Thank you for sharing those facts because—full disclosure—I was in that business for 25 years. Before you can even put a shovel into the ground, you have to walk into the local engineering and building department and put down whatever the development charge is on that lot. That's before you even start the process, so there are also the financing costs that I forgot to mention in terms of what developers do.
It seems to me that as I've watched this situation of affordability unfold across the country.... We talk about affordability and first-time home buyers. If we could reduce that down to, say, 25% or 20% where we've seen the biggest growth, it's in the development charges. Development charges now range in my community of 100,000 people around $32,000 a door. If it's an apartment building, it's every door in the building. If it's a new home, that's a door.
We definitely need the infrastructure. People don't mind paying their fair share, but people around the municipal level seem to think that this is coming out of the builder's skin or the developer's skin, that somehow they're absorbing those costs. Do you know why? It's because they're making too much money. They're rich guys, right? That's the perception. Do you see that perception at a municipal level in your part of the real estate industry?
In fact, at the end of the day, do you know who pays for it? The person who's buying the house.