Don't get me wrong. I'm a big fan of success. I just get irritated when the statements get thrown around that there is not profit in the business. Of course there isn't. The money is taken out of the business leaving little behind...
Most of the money is in custom homes and huge spec volume. You don't see Knight Construction, Huxley, Christopher Developments, Johal Developments, etc., building too many spec homes. Abstract has done a few spec home but it seems they are moving away from that into condominium projects such as http://www.villagewalkvictoria.com/ and http://elementresidences.ca/
For custom homes you need reputation behind your name which not many people have and spec volume requires a huge amount of capital and risk tolerance which not many people have either.
A builder building a couple of run of the mill spec homes is not living in the Uplands, for the most part. All the guys living the Uplands are pretty big players, Huxley, Johal, and I think the Limona owner has an approx. $5 mill home in the Uplands.
It's much like real estate, there is solid money in it for sure, if you are in in the top 1% of the realtors, so 12 out of 1200 can likely afford the live in the Uplands, the other 1188 not so much.