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Would the housing built on Edmonton teardown lots cost a median-income household 30 percent or more of its income to buy?

The public record can’t back this up — not the same as proven false.More in the methodology· The panel materially disagreed; the disagreement is shown, not averaged.More in the methodology panel

Nobody can tell. The Bank of Canada stopped publishing the monthly mortgage series needed to test whether a median income household could afford new homes on Edmonton teardown lots, and the method gives no substitute.

What kind of record answered the question — an audited statement, a council report, a dataset. It is reported apart from the finding, because a claim can be Supported on a thin basis.More in the methodology: Direct Edmonton evidence

Not established

Verdict by a Three AI reviewers from different vendors research each claim independently in a first round that is blind to the other two, then read one another’s findings in a second round that documents errors. Which models ran is recorded with every run and shown in the AI review section of every question.More in the methodology under a A fixed synthesis rule, published in advance, turns the three verdicts into one finding word, so no person chooses the finding. The rule and every change to it are versioned in the methodology changelog.More in the methodology · The date the accounting window closes. Anything that happened after it is outside this check, and the date is fixed in the brief before any model runs.More in the methodology · The date we last re-read the cited sources and confirmed the page still matches them. It is not a claim that the records themselves changed.More in the methodology · When this is due for a fresh check of its sources. Past that date, treat it as unverified until it has been re-reviewed.More in the methodology · The version of the published method that produced these findings. Every change to the prompts, the merge and synthesis rules, the vocabulary or the validation bumps it.See what changed

What it rests on

  • The threshold is Statistics Canada's, quoted rather than paraphrased. Its shelter-cost-to-income classification, in force on the freeze date, splits households into those spending less than 30 percent of total income on shelter costs and those spending 30 percent or more. Neither the definition nor the classification carries any Edmonton figure. YF-EV-0106, YF-EV-0110
  • The financing inputs the brief fixes are published. The Bank of Canada's posted five-year conventional mortgage rate is available as a full observation history, the City publishes its municipal and education mill rates by year and assessment class, and Statistics Canada publishes an annual household spending table on provincial geography whose latest reference year before the freeze date is 2023. The archived page carries the water, fuel and electricity line for the principal accommodation on Canada geography only; the Alberta figure behind the run's monthly allowance is the run's own read of that table. The mortgage figure is a posted chartered-bank rate, not a contract rate any buyer transacted at, and the utility figure is a provincial average, not any dwelling's bill. YF-EV-0092, YF-EV-0046, YF-EV-0097, YF-EV-0107
  • One of those inputs needs a rule the brief does not supply. The Bank of Canada discontinued its monthly chartered-bank interest-rate publication on 2019-10-01, keeping the weekly posted series, so the price-month rate the brief calls for is not published as a monthly series for any purchase after September 2019 and has to be derived. YF-EV-0091
  • The income figure the whole test turns on is carried by the run's fetch report and by YF-EV-0049, which independently reports the same figure. The panel declared the 2021 Census median total before-tax household income for the City of Edmonton, $90,000, which puts the 30 percent line at $2,250 a month. The fetch report records both cited Census Profile pages returning a File not found body under an HTTP 200 when the run archived them, so the figure was not ingested from those pages. Nor was it the only input the run could not get: no first arm's-length sale price and no condominium fee was publicly available for any dwelling in the cohort. What the registry does carry is the City's own affordability analysis, built on a median-income Edmonton household under the City's own method, and a later Statistics Canada table reported on a different unit, economic families rather than households, which offers an Edmonton census-metropolitan-area geography. The run used that estimate only as a labelled sensitivity, and the finding that it would not change which dwelling types pass is the run's own arithmetic. YF-EV-0059, YF-EV-0049
  • The run lacked sale prices to run the test on and used, or could have used, the assessed-value fallback the brief allows for a first full assessment roll. The City's assessment data publish assessed values only, with no sale prices, no shelter costs and no tenure; the City calls an assessed value a mass-appraisal estimate rather than a transaction price; and Alberta's land-title registry releases each title or registered document on its own single order, whether through SPIN2, ARLO or a registry agent, rather than as an open dataset. YF-EV-0040, YF-EV-0047, YF-EV-0036
  • The City has run its own affordability analysis, on its own method, and it is not this one. Its 2024 market housing affordability report found that a median-income Edmonton household could afford benchmark row and apartment product and could not afford the benchmark single and semi-detached product it prices at $431,100. It uses benchmark prices, income bands and a mortgage-qualification method rather than the frozen shelter-cost model, and it says nothing about replacement dwellings on teardown lots. YF-EV-0049
  • The comparators that exist answer a different question. CMHC's absorbed-price distribution for newly built dwellings in Edmonton is a directional new-construction comparator whose captured table covers single- and semi-detached units only, so it says nothing about new row or apartment prices, and it does not isolate teardown replacements or separately titled dwellings and is not lot-matched. The REALTORS Association's July 2026 Greater Edmonton Area averages put detached at $585,726, semi-detached at $425,329, row and townhouse at $292,756 and apartment condominium at $214,521, which shows cheaper ownership product exists in the resale market and is not a matched teardown-replacement figure. YF-EV-0105, YF-EV-0104
  • Renting the replacement housing is not tested, and the reason is a gap in the record rather than a result. CMHC's Rental Market Survey reports rents that carry no heat-included status and covers structures of three or more units, which is the scope the source establishes. The run found no open cohort-level source of contract rents, so no utilities-inclusive shelter cost can be built for the units held on a single title. YF-EV-0039
  • The City's own affordable-housing definitions are deliberately not applied here. The guidebook gives two alternative definitions: rental or ownership housing that gets government financial help, upfront or ongoing, keeping costs below market price for households earning less than the median income for their household size; or, separately, a property rented under a government agreement aimed at reducing poverty, with rent capped at no more than 80 percent of market rate or 30 percent of the resident's pre-tax income. The guidebook excludes market home ownership from both, so market replacement dwellings fall outside them by construction. YF-EV-0050
  • Two of the brief's named sensitivities rest on regulation rather than choice. A 30-year amortization has been available since 2024-12-15 for a first-time home buyer or a newly built dwelling, but only on insured borrowing; above 20 percent down it is lender policy, not regulation. Where the minimum down payment is modelled instead, CMHC's published premium schedule by loan-to-value band is what gets added to the financed amount. YF-EV-0054, YF-EV-0093

