Calgary, even with recent economic struggles, has been a sort of magical Christmas land with relatively high wages, low cost of living and urban sprawl development to meet demand. I don't think there are many other places in Canada that tick all those boxes.
Don't underestimate how expensive Canada is. I recently moved from San Diego to Calgary and everything here is more expensive (groceries being the most extreme at 40-60% more) and unlike San Diego, Calgary doesn't have an ocean.
While there are obviously genuine environmental concerns, Calgary's decline seems to me a combination of two major forces. First and foremost is economic opposition from the US, who went from the largest consumer of Canadian oil to its largest competitor in the past 10 years. Second, political polarities in Canada that tend to favor concentrating political and economic power along the cities of the St Lawrence instead of Alberta. It would probably be too much to say that the Eastern provinces want Alberta to do poorly, but given the Liberals an d the NDP simply hold no seats in Alberta, there is no incentive to defend its provincial interests (in comparison to say a Quebec company like Bombardier).
However at the moment maybe it's for the better, you don't need to be in the 1% of income earners to buy a house in Calgary.
You're out of luck. Any major city here in Canada (Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary) is expensive. But, these cities are routinely in the top 10 for best places to live, so you get what you pay for (kinda).
Canada has some of the most unaffordable housing in the world. It makes sense that people want the freedom to work from cheaper locations. I moved from Vancouver to Calgary when I went 100% remote and I have not regretted the decision at all
Calgary is the home of the urban sprawl. Edmonton has a long way to go to get that ugly.
Edmonton saw a massive shortage in housing a few years back during the oil boom and moved to build tons of condos and apartments, plus offered tax subsidies if you converted a basement or in-law apartment into a full-on dwelling. So there is a glut of average-tier 2-bed 2-bath apartments everywhere.
Plenty of space and COL is reasonable if you're willing to go further out.
But, on average, still 100k (adjusting for currency) more than what my coworkers in the NC Research Triangle are paying for a similar square footage house.
It's even more depressing in the larger Canadian cities. In Greater Vancouver the average price is 1.47M, in Calgary (which is in the midst of a recession) the average price is still 457000 (and good luck finding a decent job), in the GTA it's 602000 and over a million in Toronto proper. The only affordable 'big' city is Montreal, and even smaller markets with few jobs are far more expensive than an equivalent sized market in the US.
Calgary (albeit Canada in this case, but [Canada is just as bad if not worse than the US with regards to housing](https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/crea-housing-december-1.631...) is a great example of a city like this. They aren't landlocked and so they can expand as they want. Also a decent sized city, and world class skiing within an hours drive.
My gut tells me people will then complain that the housing market in places like this are not worth buying into as houses are only increasing at the cost of inflation.
Price has also been going up in the cities you called “relatively affordable”
I live in the middle of nowhere and when renewing my annual lease my rent went 10% up
It is expensive for most people who live here
And Calgary prices have shooted up due to people leaving BC and ON. Not as expensive as BC or ON but nevertheless local people are feeling the changes.
Meh. 5 years ago my house in Calgary was worth 380k. I just sold it for 385k. It might have gone up to 400k if I had waited a bit.
Its not 'bubbling' everywhere - just the meccas of Toronto and Vancouver and their bedroom communities are going nuts. Move to western Canada and prices are still very reasonable.
It's a legitimate argument dang, just not expressed in the best way. The Canadian praries (AB, SK, MB) are rough. The crime rate and suicide rate is much higher than other provinces, especially Ontario, and there is very little to do. It's cheap because people don't want to live there.
You're right. Sales are down 30% in Calgary, but prices have only dropped 1.6%. [1] Still, that's compared to a 9% rise for the rest of Canada. [2] I'd still expect them to drop significantly more as laid-off oil workers burn through their savings and find themselves unable to pay their mortgage.
I live in Vancouver. Cost of living looks bad. Quality of life is good. I look out of the window of the window of my smallish condo at the beautiful mountains and all seems well.
It's tough to live in this town on the median local income. Get a very good job before you move here. There are much more affordable Canadian cities with the same social deal and without the Vancouver housing crisis. But if you can make it work, this is a nice place.
For example, Vancouver's real estate is pricey because it's one of the nicest places to live in the world. The rise of teleworking won't erase the mild weather all year round, the access to world-class mountain sports (hiking, climbing, cycling, skiing, etc.), the ocean with its views, great asian food, the rule of law, liberal culture, etc.
That's a very different scenario than, say, Winnipeg where it's -30 half the year and the other half the year the insects are so bad they send trucks around to fog pesticides. Plus you have conservative culture, no mountains nor ocean, little in the way of outdoor sports unless you like quad biking and fishing, or hockey.
I lived in Vancouver for a short while, and have visited Winnipeg several times for conferences and work trips. I can see reasons to live in Vancouver even if you didn't have to live there for work. I can see no reasons to want to live in Winnipeg unless someone was literally bathing me in money.
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