I took delivery of some really exceptional siding material. The flashing component and measuring quantity was a challenge I almost certainly screwed up. The good news is I hired someone really capable to install it. It should be going an the wall shortly. Until the work is done, here is a corner trim piece profile that illustrates just one of many methods to detail this product.
I really want this to work out. It is one of those new products that could look exceptional or be a nightmare.
Hi everyone and happy new year. It is January 2nd, the first construction day of the year and time for me to make some predictions. I think this will be a very eventful year, and possibly hard to predict what will happen. In December I will review my predictions, and see how I did.
1. The City internal process to modernize infill building standards will be long, difficult, and controversial, however, at the end the outcome will be worth it because it will reduce contextual front setbacks among other changes, and deal with many parts of the bylaw that are no longer useful for the builders, communities, and the planning department (this is a highly optimistic prediction because of the political nature of this work, even so I am hopeful that much needed changes will happen).
2. Killarney land prices will moderate or slightly drop in 2018 - I was wrong about land prices last year, or perhaps just focussed too much on the outliers. Even so the run up in land value over the past year or two was remarkable, given the economy has really just stabilized vs. improved. So I will again predict the land values will not be higher than in 2017.
3. Government meddling will impact new home sales - This is an easy prediction to make, because by making it harder to borrow, even for really well qualified buyers, the new home industry usually would take the hit. This is a toxic prediction for me to make because I am building new houses right now for sale in spring 2018. Perhaps the inner city product will prove more resilient than the deep suburbia, we will see.
4. The spring market will be very good - the all important spring market will bring massive quantities of buyers out to the show homes in Killarney. I think the amount and similarity of the Killarney product deluge that is now underway will be interesting to watch, and a lot of buyers will be drawn to the generous selection.
So there you have four predictions for 2018, I hope everyone has a healthy and productive year.
Regular readers of this site will know that I am not particularly shy when it comes to making predictions and offering 'opinions' on events that I find worthy, especially the villainous characters that populate the industry.
I made a couple predictions in 2017, so lets review them now.
1. My bet was that Killarney land value would stall at the summer high point of $683500 for a 50 ft lot which sold in a bidding war to a builder.
outcome - wrong - A deal was closed in december at $685000. I did comment that I thought the buyer was nuts. I will stick with that prediction, despite being wrong about the price I am really glad I did not pay that much for that property.
2. During the lead up to the vote for the re-desigation of a Killarney property to RCG from Rc2 I predicted that the council would vote overwhelmingly no, however I was uncertain at the time what would happen with the newly elected Council.
outcome - wrong - The Council overwhelming voted to proceed with the RCG re-desigation, and went as far as tweaking the zone to create site specific restrictions. I am bothered by the restrictions as I don't think they were thought through carefully enough, and I don't want to see an avalanche of new tweaks and clauses to an already complex set of rules. Despite this, I later theorized that Council has undergone a structural change to favour this type of project over often irrational community opposition. But I was still wrong about the vote.
3. the real estate board that regulates realtor behaviour would do something about terribly unethical realtor behaviour that I documented and sent to them (on a platter).
outcome - wrong - totally got the brush off. What a waste of time.
Looking back on my predictive success for 2017, I didn't do too well. My next post will be a 2018 future prediction edition, hopefully I will be more accurate this year.
There is no limit to what people seem willing to pay to acquire development land in Killarney, but there is a real cap on what newly built homes sell for that is far more volatile and fickle than the land market. These two markets, one would think, are inextricably linked. That they operate independently is just another puzzle of inner city building.
I created this website in mid 2016 during a slow period where I was really frustrated with my lack of progress on acquiring viable development land. Later that year I started a semi detached build which kept me busy and it featured heavily on my news page, as well as updates related to rezoning my rowhouse site to RCG from RC2.
Throughout 2017 I continued with the regular updates (about 280 posts which is hard to believe), and met lots of interesting people through the contact page. I also shared a lot of valuable info (at least I think it is) on inner city building and current events, from my admittedly biased perspective. Now we have completed the first full year and it is time to review the website stats.
5926 - total page views in 2017
810 - highest page views in single month (June)
3510 - most popular content page (news)
51.15% - desktop viewership, 45.36% mobile
2017 is now 'last year', and I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to check out my site, leave comments, and email or call me with special requests and for bringing me hot drinks on cold days. I find inner city building to be a fascinating topic, and it seems like many others do too. While we had more than 5000 page views, I'd bet that 1000 of those came from just a couple IP address repeat offenders. So thanks to you guys (especially Max) for showing so much repeat love to the site. Keep it up in 2018. I'll be back at work tomorrow pushing for a productive January to get the semi-d rolling again, so feel free to stop in and say hi.