What this does not settle

Limitations

  • Not established here is a statement about the record, not a verdict that the replacement housing is affordable. Two of the three seats found the record silent; the third ran a model that put 88.4 percent of separately titled replacements over the threshold. The disagreement is shown rather than averaged.
  • The test the brief fixes is a model of purchase affordability for a hypothetical household at the declared median income. It is not the cost borne by any dwelling's occupant, and no result under it says what any household paid.
  • Tenure is not used anywhere in the test, because no published source establishes tenure at the dwelling level for the declared cohort. A separately titled replacement is tested on the purchase model whether it is owner occupied, rented or unlet.
  • The one seat that produced a number priced every dwelling at its assessed value, because no first arm's-length sale price is public for any of them. Another seat documented that a lack of public access does not establish that no such sale existed, and assessed values can differ from sale prices in either direction.
  • That model also inherits the first claim's nonconforming frame: assessment-detected candidate lots rather than the brief's permit frame, and title form inferred from permit unit counts rather than read from the title record.
  • One seat documented an arithmetic description error in that model: 2,968 of 3,584 is called the lower bound with unclassified dwellings treated as meeting the threshold, but the numerator excludes all 225 unclassified dwellings. The arithmetic is the lower bound; the description of it is reversed.
  • About half the replacement dwelling units in the matched set, 3,244 of 6,603 in the reconstruction, are classed as sitting inside single-title multi-unit buildings and so fall outside the verdict denominator by the brief's own rule. That split is the seat's inference of title form from permit unit counts, not a classification anything in the record publishes, and the counts it produces are nonconforming: the same reconstruction reports 2,995.6 fractional unclassified units. It is a limitation of the record, not a finding about those units.
  • The utility allowance is a fixed provincial average applied identically to every dwelling. Removing it drops the failing share in that model from 88.4 to 80.9 percent without changing its verdict.
  • Condominium fees are not included for any dwelling, because none is published in the assessment record, and no bedroom breakdown is possible, because neither the assessment record nor the permits give bedroom counts.
  • CMHC has published a methodological critique of the fixed 30 percent ratio, arguing it measures a threshold rather than a household's actual capacity. The brief still uses the Statistics Canada classification, and the critique establishes nothing about Edmonton dwellings or prices.
  • The price relationship on redeveloped lots is a separate proposition with its own finding. A replacement dwelling can exceed an affordability threshold while costing less than the dwelling it replaced, and the reverse.

Missing evidence

Records we asked for and have not received, or that do not appear to exist publicly.

  • First arm's-length sale prices and dates for every separately titled replacement dwelling, linked to completion and title history. This is the brief's primary price basis and it covered zero cases (Alberta Land Titles at Service Alberta, and MLS records held by the REALTORS Association of Edmonton; critical).
  • Title form and a verified dwelling count for every replacement building, which is what separates the verdict denominator from the excluded single-title units (Alberta Land Titles and City of Edmonton Development Services; critical).
  • A retrievable source for the declared City median household income. The two Census Profile URLs cited for it returned a File not found page, so the run's primary income input is not in the registry (Statistics Canada; critical).
  • A predeclared method for deriving price-month five-year conventional mortgage rates after the Bank of Canada ended the monthly series in 2019 (YEGFacts editors, using the Bank of Canada weekly series; critical).
  • Property-level condominium fees for every condominium-titled replacement (condominium corporations and listing records; high).
  • Contract rents and their utility terms for replacement units held in single-title buildings, without which rental affordability cannot be tested at all (landlords; CMHC does not collect utility inclusion; moderate).
  • Bedroom counts per replacement dwelling, for the bedroom breakdown the brief requires (City of Edmonton Assessment and Taxation, and builders' listings; moderate).
  • Same-neighbourhood median sale prices by year, for the neighbourhood comparator the brief names (REALTORS Association of Edmonton; moderate).

The question it answers

What happens to the price of an Edmonton house when it is torn down and replaced?

One brief, one body of evidence and one panel run cover every claim under that question, and each claim still gets its own finding. The investigation behind this one is there: the evidence, the reviewers' own verdicts, the corrections history and the other claims checked alongside it.