Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Where I live in Ottawa there are more and more houses going up, at a break neck pace, where farm land is turning into housing developments at an alarmingly high rate, and I keep wondering, who are all of these people, and where are they going to work? Stats Canada says that the number of building permits for 2006 is a new record at over $61.1 Billion Dollars, which is amazing. Now these permits are not solely for building new houses, it could be for additions and such (and as we have learned from our friend Mike Holmes there are contractors who don’t go through the formality of getting permits either, so this number may be a little low).

Getting back to my lament about Ottawa, the increase of building with permits is up 26%
compared to last year, and last year there was a heck of a lot of building going on, so this is starting to turn into a very interesting upward spiral. Now we can guess where the most building has taken place, and that is of course Calgary with a 43% increase over last year (which explains why the cost of upgrading your house is going up so much out there as well). Kingston Ontario has a 36% increase as well, which is interesting.

My question remains, why are these houses going up? This isn’t completely renovation, this is mostly new houses and such, so where are these people coming from? Where are they working? Do they need old beat down tech workers? These are the questions that are running through my head.

When will THIS bubble burst? I have said before that trying to get someone to do a small renovation job in Ottawa is nearly impossible, unless you go to Home Depot who seems to be trying to corner this market. This is not a good thing, since you aren’t going to get your best price from a monopoly, now are you?

Build, build, build, when will it stop?