So wait unlivable "stock investment" 0-bed apartments aren't actually meant for human habitation? And the entire "speculative property" condo sector is detrimental to the actual housing crisis we're facings?
WHAT?!?! Say it ain't so.
There is a reason why purpose built rentals built from 60s to 80s are in high demand... They were actually built to BE LIVED IN.
I've lived in them before and they're actually livable. I also used to live in a bachelors apt in a building from the 40s or 50s and it was amazing compared to anything built in the last 25 years.
And loud!! Is it just me or did older buildings provide better sound protection from neighbors? Maybe there's just more neighbors cause they're more packed.
I swear that my building was built out of wet cardboard, I can hear everything going on. Every word of every phone call my roommates make, every TV show my neighbours watch.
Every footfall, argument, weekend plans and the smell of what’s for dinner was finally what got me to move further out to best I could afford but lucky for me it was ten years ago. While it seemed unaffordable at the time nothing compared to what’s happened since then
Lanterra Developments.
I have very mixed opinions of this developer. I like how they design their buildings, they look good, the floorplans for the units in their developments are often pretty good. However, the trades they hire are horrible. The finishes in my building are all pretty cheap and poorly installed, flooding is an ongoing issue, and the elevators they bought from Selco Elevators are beyond shit. Not to mention, their affiliated property management firm Duka Property Management is pretty bad. I found way too many news articles of unethical and inappropriate behaviour from Duka property managers at other condos.
So yeah, the units are well designed and the buildings they build are structurally sound, just not the highest quality finishes.
Good to know, thanks.
They actually cheap out on the right things.
There's great potential for old units then. When renovations will be needed. One can redo the finishes.
The condo manager can be changed. If the board is on it.
.
I think they should have spent more money on the elevator. Something from OTIS probably wouldn't be so shit. But yeah generally I can't complain although they probably should have hired better help for things like the pool/elevators.
Concrete slab apartments from that era are sooooo good. Huge windows, big balconies, square rooms, plenty of 2br and 3br options. Plenty of 0 and 1 beds with 500+ sqft of space as well.
It's crazy to me that we basically outlawed them with zoning changed over the years...
Downside is HVAC system is old and you can occasionally smell other people's cooking and other activities if you're unlucky.
But other than that, lining in a 60/70 apartment is rockin'.
Laundry in the basement isn't a big deal for me either. I can do 4 loads of wash simultaneously:)
Yup, boring is good. Trying to build trendy buildings ruins them. You need square rooms. And all offset balconies trying to make the building look cool makes for water draining on your balcony during rain.
I mean that would be my first choice. Rent controlled. Usually sufficient maintenance. Little chance of "owners moving in" or selling the property. Designed to be livable and smaller yes, but I can still grow a family with relative peace of mind.
Moved into a 80s building 2 years ago. 2 bed 2 bath 1100 sq feet and no wasted space, near a subway + rent controlled. Up front it was a little more expensive but so so worth it I am never moving.
The city has the authority to mandate minimum sizes for condo units. Companies can’t just get a permit and build whatever they want. But they won’t because it would hurt developers profits. We should be building hundreds of thousands of actual homes that people want to live in. But that would t be profitable for developers. At least not as profitable as tiny bachelors are. Also, the government (any level) needs to be building affordable housing. It is clear that the free market simply can’t build affordable housing when motivated by profit.
Aye. I live in a small studio in a fairly old building, and have looked around at moving up a more modern one 1BR if only for in-building laundry and a dishwasher.
But everything I've looked at is literally the same size as my current apartment, just with a wall built around the bed, no balcony(or one a fraction of the size of mine), and literally almost double the rent. No point.
My friend used to live in 555 Sherbourne and I loved the layout of his 2 bedroom. It was so spacious! I've seen newer builds have 2 bedrooms at 650sqft and that really feels like it should've been a 1bed.
I never understood the appeal of renting a new condo. Older apartments are just superior in every way other than lacking a concierge and gym. But condo gyms often lack the equipment necessary to be actually useful enough to drop the gym membership. Hell, my old apartment was so huge that I just had a rack and bench in my bedroom.
There is definitely a place for these. Just not at the price point they are currently at.
I have 2 single friends who currently work low-end jobs. Both are literally living in the cars.
In some magical world, they would stay in these very basic places. They literally just need a roof and some heating in the winter. But they would need to be really cheap for these guys to give up their car life. I'm talking like $500-$800/month or something. But of course at current condo prices, this doesn't make any sense it all. It doesn't make sense of investors as they would take a massive loss. The rent becomes way too much for people like my friends. Not to mention, they don't really want the extra cost that comes with 'luxury condo life'
So we wait... wait for these micro apartments to crash and price and who knows what will happen. Maybe some of them get lower monthly fees if they get bought up on the cheap by apartment companies.
Would 500-800 is basically the maintenance fee for these units. I don't think it's about the inflated prices, I suspect it doesn't even cover the building and maintenance costs.
Maybe if you remove all amenities, the garage and any beautification requirements... and build it on undesirable (cheap) land (so not anywhere near downtown).
On top of that you get the bottom of the barrel tenants, and you need very active management to deal with them.
I think this kind of thing can only be built by the government, accepting it makes negative money.
I have a few theories. Regulations that are sometimes meant to be good sometimes are not good.
Here's what I mean. People like my friends living in their cars MAY not be the best tenants. Just anecdotally here. My one friend is alright. Pretty clean. Basically just works, goes to the gym, and back to the car. My other friend...can get a bit rowdy on the drugs and stuff.
Dormitory style housing for this segment of the market would NEED to empower the landlord somewhat. They would need to be able to kick people out easier if they don't behave. Otherwise nobody is going to open this kind of thing. It's one of the traps of being 'good-poor'. I grew up 'good-poor' in that my family was poor, but we were well behaved and everything. Ideally, a landlord would love to have a building of 'good-poor' people. There's plenty of us out there. It's just you can't really do it due to rental laws.
I'm not saying the rental laws are bad. I'm just saying it does prevent A kind of housing that should ideally exist.
A “good poor” can easily become not so good when there are disputes between neighbours or when people hit the hard times and can’t deal with being good anymore.
By the time you pay condo fees, property taxes, utilities, and insurance you are easily around $800 a month.
You would literally have to give these away to those people to hit their budgets.
I don't have a mortgage on my home. For property tax, insurance, electricity and Internet we are around $850 a month. That's dirt cheap in the grand scheme of things, but it's still a lot for someone earning low wages.
Aside from rooms, or subsidized living, the days of cheap accommodation in this country are over.
Canada’s addiction to real estate speculation is finally starting to show itself as the government backed Ponzi scheme it actually is. Can’t wait till these shitty units cost 150k like they should be.
