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Population and Housing
#61
(02-25-2016, 09:02 PM)panamaniac Wrote:
(02-25-2016, 08:06 PM)DHLawrence Wrote: So they become apartments for large families who don't want/can't afford a house. What a tragedy!

Not at $3,000 a month they don't.  Somebody's going to take a bath.

If the market really is massively oversaturated (of which I'm not convinced), the rents will fall and the building owner will need to accept a lower rent.  Supply and demand works very, very efficiently when it comes to housing.
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#62
(02-25-2016, 10:12 PM)tomh009 Wrote:
(02-25-2016, 09:02 PM)panamaniac Wrote: Not at $3,000 a month they don't.  Somebody's going to take a bath.

If the market really is massively oversaturated (of which I'm not convinced), the rents will fall and the building owner will need to accept a lower rent.  Supply and demand works very, very efficiently when it comes to housing.

I agree.
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#63
(02-25-2016, 10:47 PM)panamaniac Wrote:
(02-25-2016, 10:12 PM)tomh009 Wrote: If the market really is massively oversaturated (of which I'm not convinced), the rents will fall and the building owner will need to accept a lower rent.  Supply and demand works very, very efficiently when it comes to housing.

I agree.

The landlords most likely suffering are the "Stuff A House" with university students landlords who kept run down houses (many illegal) and spent no money on their rental houses in the university area because they could.

No one will cry for their over the years greed filled pockets and increased land value profits.
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#64
(02-25-2016, 10:47 PM)panamaniac Wrote:
(02-25-2016, 10:12 PM)tomh009 Wrote: If the market really is massively oversaturated (of which I'm not convinced), the rents will fall and the building owner will need to accept a lower rent.  Supply and demand works very, very efficiently when it comes to housing.

I agree.

The landlords most likely suffering are the "Stuff A House" with university students landlords who kept run down houses (many illegal) and spent no money on their rental houses in the university area because they could.

No one will cry for their over the years greed filled pockets and increasing laand value profits.
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#65
I wonder what the shelf life of the existing 'new-build' apartments/condos actually is.  Anecdotally, I have heard from some trades about construction short-cuts that are being covered up to save money for the builder/developer with the knowledge that the new owners will have to pay to correct the problems in the future.

Similarly, we have seen stories about the purported condo-boom in Waterloo Region that is being fueled by investors hoping to win big by flipping their newly constructed condo/apartments before they are even built yet.

I'm not sure if there ever has been a full census of how many beds there of the "stuff-a-house" variety given the difficulty of tracking them.  If you assume that those 8300 new beds are going to soak up 8300 tenants out of those houses, that might mean between 1000 (8 to a unit) and 2000 (4 to a unit) rental houses or apartment units would be empty.  Regardless, given that UW, WLU and Conestoga themselves are only predicting single-digit growth in the coming years, the gap is only going to widen.

Similarly, according to the CHMC, local population growth has dipped below one per cent and the Ontario population aged 17-21 is also predicted to decline.  It's currently a race to the finish to see who can get their building built first before the population dries up.

The question is going to be, how long can the small-time investors hold on before they have to lower their rents?  Given that many of these units are likely purchased with borrowed money anyways, more than a few people are going to have to re-evaluate their investment plans.
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#66
I wonder how many basement ancillary apartments are now populated by the homeowner's own children...
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#67
(02-29-2016, 01:26 PM)nms Wrote: I'm not sure if there ever has been a full census of how many beds there of the "stuff-a-house" variety given the difficulty of tracking them.  If you assume that those 8300 new beds are going to soak up 8300 tenants out of those houses, that might mean between 1000 (8 to a unit) and 2000 (4 to a unit) rental houses or apartment units would be empty.  Regardless, given that UW, WLU and Conestoga themselves are only predicting single-digit growth in the coming years, the gap is only going to widen.

I've seen several single detached homes convert from rental to... owned (not sure what word I'm looking for here) in the further from the university areas. I suspect that trend will continue for the future and the "student zone" will contact signifgantly towards the University.
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#68
(02-29-2016, 01:26 PM)nms Wrote: Anecdotally, I have heard from some trades about construction short-cuts that are being covered up to save money for the builder/developer with the knowledge that the new owners will have to pay to correct the problems in the future.

Sadly, this is true for just about every type of construction project.  Pride of workmanship and construction quality is really quite disappointing in this country.  Houses are being built as disposable, just like everything else.
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#69
When I started in the construction field I was brought into the drywall and acoustics union in Toronto (they were the union for light steel framers) we primarily did work for the Katelyn Group and I was appalled at the fact that these town homes we were constructing were flimsy tin and Styrofoam and selling for 600+... A few of the more seasoned contractors said that what was really holding the homes together was the interior drywall and the brick facades.
A little over a year later we had done a few custom homes off King Side Rd north of Vaughan and I knew the the light steel was not for me. I hooked up with a local framing crew and we did production home for Reids Heritage and their subsidiaries but for me it was more of the same, stick framing with 2x4's and Styrofoam insulboard. We did do a number of custom homes where they spent the money and we constructed some homes that would last well beyond my years but sadly not enough. I eventually moved onto renovations and property management/maintenance because at least that way I was fixing things so that it would last and doing things my way with in the reason for the customer.
Sadly people don't understand what they are paying for, or why even with all the shows on HGTV they still really don't get it
I like Renomi, he has a good thing going as far as being the go between. The contractor knows what has to be done but the customer isn't always available when decisions need to be made. His program kinda helps to smooth the process out. The contractor can basically list off everything that needs to be done and the program can break it down so that the the client can really understand what is going on and understand why things should be done a certain way. They can decide against (for cost as an example) but then it saves time for everyone cause the program is designed in such away that there are very few mixups or miscommunication between everyone.
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#70
Construction of all forms aside from high rises up in Kitchener in 2015.


http://m.therecord.com/news-story/637703...om-in-2015
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#71
1300 units in 2014 down to 58 in 2015 is a huge drop.
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#72
(03-06-2016, 04:20 PM)jwilliamson Wrote: 1300 units in 2014 down to 58 in 2015 is a huge drop.

As the article states, that's a heck of a lot of apartments for an area this size to absorb.
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#73
(03-06-2016, 06:39 PM)panamaniac Wrote:
(03-06-2016, 04:20 PM)jwilliamson Wrote: 1300 units in 2014 down to 58 in 2015 is a huge drop.

As the article states, that's a heck of a lot of apartments for an area this size to absorb.

Also those projects often take more than 12 months to complete, so the number will fluctuate from year to year (for example, 370 of those units in 2014 were for Drewlo's third and fourth buildings on Fallowfield Dr).  I think we'll see some new rental apartment projects starting again this year, including new starts by Drewlo.
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#74
2015 year-end population estimate from the region:
575,000
http://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/region...df#page=15

For reference, last year the forecast for 2015 was 576,200.
Everyone move to the back of the bus and we all get home faster.
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#75
Ignoring other externalities, if population growth on a 15-year cycle similar to what happened for the past 15 years or if they maintain the average 1.58% growth from the same 15-year period, they would be in the neighbourhood of the predicted 750,000 by 2031.
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