Beating the housing market horse some more

I was talking over the weekend with a good friend who lives in Calgary, and he told me something very interesting: people he knows who are in the market for a house are purposefully seeking out homes that were built before 2002.

Why?

Because as the housing boom has heated up in Alberta, deficiencies and shoddy workmanship have increased exponentially. In my work, I have witnessed deficiencies in plumbing, framing, and drywalling that would curl your hair, especially the crummy plumbing being slapped in to some homes. Builders are hard pressed for labor, and have to take whatever trades are available. As a result, there's a sizeable majority of trades who just don't care, slap any old work in, and move on to the next job.

A few weeks ago, I was speaking with a client who is building, and in fact over-building her house. I commented at the time that in the face of so many million dollar homes that are quite literally slapped together, when the time comes to sell her house ten years from now, it will look very good from a resale perspective compared to so many others of the same vintage.

I knew that there would be a reckoning, I just didn't expect home buyers to catch on so fast.

I feel bad for the people who have paid $900K for a new house, and will learn that it needs $150K in fixups when the time comes to unload it.

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