6 days Ago By Joel Schlesinger, for the Calgary Herald
Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page. It’s no secret Calgary home builders have been constructing new homes fast and furiously after record-breaking starts over the past three years.
Yet as trade strife looms, one tailwind for builders is that the city is among the most construction-friendly major municipalities in Canada, a new study shows. “Calgary scores second-best of all the major metropolitan areas and remains one of the most affordable,” says Brian Hahn, chief executive officer of BILD Calgary Region. The head of the Calgary arm of Canadian Home Builders’ Association is referring to the recently published Municipal Benchmarking 2024 Study, which ranks Canadian municipalities’ development and homebuilding frameworks — from fee costs to permitting timelines.
Central to its premise is understanding whether municipalities are helping boost supply and contributing to housing affordability — or not. These are hot-button topics with new housing supply not keeping pace with population growth for more than a decade. As the study notes from 2022 to 2024, Canada’s population surged, while home starts did not keep up, meeting only about a quarter of demand.
The consequence has been surging home prices, especially in Canada’s largest cities. In Vancouver, the report notes that home servicing costs exceed 70 per cent of household income. The affordable housing benchmark set out by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.
is 30 per cent of income. That’s led to Vancouver and Toronto seeing dramatic drops in migration with more citizens moving to Alberta and, in particular, Calgary. Yet even in the face of high population growth, Calgary’s building community has answered the call with CMHC data showing all-time high starts in 2022, 2023 and 2024.
“Calgary has faced really significant growth pressures,” Hahn says. “Due credit has to be made to municipalities for marching in step with” developers and builders to meet demand in recent years. The study reflects the progress.
Calgary ranks fifth best overall for having fewest new homes development barriers, trailing Edmonton — the only other major city in the Top 5 — in first. Halifax, London and Regina round out the remaining top spots in the study..