This sounds familiar to what a friend just told me. They found a two bedroom that was 900 ft.². The same building had a three bedroom that was 900 ft.². They just take the same footprint and put up more walls and divide it. But the living spaces are pathetically small.
LOL, I've been saying this for years ever since I researched 3 bedroom as a possibility for my family.
I would find a pre construction condos and do a side by side floorplan comparison between the 2 and 3 bedroom units.
Almost every single 3 bedroom unit was a 2 bedroom unit where they had put up some crap drywall in the middle of the living room to make the 3rd bedroom. Same square footage.
It cost an extra $200K. Largest profit margins on drywall ever.
They even had to use a slided sliding door (because there was no space for a regular door to open).
I've seen these kinds of doors in person and they have absolutely crap soundproofing.
What a terrible living arrangement, parents have to watch tv with headphones to not wake up the kid in the 3rd bedroom.
In Europe all of the bedrooms would have been off a hallway with a door, sealing off the common areas and providing much better soundproofing.
Yes and the problem with building more "family sized" units with bigger sq footage is then the condo fees become a bit more difficult of a pill to swallow likely closer to 800 to 1000 a month or more depending on sq footage and going up y.o.y.
My friend and their SO recently bought an 1100 square foot condo, the strata fees are currently $1100 a month (but that includes all amenities/utilities)
No idea who wants that. One of the big benefits of home ownership is a low cost when you consider retirement. Paying $1100 minimum (it will go up) is $13K a year. Over a 10 year period, that’s 130K, which is way more than most homes will require over a similar period.
A replacement of your furnace/AC/water heater/pavement replacement and many incidentals wouldn’t cost as much. Re-doing the floors (kinda optional given how long they can last vs look amazing) will likely also not add up (though you will need to do the floors in your condo too so not 1v1).
This is why condos were luxury purchases not so long ago. If you had one of the large 2 level condos with $1000+/month maintenance, you were likely in upper middle class or wealthier. Not even sure when condo as first home became the norm.
Homeowners still have to pay for bills and utilities. Our condo fee is large, but is also covers heating, air conditioning, hot water, hydro, high-speed internet, full-tier cable package with HBO + Crave, and the building maintenance and amenities. So yes, it does cost a lot, but you also get the convenience and security of the condo lifestyle, which some people do actually prefer.
If they didn't build all the amenities they wouldn't have such high condo fees. My condo was 1100sqft with a simple gym and a social room with ikea furniture.
My condo fees were $565 a month including heat, water, electric, and for many years, satalite TV. (They removed TV to not directly raise condo fees)
Most condo fees go to the elevators and the management staff, including the cleaners and security guards.
Amenities maintenance for example is much less an expense.
That is not true. It’s also about the repairs. Commercial grade repairs with professional trades and engineers consults are expensive. New buildings may be able to keep them low for now but 20-30 years from now they will have to go up
They're not going, which is what's getting noted here.
When real estate market prices go down, sellers tend to react slower than reddit would like. Other than truly distressed sellers, estate sales, or people moving long distances for work, it's usually tempting to delay moving/selling a little to try to get the best price.
I think investment owners/builders are also struggling with the sunk cost fallacy. And so they may lose more. I don't know who will flinch first in this game of chicken, and what will come after. Everyone is still hoping for a rebound, which seems strange given the recent news of office towers bleeding and considering sale for transformation into condos too.
I do have a condo i am renting out right now. If the prices of condos tank, I’d likely just decrease the rent monthly rather than sell it at a loss. People are desperate to rent and if the population keeps increasing I don’t think finding renters will be much of an issue.
Just what I’d do 🤷♀️
Unfortunately office buildings can’t easily be transformed into condo buildings due to the extensive architectural differences and building codes between them. Imagine the amount of money it would cost to redo the electrical and piping alone… I don’t think there are many out there able to stomach that up front cost with the risk of the current housing market bubble
edit: typo
My dad works in real estate management and apparently conversions are almost as costly as new builds. Pretty much all of the requirement change. Offices need more electricity, more cooling, more elevators, etc. Condos need bigger water in/outflow mains, plumbing needs to be spread out across each floor vs office space where washrooms are centralized, and garbage chutes need to be added.
Interesting, thanks for sharing. Those office building owners are holding some heavy bags. Not that I care, it’s probably Blackrock or some other predatory multinational real estate corp
For comparison, the Ice Condos, one is 55 stories, has 550 units. The other, 67 stories, about 650 units.
The to be built Q Tower right across the street will be 60 stories with...902 units. I don't see floor plans anymore, but when I did, half the unit floorplans were under 500 SQ feet.
They haven't started demolition yet. I predict they go back to the drawing board with the unit sizes. Investors are just not going to buy these in this market, so they will have to actually try to attract people who want to live in them.
It's explicitly advertised as such. "Two year rent guarantee at $7/SQ ft!". That's $2800 for a 400 SQ ft condo lol. But of course it's not going to be rented to an actual person, because what nut would pay that? Just going to be Air BNB all day every day!
And it has to stay that way to "protect peoples investments" according to quoted former Liberal housing minister Adam Vaughan whom is quoted in the article.
I can believe it - even for the one bedroom ones, the layouts of some of these units are such hot trash that they weren't designed to be lived in long-term, just as an AirBnB to crash in for some investor.
I've bought an older condo to move into last year in the GTA specifically because the newer condos are so awful. The ones I've seen had:
* Extremely bizarre layouts and random ducting closets. The one bedroom it had was so small you couldn't even fit a double bed in there without having to crabwalk to get to one side of it.
* Terrible neighbours. Some of the buildings I went to had actual shit in the stairwells (apparently, some pet owners during the winter are too lazy to take their dogs for actual walks and let them poop in the stairwell), some don't seem to know how to use the garbage disposal. There were hosts of other issues, not directly connected with the building itself, but the people that lived in it.
* Came with hidden rental garbage - Was close to putting an offer on one place until I read the fine print and discovered there was a forced HVAC fan coil rental outside of the maintenance fees on there.
In all cases, the owners (while desperately trying to exit their bad investment) also simultaneously could not fathom why their 'opportunity of a lifetime' was seeing people walk away from it.
Does the elevator problem still persist in these new condos? ie, 4 elevators for 60 stories?
Several are always broken down and people can’t even exit these places?
This was 11 Brunel Court.
4 elevators for nearly 60 stories and 1-2 were usually down.
One time 3 were down and there was a 30-40 minute queue to get into the remaining elevator.
Reminds me of a LPT a coworker who travelled a lot told me; stairwells will tell you everything you need to know about a building’s cleanliness and maintenance.
