Some of us take a sadistic pleasure in demolishing the old houses we purchase. Basically they tend to be asbestos riddled shacks, with low ceilings, tiny windows, bad choppy layouts and inadequate bathrooms. Making them livable takes a lot of work and merging the old and the new is costly. So we can demolish them in a day and move on with a new build. However, given the prices we have now for product, an old house’s intrinsic value may be worth revisiting. Could project economics flip enough that we can no longer afford the full on armada of infill construction in Calgary? I don’t think so at least not yet but the path we are on will make a new build prohibitively expensive for all but the most wealthy buyers.
Way higher material cost, increased land value and trades that want to be paid more….builder will be squeezed in the middle of home values don’t go way up in 2021.