Speaking of the Alberta housing boom and labor shortage

One of my little hobbies is doing a little buy/sell/trade business on Audiogon, which is like eBay, but a more exclusive site, and focused entirely on HiFi. In addition to my own gear, I also broker deals for people who want to unload their equipment, but are too lazy to set up their own Audiogon account.

Last week I sold some cables to a guy who lives in Thunder Bay, Ontario. On the phone, we were having a chat and the subject of labor costs amongst the trades came up. His sister lives in Calgary, and his other brother-in-law lives in Thunder Bay, and runs a drywall company. Well, sister needed some drywalling done, and after shopping around for quotes determined that it would be cheaper to fly brother-in-law and his entire crew in from Thunder Bay, put them up in a hotel, and pay their standard rate than it would cost to hire a company in Calgary.

In addition to saving money, she got better quality work done. Brother-in-law walked on to a few other jobsites while he was in town, and pronounced the quality of work he saw as "Total shit."

The fact is, right now builders and general contractors are so busy, that they have to take what they can get. And some sub-contractors are so concerned with getting paid and moving on to the next job that the quality of work goes out the window. You pay too much, and get too little.

Moral of the story: don't build a house until the next recession.

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