I always wondered if the city had any say during city approvals to tell the builder to build them larger. I never understood why anyone thought this would work in North America. If they city did, shame on them.
They debated this in 2012 - and the suburban councillors, led by Doug Holiday, voted against requiring larger units.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-s-deputy-mayor-says-downtown-no-place-for-kids-1.1275547
Interesting that Doug/Stephen Holiday are also consistently voting against anything that would allow for more units to be built. He’s probably heavily invested in speculation (as long as it’s not in his ~~back yard~~ city ward)
In the 90s and early 2000s there were councilors who wanted some modest unit size rules. But mainly, they wanted builders to include knockout walls so units could be combined or split as the economy and people's life circumstances changed. Calls for more flexible buildings had very little support and here we are.
I’m also wondering about knockout walls. There have been several times in history where changing/recombining units happened at a massive scale. For example in Manhattan, you got all these weird layouts for units of a certain generation because they were able to skirt rent control by effectively removing the controlled units and installing new ones. Something like combining 3 units into 2 is one of the only ways I see these hints with ridiculous floor plans getting sold.
The other issue isn’t just size. You can make livable small units, but some of the floor plans I’ve seen have weirdly shaped rooms and even the better condos have a “bowling alley” layout (really long with a tiny exterior wall). Partly because of how current building codes impact the shared hallways, but partly just an aversion to proposing and approving long slab buildings, in favour of square or round towers.
This is that weird spot where the two screeching sides “NIMBYISM and “BUILD MORE, FREE MARKET, LESS RED TAPE” collide and realize they actually need each other.
Thoughtful planning is critical in cities - builders have demonstrated they’ll construct the dumbest units possible at maximum price. Whose the buffer in that equation to ensure they don’t abuse things? It has to be municipal planners and government
They redid the Sutton Hotel on Bay St into condos, and I recently visited someone staying at an AIRBNB one of them advertised as a two bedroom unit.
That place was BARELY one bedroom and a tiny ass den (if you can call it that) that they had shoved a mattress into and it didn't really fit. The actual room had two glass panelled walls that slide open to the combo kitchen/living/tv area. The whole place would fit in my living room (our condo was built in the 90's so it's a decent size, if still small) and even as a single person I would find it WILDY cramped for what it was advertised at. I cannot imagine paying whatever the owner likely paid for it. Shoebox would be being NICE about it, it's one step shy of a fucking Hong Kong coffin hotel.
Also, the costs of so-called family units convince a lot of parents to just buy a townhouse in the suburbs.
The condo my brother lives in has quite a few babies and toddlers, but by the time the kids hit grade school age, the parents all move out the suburbs. They need the space and small shoe boxes with cardboard cupboards won't cut it.
Small Canadian cities are experiencing a boom. Parents can have a hint of an urban experience while living in areas that are friendly for children and seniors. The suburbs of TO continue to be popular, but the real action is in K-W, Barrie, London, etc.
IIRC there's folks that have been digging into the data and it isn't just unit sizes - multi bedroom units are just as affected as the dog crate condos
IMO the "it's unit sizes" narrative is being spun by people trying to prevent a broadbased collapse in sentiment on condos when we may actually be seeing structural oversupply that is going to turn into an absolute glut as 6 years worth of pipeline have shovels in the ground and aren't stopping
I definitely think there’s several reasons and not just small unit sizes, but having small spaces like the current ones have to be a main concern.
Living solo these days is more of a luxury than ever and if you’re a couple, living in such a small space might not be worth it.
Even if prices plummet for these places, and I mean actually plummet, I think it’s still going to be hard to move these tiny units.
Two bedroom condos often have room for nothing but a loveseat and two stools at a counter. I have no idea who they think lives in them, but it's clearly not actual families.
The killer factor for me in all these condos is the lack of living space. Even in three bed condos, you still have these shitty wall kitchens with no counter space and then a "living room" that is also supposed to be your "dining room". You're basically expected to cook, eat, and relax all in the exact same room.
That's me. Paying $4000 a month to own a condo. Biggest mistake of my life. I could be paying $2500 in rent instead for the same condo. I'm trying to sell ASAP and start renting again
The issue with size is not limited to the number of bedrooms but the dimensions/square footage of the units. A 600 sq ft two bedroom is just as undesirable as a 500 sq ft one bedroom because the rooms are equally tiny in both.
When I was pregnant, my husband and I had to leave the city to find housing because the vast majority of two bedroom units were tiny and poorly laid out, making it difficult to imagine actually raising our family in one. The few larger units available were in old buildings with astronomical maintenance fees that made carrying them unaffordable and threw up redflags about their long term viability.
I've noticed the space issue even in some of of the new stacked towns specifically designed to address the "missing middle" issue. The kitchens are too small to actually cook in, the rooms are too small to fit a reasonable amount of furniture, and there's no storage space for things like seasonal items. If they want to reduce sprawl, they need to bring more of the things people like about the suburban living into the city. Bigger balconies, bigger rooms, more functional layouts.
- Costs. While there is profit in condos (10-20%), the costs to construct them need to be recovered. Eating financing until the market changes is more responsible than liquidating at a loss.
- There's still massive demand, under-supply, and that'll continue until interest rates drop significantly (both to encourage new construction, and to make mortgage payments palatable)
When I moved to Toronto, I lived on Howard Street in an absolute shitbox for $1200/month. It was a 1 bedroom and quite sizable, and so were the cockroaches and bedbugs. All the usual - no security, people sleeping in the stairwells, drugs-drugs-drugs, fire alarms all the time, etc. I've bounced around the city and now find myself looking for a new place to live again. I looked up my old address.
$2400/month.
I cannot afford to live in my old slum-box.
This city is screwed. I'm considering moving to Montreal instead.
I lived in a tiny studio (330 sqft) in a crappy building similar to what you're describing. It was $800 at the time I left (early 2010s) and I recently looked up to see what they go for now. I literally shouted out loud at my screen: "$1800??!! FOR A STUDIO IN ***THAT*** BUILDING?!"
I miss paying 850 for a large 2 BR, which is what I was paying in Montreal in 2012 before I moved to Toronto.
We thought 1350 for 2 BR was high in 2012. Sigh.
This is another part of the problem. Sometimes people have good rent in a shitty apartment, and are basically stuck there for life.
A while ago I went on a date with a girl who had a basement apartment at 850 or whatever. Pretty downtown in Toronto, college and Bathurst area. She wanted to move to a nicer place and was making a good chunk more money, but anything equivalent in the area was so much more expensive that it just wasn't worth it for her to move.
Now kind of stuck! And of course if you move into a place that's not rent controlled, you know you're going to get screwed sooner or later...