This is my annual summary of development related topics at the micro level, right here in Killarney, and also a broad review of governments, realtors, and any other villains I encountered throughout the year. There is a lot to report from 2017, both highlights and lowlights. Can I be fair? Is this supposed to be my annual comedy entry? I guess the reader can decide.
The good, the bad and the ugly. Let's start with the bad and the ugly.
Ugly:
Realtors - Without trying too hard, I just stumbled on so many instances of realtors blatantly misrepresenting property. I even noticed a single realtor so chronically guilty of lying about development potential, it simply cannot be accidental. I had other realtors forwarding me links to the lies of other realtors! Then we'd discuss the outrageous claims and laugh. The Calgary real estate board, wow, what a total farce. If those are the 'good guys' watching out for the public, beware!
Bad:
The election - the civic election was such a dud. How can public debates be held and no meaningful positions be put forth by incumbents and supposedly desperate challengers? All of the incumbents, including the dead weight were somehow re-elected (here's to you DiCU). The four new members on council seem pretty good thus far, perhaps only elections should be held when incumbents resign? The election financing is so utterly corrupt and hasn't changed in decades. You now have builders giving four to five donations to the same candidate while important land use votes are taking place before and after the campaign. Goodbye Councillor Chabot, we wont miss you!
Good:
Secondary Suites - progress on this important issue of personal and property rights has to make everybody's Calgary top 10 list (except for the four remnant corpses and dinosaurs still on Council). The rest of us are still suffering brain damage from the last decade of secondary suite trauma.
Excellent:
NIMBY's on the run? - Small change over many years on Council has suddenly had a cumulative impact and we find ourselves in 2017 passing main streets initiatives all over the City, with mass land use re-designations of hundreds of properties (that would have cost $20k each to do individually). With the new four on Council, I've seen a major improvement, and community resistance based on fear and protectionism seems to be ignored by the voting members and mayor (the only votes that count). Class and race based prejudice that bubbles just below the surface of many land use debates is being called out as 'insane bigotry' and 'dog whistle nimby'ism' by those on Council with conviction to modernize how we rebuild the inner city. To me this is a welcome change.
Ugly:
Government at all levels, at its worst, meddling, screwing stuff up, adding layers of cost and bureaucracy on business owners. It is impressive how the parasitic class in our society grows, and how little of value it produces, and how much subtle and insidious harm it can cause. This year the government gets an ugly rating, for the ridiculous farce of the licence program, the mortage rule meddling, and the fee hungry thievery. Can 2018 be any worse?
Ugly:
The political correctness run amok has yet to really appear in development debates, which is very peculiar, especially given the homegrown prejudice that is so rampant in the hardened opinions people have on these matters. I guess now the face of a middle aged white male who refuses to use bizarre pronouns can be pasted on a kid at Halloween as a ghoulish mask. No store bought costume needed! The bizarre case of the univeristy TA made major headlines. https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/yw5dbg/wilfrid-laurier-exonerates-lindsay-shepherd-we-can-all-move-on-now . I am hoping NIMBY'ism can become the next shameful 'ism' along with racism and sexism so that development debates are more meaningful. Maybe 2018 will become the year where we can have a rational debate on how to rebuild our City by excluding the NIMBY'ism perspective. Once we do that we can make some good land use decisions.
Bad:
The City staff drafted a document proposing changes to the RCG zone, and it isn't very good. Two of the three proposals would be seriously negative for rowhouse projects. I am hopeful in the new year this can be fought off and the City will back down. There is also a project to look at wholesale changes to how inner city contextual development proceeds. This would be such a welcome process if it actually includes input from builders and designers with ample weighting to other perspectives. Stay tuned for updates on this one.
Bad:
Bankers - we've complained about lenders who won't lend before, and we are doing it again. I've never felt so rejected! Poor me. I had a banker offer to lend me $200k if I gave them $200k in a cash deposit. That was really bizarre. I guess they'd take my $200k and give me zero interest, while lending me the same sum back at a higher rate. That's the bankers idea of a good deal.
Good:
Oil - the price of oil ended, by my review of oilprice.com at $60. That is a lot better than I had expected last summer when it hit $42 in July. Natural gas is still really suffering though.
So there you have my overview of 'everything else' that is going on locally and on up to the provincial and federal level. I think 2018 will be a fascinating year in the evolution of our society and hopefully us builders will benefit from a better local economy (and somebody will sell me a good development lot next year too).
