Welcome to Halifax's New Condo Market

Here's a half-baked idea I'm just gonna throw out there:

Should we institute a condominium density law? That is, if there are more than a certain amount of condos in a certain area, we limit new construction of condos - forever.

Here's my reasoning:

Condos are extremely difficult to legally dissolve. Any other type of ownership structure can rapidly be switched (bureaucratic strictures aside) to anything that the market demands, thus commercial becomes residential and industrial becomes parkland or what have you. Obviously, this is a beneficial form of flexibility for a city to have, but with condos it's a one-way street. We're not at the point in Halifax that we really need to worry about it yet, but there are certainly places that are extremely exposed to the risks of this. Toronto springs to mind.

Firstly, we learned in the post-war building boom that it's bad to have a massive amount of any kind of building stock. You end up with a long trough in which the structures are old, in need of serious repair, and are simultaneously unfashionable and valueless. In our area we've got large swathes of public housing which fit this description, we've barely begun to move out of this trough in the North End, and there are multiple beige townhouse type developments which are going to start showing their age soon.

Secondly, tastes change. In the 150 year we'll be occupying these buildings, can anyone honestly say they'll be thriving housing options over the entire period? There are a number of things that can take the shine off these kinds of developments: interest rates returning to the historic average, a real estate market correction, a legislated subsidy towards more energy-efficient buildings which can't be easily applied to glass-sheathed concrete boxes in the sky, or any number of other things. What if the fad for really small living spaces fades, which it almost certainly will if real estate gets even a tiny bit cheaper over the years?

All of which is to say, if we simply continue the way we are, there are no incentives for anyone to pursue the mixed-income, mixed-use, high density neighbourhoods which we pretty much have accepted to be "the way" when it comes to citybuilding. If anything, the end user (condo owner) will reap the most benefit, as they will garner a market premium for artificial scarcity.

/r/halifax Thread Link - thecoast.ca