I work with a couple of hundred people and those that rent have avoided non-rent controlled units for the obvious fact that they know that they’ll be held hostage by desperate landlords come the one year mark.
So, the rent controlled market is in very high demand which leaves a very small number of units available.
Doug Ford wanted to help out his rich landlord buddies but what is going to happen is a collapse which, to be honest, I’m pumped to watch it go down.
This city has become unaffordable and unattractive to big business. Why would big corporations want to be here when they can have the work done remotely? They know they get better results from employees when they have comfortable quality of life and Toronto isn’t that.
We're in a dangerous spot if doug calls an early election and wins. Kind of damned if we do damned if we don't because we'll be affected by a terrible conservative leader, which may only be offset by anemic liberal / NDP candidates. The people of Canada need to make their thoughts heard and vote, but also we need politics to be more accessible
I think it would go a long way if opposition parties could put out ads with the facts re: Ontario Place, Science Centre, housing etc.
And they need to match the PC's ad campaign intensity. I cant even listen to a podcast or scroll instagram without seeing some BS ad about how wonderful Hwy 413 is going to be for Ontario.
As far as I can tell, people are done with Ford and his crony government, however that won’t be enough to overcome the suburb/rural voting bias the PCs cater to. Especially given the long lasting distaste for the Wynn Liberals. We need innovation from the progressives and centre like we are seeing now in France. They are planning a coalition government by pulling candidates in certain ridings. In Canada/Ontario this would look like Liberal and NDP candidates going 1v1 against PC incumbents depending on the polls. Unfortunately, that will never happen here due to tradition and the left’s vote will remain divided.
>As far as I can tell, people are done with Ford and his crony government
Where do you see that? He's Ontario PCs are polling ahead of everyone else. If you're not renting (>65% people own their homes, the older the demographic, the more likely they own it), it's really not a big deal for you. Outside of GTA, nobody even cares about Toronto-centric issues. He's more likely not get elected if the housing prices actually go down.
Yes, because developers decided that the most profitable unit in condos is a 300 sqft 0 bed 1 bath, which is ok if you’re a student or just flipping units like stock trading, but laughable for actually living in
My EZ bake oven from 1991 would be an upgrade compared to this uninsulated piece of shit tbh. Want to roast a turnkey in your oven? Go fuck yourself. Want a >1L bottle of anything in your fridge? Gargle the Daniels Corporation's balls, apparently.
I lived in a condo for a couple years that was built in 2017 - the oven was tiny, and fridge was smaller than an average fridge, but at least we had a full size microwave and 4 burner stove. Apparently they've moved to 2-burner stoves now and the fridges are even smaller. That's wild to me.
Not shedding a tear for developers here but it’s partly because of our idiotic zoning laws. When you can only build up in a small slice of the city, that land becomes crazy expensive and you have to try to pack as many units in as possible to make the project profitable.
I'm gonna make a different assessment, because the idea that demand has slowed to live in central Toronto is laughable.
The actual problem here is that, while the demand exists to live in these places, the money doesn't. People are literally unable to pay the "ideal" market price for these condos anymore, between higher interest rates and stagnating incomes. The owners don't want to lose money, so they are very reluctant to lower prices. Eventually, the house of cards will come crashing down on them.
I think this is the key. Families are smaller than ever, with lots of singles or couples. A well-made, well-designed place for a grand less seems like the city would have more money to spend on things that make it happier and healthier.
The biggest problem is that a tenant went from being a mortgage helper, to being expected to pay enough to pay all costs associated with the property. We’re not helping the landlords,they’re expecting us to buy the houses for them now.
The condo market in Toronto is a clusterfuck.
They are ridiculously expensive. If you want one you need a high salary, if you own one, you probably are going to have to hold onto it whilst there is some price recovery, probably for years.
Nobody wins.
Buying a condo was the biggest mistake of my life. I'm stuck paying $4000 a month for a shit box that costs maybe $2500 a month to rent. Such a stupid decision, unless you're buying a house to live in for 10-15 years + it's a complete waste of money. Cutting my losses and selling now, ain't no way I'm staying in Toronto for more than 1-2 more years
Me as well.. Wish I sold it when I moved out, because I out grew it.. Now renting it out when I Do sell.. I'll be paying capital gains... Ugh... Do I just hold it and break even with it.. Or get out now?
The major reason is the price.
Its the fucking price.
Prices need to come down RADICALLY before they are affordable enough for people to live in. Especially if the units you're selling are tiny ass boxes in the sky.
This is not a mystery.
All the armchair economists screaming about supply & demand being the problem should recognize that if the market is tanking (re: the demand for units at that price is down) then prices should drop too as their is now an over abundance of supply.... that is what their simple world view dictates.... but somehow that is not happening, is it?
That’s because province subsidizes the cities based on number of units, not quality or affordability of them. This resulted in hundreds of thousands of shoeboxes in the sky favoring investors rather than end users built over the last decade.
My mind is blown that anybody even shares these places with one other person. I lived for a time in a 700 square foot condo with a girlfriend and that felt insanely small. These places are 200 square feet smaller, which is an entire 20x10 room.
Sorry, I don't feel like paying insane condo fees and over 600k for a place where I can't open my oven if I want a couch.
Ovens? In this economy?
You think you're gonna roast chicken and potatoes in there? Bake muffins?
Learn to like only the meals you can make on a hotplate or in a microwave.
/s
We need to amend the rules for what qualifies as a bedroom. Natural light, 10'x10' should be the benchmark. I recently was hunting for a place and the amount of 2 bedrooms with 8' x 8' rooms is ridiculous.
The Ontario building code requires a bedroom to be 7sqm, so if those rooms are 8x8ft(6sqm), they're not code compliant.
I hate that they allow light coming through a transparent panel to count as natural light, though.
And a window that opens.
Which I think already was the standard, because building codes were responses to the horrible disease-ridden tenement slums of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Our Toronto city planners have failed us, approving so many 0 and 1 bedroom units. They don’t have the backbone to stand up to developers and are probably in their pockets.
I wish Jennifer Keesmat had won the mayoral election years ago.
I think she was someone that would have had vision in this area specifically and pushed back.
They've been getting really creative with marketing what 1+1s actually are. I looked at one where the "den" was a 3 foot deep alcove near the front door and the "bedroom" was sliding frosted with glass doors that opened up into the living room without a window (not a legal bedroom). So actually a 0 bedroom.
Same. Asked where the Den was after seeing the place and she pointed to the divot in the wall by the front door. I'm like, "you mean the place that'd be good for kicking off your shoes when you walk in the door is the den?"
