From secondary suites to backyard suites, from rowhouses to “missing middle” multi-family, and beyond, there are homes being built around every corner in Alberta these days.
Nope, it’s not your imagination. In Alberta there were 3122 housing starts in March of 2024. This is a year-over-year increase of 55.4%!! https://economicdashboard.alberta.ca/dashboard/. The highest portion of these homes belong to Calgary (1760 new homes) and Edmonton (1162 new homes). That’s just one month! So far Alberta has seen 10,000 new home starts to date in 2024. The rest of Canada is seeing just a 16% rise in new housing starts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6seR2T44mk.
“Building is about getting around the obstacles that are presented to you” –Jeremy Renner. Oh, and that is so true in Alberta and Canada these days. Even if we try to ignore government regulations, taxation changes, new building codes and investor reluctance, there are plenty of other headwinds. Should we discuss financial institutions’ risk tolerance for building? No, that leads to an absurd conversation. But there is another very serious obstacle, “There were over 11,400 job vacancies in Alberta’s construction sector as of the fourth quarter of last year—labour remains a key limiting factor.” https://www.atb.com/company/insights/the-owl/atb-economics-weekly-wrap-april-26-2024/. That means the poor project managers are losing their marbles with timelines these days –waiting for the next specialty tradesperson to arrive is a common and necessary evil in today’s building climate. Deadlines are incredibly difficult to attain.
In our building world, we wear multiple hats: entrepreneur/small-business-owner, general contractor, and real estate investor. It’s a unique perspective! Many people talk about the “highest and best use” (HABU) of a piece of property. Similarly, we are endeavouring to employ the HABU of all our skills, knowledge and experience grown through the years. There are no easy days (an expression that means much more to the SEALs that coined it). However, we feel privileged to be one small part of the solution to Canada’s housing crisis.
“Whatever good things we build end up building us” — Jim Rohn.
In a world where the buzzfeed focuses on the negatives and the problems, what are you doing to find solutions? Can your real estate investing journey find a path to keep it both positive and real?
