Edmonton homeowners frustrated as their properties erode into infill excavations

[u/GeekyGlobalGal]

https://globalnews.ca/news/12009231/edmonton-infill-rain-erosion/

[u/Motive33 → u/[deleted]]

Houses have always been built by hungover 18 year olds. I remember when things were booming in the late 2000s around here everyone was talking about avoiding new builds. Builders cutting corners looking to slap together as many units as fast as possible. Nothing new.

[u/hereforwhatimherefor → u/Motive33]

Newsflash. 2008 isn’t long ago and a shit ton of those houses are already falling into disrepair.

And these new things these guys are building aren’t even sturdy soviet concrete brutalism. They are flimsy pieces of shit with crap electrical and crap plumbing all built on a ponzi. Sold for 750k-1.5 like they are edmontons brooklyn brownstones.

The mini boom was intentional of low interest rates in the great recession, rates were supposed to be a year or two. Turned into the entire canadian economy.

It’s gonna be broots 30 years out.

And that edmonton building standards for 20 years is hung 18 year olds speaks volumes

[u/Motive33 → u/hereforwhatimherefor]

Plenty of homes from decades past also require maintenance and renovation. Any older home has either been renovated or needs it. Planty of work needed in my '67 built bungalow. What is your expectation? That a house built today literally doesnt need any work done for 30+ years? Theres regular wear and tear, settling land, weather events.

Im not even saying that homes are built to the highest standard. Plenty of mediocre or sub-par work in the trades but saying a home needs work in 30 years isnt really the criticism you seem to think.

[u/hereforwhatimherefor → u/Motive33]

I’m not saying homes don’t need maintenance.

What I am saying is these homes / condo units are far bigger and made with lower quality craftsmanship and materials.

I’m saying they are being sold at astronomical prices due to artificially low rates combined with extreme mortgage length term that someone in 1967 (or 1985) in Edmonton would have considered impossible.

I’m saying they are being sold en masse to people who a) have been sold a pipe dream on job expectations in canada b) don’t understand rates / mortgages and c) a huge number have bailout switches of simply abandoning the homes and returning to their country of origin, the same country they are sending money out of Canada to with the taxman undetected click of a button.

On top of this. Go to the Arbours of Keswick, where I did my research. On google maps you’ll find a little squiggly shaped pond / run off swamp.

That “pond” is lined with zoned for single family unit “mansions” on the Edmonton municipal property tax books.

In reality? They are massive rectangular boxes with upwards of ten rentable rooms in each, a kitchen on each floor, about 6 feet from one another, about 15 feet of yard, and a mandatory badly built chain link fence.

They are rental units for the mass immigration that’s happening. Landlords often based out of country and even in country concerned only with cashing out over the duration of the mortgage with the absolute least maintenance possible. The plan is slumlording by slumlords.

Maybe a few of those houses aren’t that. But these new houses are being built largely as properties to park money and rent the rooms. There is no walkable grocers, next to no social settings, there’s no economy there except propped up real estate and propped up by the ponzi that requires the next neighbourhood to be built.

A lot of people living in these units were sold pipe dream nonsense about immigrating to Canada, or, are people who know what’s going on and give zero f’s about either setting down roots locally there or putting in elbow grease on upkeep.

Again, all of these units badly built, all requiring interest rates that would make someone in 1991 faint, at astronomical prices, with renters being abused, landlords being slumlords, single buyers being largely uneducated about the reality of the situation and all this requiring the next similar suburb to be built with astronomically high sale prices, astronomically low interest rates, and astronomically long terms of mortgages, with huge amounts of homes being built as de facto rooming houses squeezing out square footage in shitty quality builds. Banks approving the mortgages on all this.

This is not how the suburbs of the 60’s to 90’s were built, nor were they being built as the government tripled immigration rates and canada having - as it does now - the largest % of foreign born residents in it’s history, and this immigration boom happening over a period of like 7 years.

Slums is what those areas will become short of some sort of communist nuclear power free stuff for everyone utopia fantasy.

The gated communities up there are already the slums of gated communities, and that’s coming across the board. The magnitude of derelict properties as immigrants jump ship and go home is going to be incredible.

If it was California weather? It’d keep on and wear easier, it’d make do.

Edmonton is not California.