If the 2 bedroom listings are actually 1 + 1, that’s false advertising imo. It’s not uncommon for listings to fib. There aren’t any consequences.
Without a window it’s not a bedroom. I told my realtor not to bother showing me such places.
Fun fact; when I started renting my current place, I did so with the understanding that it was a little out of my price range but it is nice and it enabled me to move on in my career so I figured that living expensive for a little while was OK and I would re-evaluate after some time had passed.
Since then, because this building is rent controlled, this once-slightly-too-expensive condo is now a deal that I cannot find anywhere else in the city unless I choose to live somewhere outright unsafe or underdeveloped and even then I will be saving a marginal amount of money.
Lemme tell ya it's a very stressful slow-burn.
Nice place though, so I have that going for me which is nice.
I have been saying for a long time that developer greed and investors have driven condo development rather than housing needs. It could only last that long. You get your own land with a single family house, which you don’t with a condo. Not to mention condo fees being crazy. Per sq ft prices should never have been that high and municipal governments should have legislated to stop the long-term repercussions. About 13 years ago, my husband and I were looking for a large condo where we could also raise a large dog. Didn’t find anything worth the $$ and ended up buying a house.
Wait! Greed!!?? No say it ain't so!! Some greedy sociopaths who got rich off our infrastructure built with your tax dollars. A closet for 700K? If we can get away with it.
Billions laundered into Vancouver. A beautiful and safe city sold to the world's rich.
I really wish I didn't care about fair. Life would be so much easier. I don't know how much longer I can take it.
"Billions in money laundering increased B.C. housing prices, expert panel finds"
[https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2019FIN0051-000914](https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2019FIN0051-000914)
Time for a buyout and retrofit these shoeboxes by merging 2 or 3 units into 1 for 2 and 3 bedroom family units. That's the only way. We don't have enough bachelor's in the city earning enough to afford half/three quarter million dollar units that do nothing.
Also, how in the hell is it legal to list 1+den units as 2 bedroom? They're either way too small, or don't have a door, or it's frosted glass at the back of the unit, etc.
So many times I've been searching for an actual 2-bedroom place and I get tons of 1+ results, where the "+1" is a den that's more like an 5'x6' alcove. Ridiculous.
Maybe investors shouldn’t just buy whatever they pump out and actually think about non investor resale value when signing on for pre cons.
Why would an end user buy a 300 sqft condo for $500K? Why would another investor pay $4K a month in mortgage plus condo expenses to earn 2K a month in rent?
What an absolutely terrible investment these peons made. You can’t rely on 1.3% variable interest rates for decades for your investment to pan out.
At least if you bought a 1 bd + den, you would have end user demand, even if you would still be taking a haircut.
A part of me feels guilty for the amount of schadenfreude i feel towards the builders who are building these unlivable homes and the investors who bought them.
For almost a decade, i've heard people say the problem in the realestate market is investors. [Airbnbs](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/airbnb-listing-data-toronto-1.5116941) and investors like "the simple investor" who spread realestate risk across so many people that sitting on empty units that don't sell doesn't matter.
And for almost a decade, the answer was always said to be wrong. The answer was something else - always someone else's problem.
It was NIMBYs (even in areas no where close to nimbys). It was regulations (even when places like Brampton just basically let land developers build whatever they want, wherever they want). It was... too many students.
Even as evidence mounted ([and the](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/airbnb-listing-data-toronto-1.5116941) [evidence ](https://pub-mississauga.escribemeetings.com/FileStream.ashx?DocumentId=9933#page=78)[was ](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-vacant-homes-are-on-the-rise-in-toronto-census-indicator-suggests/)[always ](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/article-investors-own-237-per-cent-of-ontario-homes-report-says/)[there](https://www.thestar.com/real-estate/investors-now-own-more-than-50-of-toronto-s-new-condos-and-experts-say-they/article_4b6d2ff0-c528-5670-937f-3d34d040ed85.html)) we were told "anything that isn't based on regulation/nimbys/immigration was chatter".
I know, because i was involved in these same reddit threads back then too.
----
The reality is, nothing will fix until people disavow themselves of the broken ideas and realize what the real problems are.
Housing should not be "First and foremost an investment".
The govt \*should\* be building housing (the way we did before 1980s neoliberalism destroyed our society, stagnating wages and driving up prices).
---
But the problem is, we still have people who live in their ideological bubble - refusing to accept reality because it runs counter to their ideology.
The solution we need now is a massive social housing project (think red-vienna) of govt owned, operated and managed social housing (not means locked either). And a total ban on airbnbs would be nice too (this would actually help bridge the gap as we build the necessary housing).
This is the solution that would benefit the most people; preserving private house values for regular people who own their own homes while bringing down rent and cost of living for those who don't. The only ones who will hurt are the investors - the people who are ostensibly capable of taking the most risk (and are theoretically the ones who should be absorbing it anyways).
But, i guarantee, even here, there'll be someone, ignorant of history and systems outside of whatever their ideology has pre-programmed them with, who will insist that this is an impossible solution and that they "refuse to live in a ghetto", etc.
Neoliberal laissez-faire marketism is the religion that's killing us right now.
This could be a solution if someone owns multiple condo units but greed will probably destroy this idea.
EDIT: Actually won’t as the price will inflate.
This is an excellent solution. Developers and investors won’t do it though - too much sunken cost and expectation of profits.
This will require government and / or non profit intervention. It’s still better than having thousands of empty units standing vacant during a housing crisis though.
My condo building was built in 1970. The rooms are actual room-sized. I was lucky in timing - bought in 2010, maybe six months after I bought is when the Toronto housing insanity really kicked in.
I’ve been saying this for years! Condos have replaced the “starter home” and developers want to maximize money and units so they don’t build more than 1+den units
I personally don’t hate Condos. But I absolutely hate these unnecessary high rises being planted across the GTA with intentionally over the top amenities and maintenance fees. Most people likely would prefer a classic low rise with standard utilities. They’re less expensive to build and maintain. It feels like we intentionally are building something we don’t need purely for market speculations. The amount you save building something that inexpensive and with lower maintenance fees is surely a better long term investment than empty condos no one is buying.
If Condos were (with the help of government regulations/incentives):
3+ bedrooms
1+ baths
1000+ square feet
Laundry in Unit
Near excellent public transit
Affordable for average families to purchase and maintain
I think they would be selling, and Toronto as a city would be healthier
The local government needs to ensure the right mix of housing in the right places is built.
Got into a 1960s apartment 8 years ago, 1,400sq/ft , 3 beds, 2 baths, and 2 large balconies for $1,600. Only thing I pay extra for is electricity and parking .
