I hope you had a fantastic February!
We certainly have had an eventful month. We began construction of our fourth coach house, which happens to be the first one being constructed in Oshawa!
Things are moving fairly quickly, so we expect an end date near the beginning of May, just in time for when people begin moving in the spring!
We also got our rendering for one of our apartment buildings this past month. It will still take over a year till this project will be breaking ground, but it was exciting to get our first glimpse of what it will look like! The apartment building is a 7 unit project we will be building in Bowmanville.
A Quick Construction Tip!
People aren’t aware that you can pour foundations in Canada any time of the year. You can, only you’ll need to be prepared to protect the ground from frost. Water expands 10% by volume when it freezes, if you pour your foundations on frosty ground, when it thaws the soil will settle. This will cause settling of your home and potential foundation issues.
We have been extra diligent so we do not get frost under this foundation for the couple weeks it will be exposed to the cold weather before we have the framing complete and the building is closed up.
We will be documenting the construction process on our social media. For anyone that would like to follow along you can follow us @northlakesdevelopments on Instagram.
5 Years Without Single Family Zoning
It isn’t only Canada that has had to come up with solutions for the increase in population caused by Immigration. Many other places in North America are having the same problem. Some cities have been on the leading edge of progressive changes redefining our urban living environments.
Minneapolis has been at the forefront of these changes making many changes that are now being discussed in Ontario and within our municipalities. Minneapolis eliminated single family zoning, parking requirements and allowed for increased density downtown and on transit corridors.
Since it has now been five years since these changes were enacted we can now start to see some of the effects these changes have made come to pass.
In five years, Minneapolis added 12% to it’s total housing stock significantly above other cities housing growth rates. The majority of the growth came from mid-sized apartment buildings from up zoning downtowns and transit corridors.
This increase in housing units had a stabilization effect on rental rates, with rental prices only increasing 1% over the five years in Minneapolis and the rest of Minnesota rose 14% on average.
What This Means!
As we progress through the coming years, we will see a similar effect here in Ontario. We are seeing the same changes coming in effect here that were put in place five years ago in Minneapolis.
It remains to be seen how similar our results will be to theirs however. In our opinion their would need to be some drastic changes in the municipalities to speed up approval processes for new units to level of rent prices at any meaningful rate. Nonetheless things are heading in the right direction, and meaningful change is on its way!
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For any concerns or inquires you can reach us at info@northlakesdevelopments.ca or through our website contact page.