2017 was a good year, certainly better than 2016 for the business. There are many successes to report on and many internal milestones achieved. We even had some really complicated and unpredictable design work result in exceptional outcomes that should help us next year. In no particular order, here are some of the wins:
1. Finishing the 41st project - the homes turned out very nice, and both sold quickly. The only problem was running out of homes to sell in the spring market. The market was so good that I could have sold dozens more of the same model.
2. Permitting the rowhouse project - this was on the verge of spiralling out of control into some bureaucratic wasteland, and despite the slow process, in the end I was able to get the project I wanted approved, in full.
3. DP on the fourplex project - once again, we encountered some tough obstacles that could have crushed the project, or suffered cumulative setbacks leading to a full redo. While it took a year, we did everything correctly (myself and design crew), and in the end we have something really good.
4. Starting the Killarney semi d - After closing on the land in July, and doing some preliminary work right after the deal was signed, we were able to start the project in the fall. Unlike the multi family projects, this means we don't have the costly delay of a year or two until building. This could be a project where the investment and sales all occur within 12 months. That'd be a record for me. Having the capital only tied up for 10 months would be such a fine way to boost the business forward. Low volume and slow turnover has been absolutely killing this business and there just did not seem to be a way out of that ugly cycle of slow permits, major delays, lengthy costly permit requirements, and slow land title office condo registry (other than by doing simpler projects I guess).
5. Starting the Rowhouse - while the entire warm building season was lost due to City staff foot dragging, the rowhouse is being framed right now. Once we are at the lockup stage, the rest of the build should proceed very nicely because I will have total control over the pace of work. It looks like we can get to that stage by the end of the first month of 2018, what a relief after 1.5 years of struggle and delay.
6. New framers - I latched on to a new set of guys to frame my buildings. They've literally saved me months of frustration over some prior work I have had done, and the pricing is very reasonable. I am very hopeful the crew will continue to be available.
7. New partnerships - I'm doing a project with a new investing partner and it is going well. Not being exposed to the full risk of the project and having someone to contribute funds to the land and build is a nice change. Hopefully this can continue and grow into some more volume as we get to know each other better.
8. Controlling costs - Some progress has been made here and it has become even more essential to lower labour costs given other cost headwinds. The dollar value, the fires in B.C, trade wars, all of this is killing the builders (not that the government on any level cares about business owners that build houses and employ dozens of contractors).
Of course we also had some setbacks throughout the year, but nothing that has really prevented a good year. Here are a few to consider:
1. Costly road fees/offsite levy fees - I can't believe I have paid so much this year and how badly the City is treating builders on these fees is truly shocking.
2. Possibly supply/demand challenges in 2018 - there always has to be something to worry about in a small business , and right now the trendy worry is overbuilding of similar semi detached product in the inner city communities. We know what the supply is six months in advance, but what will the demand be? So much can go wrong here.
3. Financing - not much to say here other than how can the banks make so much money when they refuse to lend me any?
4. Paying warranty premiums on my own project - I could not find a way to weasel out of paying $4500 to buy my own warranty coverage for my building. I guess when something breaks I will know who to call to fix it. This year seemed like the all time best year for wasting 10's of thousands of dollars while not building anything to qualify for unnecessary government programs.
So that is my review of 2017, I have some great plans for 2018 and I am excited for the projects we have in the ground today. 2017 was strong for the business with two homes sold and five started. That's seven houses in one year, my best to date. My land supply has dried up so I have just the fourplex to start next year and I guess will be hunting for land deals all winter.
Sean.
We snuck in the firewall pour and it was a timely bit of progress, as the weather is truly hideous for the foreseeable future. The framers were back at it today to try and salvage a little progress this week, and installed much of the second floor structure on the third unit.
The cribbers returned and stripped the forms, stacking them for re-use later on once we are ready for the final pour. With Christmas break upon us, I think this will be my last progress update until we get through the inspections at the semi-d, or somehow the framers work through the cold after boxing day. I will also be composing a year in review type post, and that will be it for 2017. Merry Xmas everyone!
The second floor joist package is going on now. The mass of the building is starting to take shape, for some reason this one looks different than how I'd imagined it. I must be a terrible 3d visualizer. This will be an interesting building once I get the finished exterior work done. I'm attempting to get over my cowardly nature when it comes to building colour.
The concrete monster is 2/3 complete. Words can hardly describe how awful this wall is and how much worse it will be once we get to the top.
Atco was delayed thIs year in getting the gas lines installed. This is not surprising given how inundated they were earlier this year with disconnects from demolitions. Every disconnect usually results in two new services so the workload grows over time.