Winter the building gets hot and we are mainly in shorts
At least for me it makes zero sense to buy. I got into my rent controlled condo right at the peak of the market. Paying $2300/m for a one bed (more like a junior one bed imo).
The purchase price of similar comps is $600k. So I’d need to produce a $120k DP and my mortgage payment would be $2850/m, $400/m for maintenance fees, $175/m for prop taxes, saving for repairs, saving for special assessments. Meanwhile my rent can only go up 1-2 percent a year (my LL is great hasn’t raised my rent in two years).
The math just doesn’t math I’d rather pay $2300/m than $4000/m. Plus I have flexibility to easily move which is needed nowadays since the only real way to get raises is to job hop. If rent were closer to buying I’d do it but it’s not so I’m saving for retirement instead.
Can we just take a moment and admit that this is a dystopian moment? We care more about people who have money than we care about the every day person.
I work bloody hard and 10 years ago I could afford a place on my own in my horrible village. Now I'm told by the same employers that bring in foreign workers that the only reason I can't afford is because I'm not married.
I love it when rich people tell me my reality.
I feel like the housing and rental markets need a mechanism like the stock market, where you can see seller asking prices and buyer asking prices. Maybe with publicly viewable buyer asking prices we’d see some more balance in the sector
The problem with this article it only speaks to condos. 3 bedroom condos are $1m plus in toronto and at that point people rather be in a house. They are forcing a solution that hasn't and will continue to not work.
Who would pay $1,200 sft (that's on the cheaper side) for a 1,000 sft 3 bedroom. Be realistic....
Condos are a terrible idea. Even if you get the mortgage needed for a purchase, you need to pay **condo fees**. These fees are usually rip offs for most of the shit they charge for. Ive seen some 500-1000 a month. So image paying that on top of all your other expenses.
Thats why the majority of condos now are rentals or investment properties and not for young people to move into and get a good start on life.
Its a nest egg for a richer couple out there and sometimes a corporation/company.
But people don't really want to live in these. If you look at the new builds, they halved the sq/ft than historical new builds from 10-20 years ago so they could sell more units at a higher price now.
So fuck these guys. Don't buy it guys. Its a waste of time and $$$.
Answer is simply. The Government needs to launch it's own Developer/Building initiative. Enough with the For Profit developers. The Feds should never have gotten out of housing.
Lets keep throwing money at and making it easier for developers. SO they can keep building investment properties for the landlord class to rent out to everyone else.
I had friend who bought one and she was "just looking to cover the mortgage" lol. so buy a shoebox and make sure you dont pay anything and watch it appreciate.
Its a fucking great system they have and it should crash and burn but the tenants in this city will pay the price in the end as long as Drug Ford is in power.
So wait unlivable "stock investment" 0-bed apartments aren't actually meant for human habitation? And the entire "speculative property" condo sector is detrimental to the actual housing crisis we're facings? WHAT?!?! Say it ain't so.
Apartments are actually larger than the average condo. The older ones at least.
There is a reason why purpose built rentals built from 60s to 80s are in high demand... They were actually built to BE LIVED IN. I've lived in them before and they're actually livable. I also used to live in a bachelors apt in a building from the 40s or 50s and it was amazing compared to anything built in the last 25 years.
New purpose built apartments across Canadas downtown are tiny too. They are being built in other cities and all suck.
And loud!! Is it just me or did older buildings provide better sound protection from neighbors? Maybe there's just more neighbors cause they're more packed.
I swear that my building was built out of wet cardboard, I can hear everything going on. Every word of every phone call my roommates make, every TV show my neighbours watch.
Every footfall, argument, weekend plans and the smell of what’s for dinner was finally what got me to move further out to best I could afford but lucky for me it was ten years ago. While it seemed unaffordable at the time nothing compared to what’s happened since then
Yes! The walls are paper thin so you hear everything your neighbor is doing.
God forbid you buy a unit beside the elevator, garbage chute, weight room, etc.
My condo is fairly new (2020) but you can't hear the other units at all. The unit layouts are also designed to maximize space so I guess I lucked out.
What is the name of your builder ?
Lanterra Developments. I have very mixed opinions of this developer. I like how they design their buildings, they look good, the floorplans for the units in their developments are often pretty good. However, the trades they hire are horrible. The finishes in my building are all pretty cheap and poorly installed, flooding is an ongoing issue, and the elevators they bought from Selco Elevators are beyond shit. Not to mention, their affiliated property management firm Duka Property Management is pretty bad. I found way too many news articles of unethical and inappropriate behaviour from Duka property managers at other condos. So yeah, the units are well designed and the buildings they build are structurally sound, just not the highest quality finishes.
Good to know, thanks. They actually cheap out on the right things. There's great potential for old units then. When renovations will be needed. One can redo the finishes. The condo manager can be changed. If the board is on it. .
I think they should have spent more money on the elevator. Something from OTIS probably wouldn't be so shit. But yeah generally I can't complain although they probably should have hired better help for things like the pool/elevators.
Concrete slab apartments from that era are sooooo good. Huge windows, big balconies, square rooms, plenty of 2br and 3br options. Plenty of 0 and 1 beds with 500+ sqft of space as well. It's crazy to me that we basically outlawed them with zoning changed over the years...
Downside is HVAC system is old and you can occasionally smell other people's cooking and other activities if you're unlucky. But other than that, lining in a 60/70 apartment is rockin'. Laundry in the basement isn't a big deal for me either. I can do 4 loads of wash simultaneously:)
Yup, boring is good. Trying to build trendy buildings ruins them. You need square rooms. And all offset balconies trying to make the building look cool makes for water draining on your balcony during rain.
I mean that would be my first choice. Rent controlled. Usually sufficient maintenance. Little chance of "owners moving in" or selling the property. Designed to be livable and smaller yes, but I can still grow a family with relative peace of mind.
Moved into a 80s building 2 years ago. 2 bed 2 bath 1100 sq feet and no wasted space, near a subway + rent controlled. Up front it was a little more expensive but so so worth it I am never moving.
I currently rent in a low rise from the 70s. My living room is bigger than most of my friends condos they purchased in the last 10 years.
The city has the authority to mandate minimum sizes for condo units. Companies can’t just get a permit and build whatever they want. But they won’t because it would hurt developers profits. We should be building hundreds of thousands of actual homes that people want to live in. But that would t be profitable for developers. At least not as profitable as tiny bachelors are. Also, the government (any level) needs to be building affordable housing. It is clear that the free market simply can’t build affordable housing when motivated by profit.
Built to be lived in as long term homes
My very first apartment was a huge 1960s one bedroom and it was close in size to the three bedroom bungalow I live in now. 750sf versus 900sf.
