They keep building and building SFH, makes you kind of wonder who is buying them? The oil market crapped in 2014 so its been a good 6 years and they keep churning them out.
I left in early 2017 and the city already stretches so far past where it did back then. There is barely any space between Calgary and Heritage Pointe anymore.
Using city census and StatsCan population estimates I wanted to explore this a bit.
From 2015 to 2019, Calgary's population grew by over 92,200 or about 91% of Calgary CMA's total growth of 100,700. This was the smallest 5-year growth total since 1994 - 1998. For comparison, Vancouver CMA grew by 146,867 over the same period. Looking at relative growth, Calgary CMA grew by 6.6% over the period. Vancouver CMA grew by 5.5%. Toronto CMA grew by 7.0% for reference. Worth mentioning that housing growth typically increases faster than population due to ever-shrinking average household sizes.
Population growth being the core predictive factor for housing growth suggests to me that Calgary continues to see demand for housing. Sure, much slower growth by Calgary's insane standards, but roughly in line with any of the other big metro regions of the country.
The question is more specifically what type and in what location (e.g. deep south burbs or otherwise)? Calgary's new suburbs are much more diverse in housing typology than the burbs of 20 years, so there's condos, townhomes and SFH found in all far-flung areas now. Someone else may have the data but I recall that SFH hasn't been the majority of housing growth in the region for quite a few years now and is trending to a smaller and smaller share. This could be a response to the shrinking family since, affordability pressures or better recognition of different demographic markets interested in housing.
Past trends don't make future realities necessarily - particularly true in a year of unpredictable global economic collapse and travel lockdowns. If I had to make a prediction on how this will go once we return to some sort of normal in a few years, I would expect to see the SFH demand to continue to shrink as a proportion but stable, slow growth in the burbs and redevelopment areas. As a result, the backlog of giant sprawl areas from the last boom phase will take a long time to "sweat off" - there may be ongoing house building but at a slower pace so they don't start new neighbourhoods every 2 years but every 20 years.
I think of the factors that made Calgary's growth so high and SFH count so large have quickly changed. No this isn't a mass exodus/"the New Detroit" argument, just that Calgary is quickly starting to perform like any other major cities in Canada: large region with slow growth and a higher proportion of low and middle income households. Expect more apartments and continued redevelopment growth as a result.
The one unique factor remains for us that there is no physical barriers or suburban cities to take all these SFH from us (or prevent them from existing in the first place due). This is changing as well, just much more slowly. I don't know if we will see a policy-response (e.g. Toronto Greenbelt) to help shape this faster but my guess would be less impactful as the regional pressure to sort it out isn't there yet. It's certainly coming though (water supply, the Rockyview acreage belt, Balzac and Chestermere competition etc.)
Until we lose that last unique factor, the burbs will keep being built but much slower (and differently) than we have seen previously.
Why do the ultra rich always have such terrible taste.