Other builders, including those with a lot more influence than me must have complained about 13 week wait times. Without heat at some point the project will come to a stand still.
Gas line going in
Building code changes were applied to the rowhouse project and I am now in the middle of it, pun intended, at the jobsite. In addition to a lot of grief and problems from the depth of footing excavation all the way to the top of the roof, compliance is really expensive. Small changes to the firewall rating requirement resulted in a lot of cost for the footing, the framing, the roofing, time losses, extra concrete, rebar and engineering, design work, and unforeseen headaches that have yet to appear, but will show up later.
What tends to happen is some imaginary threshold is set in a distant government office where employees don't worry about consequences of the rules they create. Once this threshold is impacted by the scope of the design at the early permit state your project is raised into a higher tier of risk. This unleashes a lot of strict requirements that can be really hard to meet.
The rowhouse was deemed to be a higher risk project for fire due to the lower level units. The requirement was then to have an absolute fire barrier between unit 1 and 2, whereas the same wall between unit 2 and 3 was allowed to proceed the usual way. Essentially this means the concrete wall has to extend above the shingles of the roof, a truly ugly and cumbersome way to construct a three unit townhouse building.
This massive wall is being poured in a second lift, which will get us up to the level of the second floor structure. The next pour will be up to the roof, and I expect it to be extremely awkward. Another option is to do this in concrete block, however, this isn't the choice I made at the permitting stage long ago. Time to live with the consequences of what is on the BP.
Council created the rowhouse zone back in 2014 and directed administration to track the effectiveness of the zone and aggregate some statistics.
This report was presented to council yesterday. I happened to review it as this zone is critical to future projects I may be involved in.
I wasn’t super impressed with the report. It doesn’t seem to focus on the most important issues. It also focuses too much on parking. Phase 1 of the rcg review will possibly make amendments to building height, secondary suites and corner setbacks.
Of these changes only the corner setback changes would be favourable to rcg projects. I think the height limits should be left as is. I don’t think the suite related parking rules should be changed at all. Any adjustments to the rules on parking will eliminate suite construction as we know it today. This is about the only type of affordable new housing that can be built in Calgary because the building permit rules are so costly to comply with.
The most important issue that doesn’t seem to be high on the agenda is mid block changes to make the mid block lots viable to develop. This is where council should focus its energy.
I’m hopeful the corner set back rules can evolve to be more flexible. That’d make some difference to improving designs for new projects.
This is an issue that the city needs to listen more to the builders and less to the nimby types that put forth a lot of emotional arguments to restrict development. I thought the last council was wise to prioritize people over parking. Will the new council go back to prioritizing cars over people?
This is the 19 page report. Worth a read for potential rcg builders. Get your dp in right away before the rules change?
Many of the main floor walls are now up at the rowhouse site. This is a nice phase of construction because a lot of work is done in a small amount of time, and the final structure is now 3D instead of on a sheet of 11x17 paper. With winter really making a comeback, I expect a lot of snow shovelling to be needed, and not a lot of progress to be made on the various projects between now and the end of the Christmas break.
Much snow had accumulated over the course of the afternoon so I brought in some help to shovel the Killarney job sites. The dim winter solstice light provides a peak at the main floor walls at the rowhouse.
The midpoint milestone of the construction process to me is the preboard inspection. This is the time when all the mechanical, plumbing, electrical and building inspections are done and inspected by the City before the insulation and drywall can proceed.
I am continuing to use the footing pour to preboard inspection as an indicator of pace of work. Obviously I want this phase to be over sooner to reduce cost on the various time/money related items, such as fence and toilet rental, taxes and cost of capital. These costs, especially financing, accumulate each day and can be very significant.
Comparing like projects here is essential, for sure my multi family projects are going to be run slower than a simpler semi d. Looking at the current and previous projects, my time to date is 70 days (we called the preboard inspection today). This means we went from an empty hole in the ground to a house that is ready to insulate and start finishing in a little more than two months. That is good by any standard for two homes with three levels and nearly 6000 sq ft of development. This is another reason new home building is more cost effective than renovations, many renovation projects go on endlessly, with a fraction of the work completed vs what we can do on a new build over a two month period.
The previous semi d took about 97 days to achieve the same progress, which was frustrating and costly. From my perspective, the 27 day savings for the current project is a relief as it meant 27 days less supervision to achieve the same outcome. If I was a little more organized and had some extra scheduling luck, that 70 day timeline could have been reduced by a week or more. The current project also benefited from some great weather and few holidays vs the previous project, so that accounts from some of the difference.