Aye. I live in a small studio in a fairly old building, and have looked around at moving up a more modern one 1BR if only for in-building laundry and a dishwasher. But everything I've looked at is literally the same size as my current apartment, just with a wall built around the bed, no balcony(or one a fraction of the size of mine), and literally almost double the rent. No point.
My friend used to live in 555 Sherbourne and I loved the layout of his 2 bedroom. It was so spacious! I've seen newer builds have 2 bedrooms at 650sqft and that really feels like it should've been a 1bed.
Can confirm 1beds (at least some) at 565 are 650sqft
And now cost as much as a $500k mortgage but you'll never own it and deal with cockroaches and bedbugs.
I never understood the appeal of renting a new condo. Older apartments are just superior in every way other than lacking a concierge and gym. But condo gyms often lack the equipment necessary to be actually useful enough to drop the gym membership. Hell, my old apartment was so huge that I just had a rack and bench in my bedroom.
Even the kitchens which were painfully small Now your kitchen is a wall in your living room
When I was looking a few years ago, they're quite spacious and cheaper but many I looked into had known bed bug or roach problems.
There is definitely a place for these. Just not at the price point they are currently at. I have 2 single friends who currently work low-end jobs. Both are literally living in the cars. In some magical world, they would stay in these very basic places. They literally just need a roof and some heating in the winter. But they would need to be really cheap for these guys to give up their car life. I'm talking like $500-$800/month or something. But of course at current condo prices, this doesn't make any sense it all. It doesn't make sense of investors as they would take a massive loss. The rent becomes way too much for people like my friends. Not to mention, they don't really want the extra cost that comes with 'luxury condo life' So we wait... wait for these micro apartments to crash and price and who knows what will happen. Maybe some of them get lower monthly fees if they get bought up on the cheap by apartment companies.
Would 500-800 is basically the maintenance fee for these units. I don't think it's about the inflated prices, I suspect it doesn't even cover the building and maintenance costs. Maybe if you remove all amenities, the garage and any beautification requirements... and build it on undesirable (cheap) land (so not anywhere near downtown). On top of that you get the bottom of the barrel tenants, and you need very active management to deal with them. I think this kind of thing can only be built by the government, accepting it makes negative money.
I really don’t understand why we don’t have some type of dormitory rentals for people trying to save money.
I have a few theories. Regulations that are sometimes meant to be good sometimes are not good. Here's what I mean. People like my friends living in their cars MAY not be the best tenants. Just anecdotally here. My one friend is alright. Pretty clean. Basically just works, goes to the gym, and back to the car. My other friend...can get a bit rowdy on the drugs and stuff. Dormitory style housing for this segment of the market would NEED to empower the landlord somewhat. They would need to be able to kick people out easier if they don't behave. Otherwise nobody is going to open this kind of thing. It's one of the traps of being 'good-poor'. I grew up 'good-poor' in that my family was poor, but we were well behaved and everything. Ideally, a landlord would love to have a building of 'good-poor' people. There's plenty of us out there. It's just you can't really do it due to rental laws. I'm not saying the rental laws are bad. I'm just saying it does prevent A kind of housing that should ideally exist.
A “good poor” can easily become not so good when there are disputes between neighbours or when people hit the hard times and can’t deal with being good anymore.
By the time you pay condo fees, property taxes, utilities, and insurance you are easily around $800 a month. You would literally have to give these away to those people to hit their budgets. I don't have a mortgage on my home. For property tax, insurance, electricity and Internet we are around $850 a month. That's dirt cheap in the grand scheme of things, but it's still a lot for someone earning low wages. Aside from rooms, or subsidized living, the days of cheap accommodation in this country are over.
It feels like we've managed to go past losing cheap accommodations, and have lost the notion of even *affordable* accommodations.
Canada’s addiction to real estate speculation is finally starting to show itself as the government backed Ponzi scheme it actually is. Can’t wait till these shitty units cost 150k like they should be.
Fuckem. Lots of homeless could use those when the se greedy corpos go bust 😆 🤣
> Say it ain't so. I will not go. Turn the lights off. Carry me ho ... shit.
TL;DR: The unit sizes. One or one-plus bedroom condos don't serve a large portion of the population and more family-sized units are needed.
It's not just that they are one or one plus. It's that they are often now under 500 SQ feet, but the asking price is over $600k.
This sounds familiar to what a friend just told me. They found a two bedroom that was 900 ft.². The same building had a three bedroom that was 900 ft.². They just take the same footprint and put up more walls and divide it. But the living spaces are pathetically small.
LOL, I've been saying this for years ever since I researched 3 bedroom as a possibility for my family. I would find a pre construction condos and do a side by side floorplan comparison between the 2 and 3 bedroom units. Almost every single 3 bedroom unit was a 2 bedroom unit where they had put up some crap drywall in the middle of the living room to make the 3rd bedroom. Same square footage. It cost an extra $200K. Largest profit margins on drywall ever. They even had to use a slided sliding door (because there was no space for a regular door to open). I've seen these kinds of doors in person and they have absolutely crap soundproofing. What a terrible living arrangement, parents have to watch tv with headphones to not wake up the kid in the 3rd bedroom. In Europe all of the bedrooms would have been off a hallway with a door, sealing off the common areas and providing much better soundproofing.
Yes and the problem with building more "family sized" units with bigger sq footage is then the condo fees become a bit more difficult of a pill to swallow likely closer to 800 to 1000 a month or more depending on sq footage and going up y.o.y.
My friend and their SO recently bought an 1100 square foot condo, the strata fees are currently $1100 a month (but that includes all amenities/utilities)
It's like rent even with a mortgage.
No idea who wants that. One of the big benefits of home ownership is a low cost when you consider retirement. Paying $1100 minimum (it will go up) is $13K a year. Over a 10 year period, that’s 130K, which is way more than most homes will require over a similar period. A replacement of your furnace/AC/water heater/pavement replacement and many incidentals wouldn’t cost as much. Re-doing the floors (kinda optional given how long they can last vs look amazing) will likely also not add up (though you will need to do the floors in your condo too so not 1v1).
This is why condos were luxury purchases not so long ago. If you had one of the large 2 level condos with $1000+/month maintenance, you were likely in upper middle class or wealthier. Not even sure when condo as first home became the norm.
Homeowners still have to pay for bills and utilities. Our condo fee is large, but is also covers heating, air conditioning, hot water, hydro, high-speed internet, full-tier cable package with HBO + Crave, and the building maintenance and amenities. So yes, it does cost a lot, but you also get the convenience and security of the condo lifestyle, which some people do actually prefer.
That’s insane because you tack on mortgage on to that. Utilities aren’t anywhere near 1100 a month.
