is becoming crap now like pretty much every industry. If you want to attract more (actual) skilled workers you need to incentivize financially which we know isn't happening.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by Antigonish

The province's artificial growth plan will be the writing on the wall. You cannot say you want to double the population in just 2 generations without any concrete development plans to make it work. You need industry to invest first to attract any population growth. Dumping people here on a whim just destroys what's left for everybody already here.

As for the trades, I know lots of people who work in the trades and more who went to university only to switch over for job opportunities but the pay is becoming crap now like pretty much every industry. If you want to attract more (actual) skilled workers you need to incentivize financially which we know isn't happening.

I broadly agree, but the growth targets are mostly political theatre--population growth is occurring due to much larger factors over which the province has no control (basically, Nove Scotia is a nice place to live, with an economy that's no longer quite so doldrum-y, and it's still cheaper than the country's hotbeds of unaffordability). It's more about larger social trends and macroeconomic effects, and much less about the particulars of any growth strategy the province might dream up.

[q12]

HALIFAX





https://halifaxpartnership.com/resea...-index/people/

[IanWatson]

Wow, nice to see how much of the population growth has been in the working-age population. Nothing against seniors at all, but Nova Scotia has been an aging population for a long time now and that has serious economic consequences.

Also interesting how much of our population growth has been interprovincial. This is a reversal of a long-time trend of interprovincial net outmigration.

Finally, interesting to see how little is inTRAprovincial. Rural Nova Scotians moving to the city has, for as long as I've been around, been the main source of growth in Halifax.

[Drybrain]

Last year was only the second year in the past two decades with interprovincial migration loss (the last was 2003/2004). I wonder if it's a blip, or if it's the beginning of the kind of trend we see in larger cities where province's biggest cities see a net loss of people to cheaper locales.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Last year was only the second year in the past two decades with interprovincial migration loss (the last was 2003/2004). I wonder if it's a blip, or if it's the beginning of the kind of trend we see in larger cities where province's biggest cities see a net loss of people to cheaper locales.

I think some of it is just spillover to suburbs not included in the metro. I wonder if these use 2021 metro definitions or if they're still based on 2016.

Halifax is kind of strange in that its metro excluded some obvious suburbs (near the airport) while the HRM extends far into the boonies to the east. This is somewhat corrected in 2021, but there will likely still be areas along the 101 and 103 corridors that see subdivisions developed but aren't part of the metro.

The NS economic region definitions are strange too and are really just a county-level aggregation with only Halifax County being in the Halifax ER, while others like Lunenburg and Yarmouth get grouped. I wonder if Hants will be added.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by someone123

I think some of it is just spillover to suburbs not included in the metro. I wonder if these use 2021 metro definitions or if they're still based on 2016.

That’s definitely possible—in particular I know several people who have moved to Windsor in the past couple of years but semi-regularly commute into the city.

[someone123]

It's still an interesting trend and I think remote work enables people to live a more independent lifestyle in a small town over an hour from work.

I think there is a lot of opportunity in the less gentrified small NS towns under 90 minutes or so from the city. Places like Windsor or Bridgewater. In Ontario towns like this grew into Peterborough or Kitchener sized mini metros.

[coastalkid]

Agreed with the above.

I'm in real estate, and anecdotally, I have many friends and clients my age (early 30s) who have moved from the city to Wolfville, Windsor, Elmsdale, and the South Shore over the past couple of years. Most of them are able to work remotely, and housing costs in Halifax have become prohibitive for many of those who are early in their careers who want to own a home or start a family. I can see how there are now more of these types of people leaving for towns within an hour of the city, than rural Nova Scotians moving to the core for example.

[Arrdeeharharharbour]

Originally Posted by coastalkid

Agreed with the above.

I'm in real estate, and anecdotally, I have many friends and clients my age (early 30s) who have moved from the city to Wolfville, Windsor, Elmsdale, and the South Shore over the past couple of years. Most of them are able to work remotely, and housing costs in Halifax have become prohibitive for many of those who are early in their careers who want to own a home or start a family. I can see how there are now more of these types of people leaving for towns within an hour of the city, than rural Nova Scotians moving to the core for example.

I practically drooled yesterday looking at a listing for a house on North St. in Bridgewater at $189k. Though liveable as is, it really needs a full reno. This is a home project that many of my generation would have taken on themselves and simply viewed as an activity rather than a hardship or work. Many commute between Halifax and Bridgewater daily. I suggest that as the 103 twinning progresses and the commute becomes easier that house prices in Bridgewater will increase. If I were younger....

[q12]

The July 1st 2023 CMA estimates are going to be released in May based on the new 2021 census.

Halifax will have East Hants/Sipekne’katik First Nation community of Indian Brook added to the CMA estimate count for the first time.



East Hants pop. in 2021 was 25,631. (Of the combined population of 25,631 residents, 22,892 people reside in the Municipality of East Hants and 2,739 people reported residing in the Sipekne’katik First Nation community of Indian Brook)

East Hants Source (PDF)

Halifax pop. estimate for July 1st, 2022 was 480,523.

If Halifax has added another 20,000 between 2022 and 2023 plus roughly 25,000 for East Hants/Sipekne’katik (Indian Brook), that should put the 2023 estimate in the 520,000 to 530,000 range.

By July 2024 the Halifax CMA could be approaching 550,000.

The Halifax CMA is now likely greater than 50% of Nova Scotia's population. Current Nova Scotia clock est. is 1,072,388. 50% is 536,194.