City Centre Development Driving Our Market Forward.

I do believe the trend of moving into the City Core is one that will be with us for some time. We do still have buyers with a higher budget moving to higher end suburbs and small acreages outside of the city limits, however, I think the real value is in these inner city redevelopments. This subtle change is partially responsible for what is driving our real estate market forward.

 

What we saw happening in the early to mid 2000's were investors and small home builders finding older properties close to the city centre with frontages over 50' wide, having them subdivided into two parcels, then tearing down the existing home and redeveloping the properties for resale either with attached homes or detached "infills". I believe over the past couple of years we have seen a shift in that paradigm and more and more redevelopments of this magnitude are being developed specifically for the purchaser. Profitability and logistics of the sale once they build are not as high a priority in the development of their new home. What they are looking for is a home they can live in and be extremely comfortable with for many years to come with whatever budget they may have.

 

This inadvertently brings up the value in a specific area and – more importantly – the appeal and demand in that community. Where a builder that is building a spec home for resale will consider and try to avoid "overdeveloping" a project for a specific area, someone building for themselves will not worry so much about that aspect of the development or design, they just want what they want. Take a drive in some of these beautiful communities that are evolving in our city centre to see the variety of design and obvious attention to detail, things that only excel values and appeal creating outstanding communities.

 

This is something that evolves naturally and is not created by municipal initiatives or media hype. We will still see developments of side by sides and such, however, I believe that “building to suit” is becoming more predominant. In my opinion this is certainly a healthy turn of events, it is better to have the scale tipped in favour of the development for owners as opposed to the development strictly for the sake of resale where profitability is the key concern.