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RBC urges Canada to prioritize construction skills in immigrants to tackle housing crisis
(financialpost.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2024
41 points (90.2% liked)
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Incredibly stupid, but I'd expect nothing less from a big bank that's complicit in the country's economic woes. There's no shortage of people who know how to build homes.
There's a shortage of people who will do it for starvation wages though. And that's what the big banks really don't want.
I'm not certain about your neck of the woods but we were looking at a bathroom reno in BC and the wait lists started at a year out. Now the organizing contractors might have been stiffing the actual labor but the quotes we were getting were quite high.
That's a reno not a new build. Renos can charge like crazy because you're a captive audience, unless you move your only option is them and they set the price.
In new construction the faster and cheaper it goes up the more profit they make per unit.
Cool - but whys the wait list so long. If renos are free money spigots why aren't companies lining up to snatch prospective renoers in a shorter time window. I'm not in this industry but your comment makes no sense - there's a severe shortage of renoers in the lower mainland and tens of thousands of households with book valuations that are all north of a million on paper.
What I found when we were looking for someone to do a kitchen repair/renovation was that most of the contractors didn't want to deal with small jobs.
It wasn't until they heard it was (partially) an insurance job that a few of them became interested.
Alberta had over 200k immigrants last year. There's a huge shortage, not just a shortage of good pay.
And that's mostly because other areas cost to much, it's all just a part of the same problem.
Alberta goes through booms and busts, once population hits a point wages will go down and housing prices will go up
I don't argue with your basic premise (companies pay the cheapest contractor, etc), but it is worth noting that because of those pressures, many experienced people leave the industry, thus creating the lack of workers they are talking about. Reversing that change is slow, even if wages rise, and there is no instant fix. Getting people who have left for another industry to return can be difficult, especially in the case of people selling off tools, etc. where the cost to re-enter is often too high to justify.
Add on to that, developers have no incentive to construct everything at once, thus stalling future growth for their company and over saturating the market, driving down housing prices and their enormous margins.