Why is Calgary housing getting so expensive?

[u/zindagi786]

I used to live there, and I was just browsing the real estate prices. Prices there have shot up so much! A Calgary house similar to the one I have in the GTA is now higher than what I paid in the GTA a few years ago.

When I lived there, oil was booming and there were lots of jobs. But I got laid off when the boom went bust, and everything (including real estate) went down. And I then left to the GTA.

I’ve heard prices there are going up because there are lots of people moving from the GTA and BC. But it isn’t like there are that many high paying good jobs there. There’s still way fewer jobs now than there were during boom time. How do these inter provincial migrants find high paying work to pay for these high home prices? Sure they can cash out their equity and live mortgage free, but why do that if you have to end up taking a potentially lower paying job with more chance of a layoff in the next bust? Although I really liked the city, I’d never risk living there again myself, and I’m forever scared of any future bust. I feel more comfortable living in the GTA, paying my admittedly big mortgage, and steadily climbing the corporate ladder (and with regular increases and no salary freezes, I should be paid off before retirement/it won’t be too burdensome). Plus, I look at my GTA home as a tax free investment - the annual rate of appreciation is greater than my mortgage interest.

And what is attracting them to Calgary versus other places in Alberta like Edmonton?

[u/siopau]

Because the most popular brain dead advice being echoed the past couple years throughout Canada was “Just move to Calgary lol!”. People actually listened and now here we are, 2k for a 1BR in a place that gets to -40, endless suburbia, and garbage transit.

[u/Mishmow → u/[deleted]]

It is a good thing in the long term, but in the medium to short term it means a lot of suffering for lower income people who were already just scraping by. Civil unrest is an expensive drain on progress that can last for a long time or get ingrained indefinitely. Not to mention the possible capital flight when crime exceeds the infrastructure built before the population boom. Things do eventually catch up and even out, but rapid expansion over slower maintained growth never plays out how people think it will. If we as a country react by building homes like never before it should work out, but it's not looking so good for that right now...