Population and Housing

[taylortbb]

As long as the current trend to build "luxury housing aimed at high end clients and/or investors" persists, I'm not convinced that the "just build more housing everywhere and let the market decide" model could easily be implemented here.

But why do developers focus on high end condos? Because they have the highest profit of course.

So why don't we see this issue with other products? Why does Toyota bother to produce Corollas when they could make Lexus LSs? Because the market for $100k Lexus LSs is finite, so they also produce lower cost higher volume products as there's money to be made there too. If Toyota was restricted to 100k cars/year they'd cut the Corolla, not the Lexus LS.

The argument for "build more" is that if we did, developers would build less expensive housing too. They only focus on "luxury" housing because in a constrained market it's logical to focus on the most profitable products.

Already we're seeing some developers like Vive that target mid-market rentals, because the luxury rental/condo market is close to saturation.

I also think it's important to separate what's marketed as luxury from what's actually luxury. Charlie West was marketed as all luxury, but there's nothing luxurious about the basic 1bd units. The McGillivray units were actually luxury, but there's a reason they're only 3 of 31 floors.

This isn't to say there's no role for the government for subsidized housing, but that's only a small fraction of the market at the very low end. The mid market could be served with market-rate housing.