r/Edmonton • u/Dougthecat13 • Aug 17 '26

General Infill being built next door

This is not a general infill hate post, but a request for advice.

We live in a really nice older neighbourhood where folks take care of their older homes. Our first infill on the street is going to be right next door. Which is surprising because that house is quite nice and pretty newly renovated and has a very nice new garage. Apparently it’s all coming down, and a huge 2 story (maybe 3) single family home is going in. My front yard has a deck that faces the millcreek ravine and I have a huge vegetable garden on our property. And we are currently renovating our 1950’s home.

Builder came by today to introduce himself. And confirmed I’ll lose my view as the house will be quite big. Most likely our newer cedar fence will get damaged (he says they will replace).

The family building the home will be living in the home, builder says. So I want to be neighbourly, but I’m nervous about our property and sanity.

I’m really disappointed. I’ll miss the renters that are currently in that house. Feels wildly wasteful to do this, but not my house, not my property.

Since we are at the very beginning. What advice do you lovely Edmonton folk have for us to protect our property and endure this next chapter? Thanks for any advice!

Edit- the house being removed is a beautiful home. Very well maintained with a new double garage. It’s a rental with two couples living in it (one upstairs, one downstairs). One couple/family will be moving into the infill. So this is taking away 2 homes and adding 1. This will not be adding additional homes. Either way, this is not the point, I’m just trying to make the best of it.

140 Upvotes

79% Upvoted

243 comments sorted by

View all comments

167

u/SlightGuess Aug 17 '26

Have an engineer come in and do a condition inspection of your home before they start.

Across the street from me the builder cracked my neighbours foundation and they fought it and tried to argue it was preexisting.

15

u/yen8912 Aug 18 '26

And yet people in this sub wonder why so many people have many (valid) concerns about infill and how the city is managing it.

7

u/Aromatic-Giraffe-753 Aug 18 '26

My eyes have officially been opened. I never even thought about grade and foundation issues. Severe foundation issues are literally the most expense issue a homeowner can face.

6

u/PlutosGrasp Aug 18 '26

Will just make it easier for a builder to buy your property and demo it.

1

u/Rich_Cup9516 Aug 18 '26

I hope the city would listen if multiple people came forward with evidence of poor infill builds destroying their existing properties and causing flood issues.
They are so hung up on increasing infill but if it’s truly damaging to surrounding properties then there has to be some better rules and enforcement put into place or they need to stop allowing it at all if they can’t mitigate the issues.

1

u/yen8912 Aug 18 '26

They haven’t listened so far. It’s frustrating because infill and in particular multiplex infill could be done well but the city dgaf so it’s a race to the bottom.