“We have to get better at this,” he said.

However, he said there’s always an opportunity to look at more sustainable suburb planning. Gordon noted that there are usually two working people in suburban homes, and he doesn’t expect both will end up doing so remotely. “It’s really been a game changer in many ways,” said Lee. One might suggest, as Canadian Home Builders’ Association CEO Kevin Lee did, that working from home could help address a longstanding concern around urban sprawl: commuting, and the associated pollution. However, “a significant number believe that there will be at least some movement away from major cities, even if they remain attractive to many people,” the 2021 report on emerging trends in Canadian real estate says.Īccording to a June, 2020, survey conducted by Nanos for the Ontario Real Estate association, 61 per cent of Ontarians actively in the real estate market agreed or somewhat agreed that living in the suburbs was more appealing to them than before the pandemic. A similar percentage said the same of living in a rural area, while 34 per cent said so about living in a downtown setting. Interviewing real estate industry insiders, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Land Institute found no consensus as to whether suburbanization will increase, “in a world of remote working, affordability concerns, and pandemic-related worries about dense environments and taking mass transit.” Article content A Faulkner Real Estate sold sign stands in front of a Westboro home. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. It’s a trend that hasn’t fully manifested, raising major questions about how pandemic-driven urban exists will impact the places people live, or used to live. They belong to a cohort of Canadians who’ve elected to leave the country’s largest cities since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, relocating to suburbs or smaller communities further afield. “And my kids can just run outside and run up and down the street … and it’s a little townhouse community, and there’s just packs of eight-year-olds riding their bikes around.”įamilies like the Fairweathers have attracted a flurry of attention in recent months. “We can walk to the playground, and we can go for a hike right from our doorstep, it’s so green and beautiful,” said Natasha. Despite the financial stress - “it was a bit sickening to take on that kind of housing debt,” said Annabree - the family was clearly captivated by their new home. They traded their three-bedroom apartment in the city for a $660,000 townhouse they could just afford, thanks to a very low mortgage rate. The Fairweathers landed in Port Moody, a waterfront community in Metro Vancouver, home to 34,000 people. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.National Capital Region's Top Employers.

Urban strife steam