There is also the NIMBYism in the inner city suburbs which should be densified. These suburbs are filled with wealthy people who will not just acquiesce to high density developments and decades of transport infrastructure revision.
Finally there are heritage listings. These are buildings which are designated as having cultural significance. You can't knock them down, they have to be maintained, often at great expense. Councils are militant about protecting heritage listings. On more than one occasion a stalemate develops and the owner of the property lets it sit for years and years until the heritage building essential falls down by itself. Yet when a new building is built, the council is happy for any sort of ugly box. Go figure.
I haven’t been able to find reliable numbers on the number of new condos coming in, but looking around the city it’s hard to believe that we would not be increasing supply. For example, I live in a condo / townhouse development that has 450 units; before this was built, there were 4 single family homes on the same land.
Stats Canada is starting to put out information on multiple house owners. The majority of the multiple unit owners own within the same city as their primary residence. People who see the headlines speculate it’s cottage owners, but it’s really not the case.
From anecdotes, the other driver of non-owner occupied apartments are people who live at home but are able to buy an apartment to rent out. They do this because housing keeps going up here and they want to build equity to be able to afford a house once they are married and move out of the family home.