The rowhouse project is moving along nicely now, it will be interesting to add up the extra time needed to get that build to the same stage. I'll comment on that in the new year, what I know now is both the roof and windows won't be available when I want them to, and weather is looking really ugly.
Ensuring the sewer is done properly is undoubtedly a priority. Avoiding use of lift stations means even more care is needed to bring the 4 inch line low enough that even the furthest fixture can drain by gravity. In a rowhouse where the sewer enters the building via the side, it is quite possible that the available slope could mean you run out of space below the slab. That wouldn’t be good.
We seem to be on the right track with the sewer install thus far. We brought the main in deep enough that it is well under the footing. This maximizes the space to slope the drain into. We also trenched a path and left a gap in the middle footings to provide passage for the pipe. All this should combine to make it really easy for the plumber to get the groundwork installed.
This may not make sense to those unfamiliar with sewer installation, but everyone wants the toilet to flush. Getting it wrong is not an option. By avoiding unnecessary lift stations we benefit from free and zero maintenance gravity drainage.
this is where the sewer enters the building. We’ve got it prepped for basement plumbing.
With the main floor of building 2 and 3 mostly sheated, we can get a good impression of how spacious the rowhouse units will be, and how high the main floor is off the grade at the sidewalk. So far it is working out very well, expect some walls up very soon.
With the main floor sheated, we can get out of the dirt and work on a flat surface. Or at least the framers can, my job these days seems to be mainly writing cheques and dealing with trash.
lower levels are also progressing.
We have a new rotary hammer drill for use in our ongoing war against ditches that refuse to dig themselves. Frost in the ground, nasty pit run soil conditions and lots of site work have led to me conclude that heavier tools are needed. And of course renting would mean driving around fighting holiday traffic far from the Killarney project sites.
This is the last time our drill will be clean, as much demolition and jackhammering needs to be done to get the rowhouse under slab services in. Plus more window wells are inevitably needing excavation.
This is the first of a multi part series of posts detailing how the threeplex will be framed. Day one has the crew arriving to set up and prepare the top of the foundation wall with a gasket and plate. They then put out a heavy doubly ply parallam beam onto the metal post and the pad footing below. By this time it was getting late so they joisted much of the first floor and have wrapped up for today. We've had great dry weather, but the lack of daylight means we are dark at 5 pm. I am sure the framers can't wait for the winter solstice to be over and longer days in 2018.
Lots of work yet to come. The machine is tied up at the other site awaiting delivery back to Killarney. Once it arrives we will see some quick progress on getting the frame up.
With the delivery of our first framing package at the rowhouse site, we are officially on the cusp of getting out of the ground and building upwards. Certain project milestones can actually feel like you've arrived at the finish line, which is funny in a strange way, for a multi family site where you've yet to hammer on the first stick of lumber.
The site was purchased with the first contract signed May 14 2016, so that is a full 19 months up to this point where we can build the structure. Much of the delay was in land use re-designation, and difficult permitting of the DP and parts of the BP. Getting the construction documents in place also led to more challenges on site, particularly with respect to the storm water management and foundation designs. I'm attempting to avoid calculating what the holding cost has been on the property for the last 19 months in terms of taxes, fees, utilities, rental, financing, capital cost, builder sanity, etc.
The positive news is I've made arrangements with my current favourite framing crew to put the building up. They are just completing a unique job at an architect designed detached property overlooking the saddledome at the top of Ramsay. Hopefully the full crew can come back to Killarney right away and tackle the threeplex. We are quickly approaching the Christmas seasonal shutdown so I have ordered a bunch of material including the roof trusses. Ideally we can use this unseasonably good weather to get the structure up.
Part of the first delivery. The site has good access and room to store material at the front, back, and maybe even the side. Still some backfill left to do in the tight south sideyard, but we are ready to start the frame.
Definitely a relieved builder to see dirt going back into the excavated area. Having an open excavation in the middle of a busy neighbourhood is more risk that I don’t need. With the engineer and city inspector giving the go ahead we are dumping dirt back in the hole. That gives us opportunity to deliver the lumber and install the floor package.
The semi d project is moving along again with the stucco prep almost done and the electricians wiring up the first house. Lots of pot lights seems to be the trend on this project. Ideally we get to inspections here so we can spray foam and cover the many cantilevers and the soffits can be done.
Given the new and bulky shape of the window well the excavation needs to be extra large to accommodate the install brackets. This is strange because the old style window well was huge already. The code changed and now the old precast won't do for fire escape.
We dug out just enough and they all fit. What a relief. Less luck with the stairs however because one was too large and will need modification.
the precast window well is definitely not the fire escape bottleneck