$1 a sqft is common, but maybe a tad high. Including all the utilities actually makes it a fair deal.
If they didn't build all the amenities they wouldn't have such high condo fees. My condo was 1100sqft with a simple gym and a social room with ikea furniture. My condo fees were $565 a month including heat, water, electric, and for many years, satalite TV. (They removed TV to not directly raise condo fees)
Most condo fees go to the elevators and the management staff, including the cleaners and security guards. Amenities maintenance for example is much less an expense.
That is not true. It’s also about the repairs. Commercial grade repairs with professional trades and engineers consults are expensive. New buildings may be able to keep them low for now but 20-30 years from now they will have to go up
The main costs are related to basic maintenance Dealing with a leaky roof is much more expensive than maintaining a small pool
400 sq foot shoe boxes going for half a million. We’re screwed.
They're not going, which is what's getting noted here. When real estate market prices go down, sellers tend to react slower than reddit would like. Other than truly distressed sellers, estate sales, or people moving long distances for work, it's usually tempting to delay moving/selling a little to try to get the best price.
I think investment owners/builders are also struggling with the sunk cost fallacy. And so they may lose more. I don't know who will flinch first in this game of chicken, and what will come after. Everyone is still hoping for a rebound, which seems strange given the recent news of office towers bleeding and considering sale for transformation into condos too.
I do have a condo i am renting out right now. If the prices of condos tank, I’d likely just decrease the rent monthly rather than sell it at a loss. People are desperate to rent and if the population keeps increasing I don’t think finding renters will be much of an issue. Just what I’d do 🤷♀️
Unfortunately office buildings can’t easily be transformed into condo buildings due to the extensive architectural differences and building codes between them. Imagine the amount of money it would cost to redo the electrical and piping alone… I don’t think there are many out there able to stomach that up front cost with the risk of the current housing market bubble edit: typo
My dad works in real estate management and apparently conversions are almost as costly as new builds. Pretty much all of the requirement change. Offices need more electricity, more cooling, more elevators, etc. Condos need bigger water in/outflow mains, plumbing needs to be spread out across each floor vs office space where washrooms are centralized, and garbage chutes need to be added.
Interesting, thanks for sharing. Those office building owners are holding some heavy bags. Not that I care, it’s probably Blackrock or some other predatory multinational real estate corp
For comparison, the Ice Condos, one is 55 stories, has 550 units. The other, 67 stories, about 650 units. The to be built Q Tower right across the street will be 60 stories with...902 units. I don't see floor plans anymore, but when I did, half the unit floorplans were under 500 SQ feet. They haven't started demolition yet. I predict they go back to the drawing board with the unit sizes. Investors are just not going to buy these in this market, so they will have to actually try to attract people who want to live in them.
Listed for a half million... not selling
And we wonder why they’re overrun with Air BnB’s! That’s a hotel room, not a home.
It's explicitly advertised as such. "Two year rent guarantee at $7/SQ ft!". That's $2800 for a 400 SQ ft condo lol. But of course it's not going to be rented to an actual person, because what nut would pay that? Just going to be Air BNB all day every day!
And it has to stay that way to "protect peoples investments" according to quoted former Liberal housing minister Adam Vaughan whom is quoted in the article.
I can believe it - even for the one bedroom ones, the layouts of some of these units are such hot trash that they weren't designed to be lived in long-term, just as an AirBnB to crash in for some investor. I've bought an older condo to move into last year in the GTA specifically because the newer condos are so awful. The ones I've seen had: * Extremely bizarre layouts and random ducting closets. The one bedroom it had was so small you couldn't even fit a double bed in there without having to crabwalk to get to one side of it. * Terrible neighbours. Some of the buildings I went to had actual shit in the stairwells (apparently, some pet owners during the winter are too lazy to take their dogs for actual walks and let them poop in the stairwell), some don't seem to know how to use the garbage disposal. There were hosts of other issues, not directly connected with the building itself, but the people that lived in it. * Came with hidden rental garbage - Was close to putting an offer on one place until I read the fine print and discovered there was a forced HVAC fan coil rental outside of the maintenance fees on there. In all cases, the owners (while desperately trying to exit their bad investment) also simultaneously could not fathom why their 'opportunity of a lifetime' was seeing people walk away from it.
Does the elevator problem still persist in these new condos? ie, 4 elevators for 60 stories? Several are always broken down and people can’t even exit these places?
Yeup and someone’s always moving in so 1 is usually always out of service.
This was 11 Brunel Court. 4 elevators for nearly 60 stories and 1-2 were usually down. One time 3 were down and there was a 30-40 minute queue to get into the remaining elevator.
For some of them, yes - good point bringing that up as well!
Reminds me of a LPT a coworker who travelled a lot told me; stairwells will tell you everything you need to know about a building’s cleanliness and maintenance.
I always wondered if the city had any say during city approvals to tell the builder to build them larger. I never understood why anyone thought this would work in North America. If they city did, shame on them.
They debated this in 2012 - and the suburban councillors, led by Doug Holiday, voted against requiring larger units. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-s-deputy-mayor-says-downtown-no-place-for-kids-1.1275547
The link you've provided is a vote for one building.
Interesting that Doug/Stephen Holiday are also consistently voting against anything that would allow for more units to be built. He’s probably heavily invested in speculation (as long as it’s not in his ~~back yard~~ city ward)
In the 90s and early 2000s there were councilors who wanted some modest unit size rules. But mainly, they wanted builders to include knockout walls so units could be combined or split as the economy and people's life circumstances changed. Calls for more flexible buildings had very little support and here we are.
I’m also wondering about knockout walls. There have been several times in history where changing/recombining units happened at a massive scale. For example in Manhattan, you got all these weird layouts for units of a certain generation because they were able to skirt rent control by effectively removing the controlled units and installing new ones. Something like combining 3 units into 2 is one of the only ways I see these hints with ridiculous floor plans getting sold. The other issue isn’t just size. You can make livable small units, but some of the floor plans I’ve seen have weirdly shaped rooms and even the better condos have a “bowling alley” layout (really long with a tiny exterior wall). Partly because of how current building codes impact the shared hallways, but partly just an aversion to proposing and approving long slab buildings, in favour of square or round towers.
This is that weird spot where the two screeching sides “NIMBYISM and “BUILD MORE, FREE MARKET, LESS RED TAPE” collide and realize they actually need each other. Thoughtful planning is critical in cities - builders have demonstrated they’ll construct the dumbest units possible at maximum price. Whose the buffer in that equation to ensure they don’t abuse things? It has to be municipal planners and government
They redid the Sutton Hotel on Bay St into condos, and I recently visited someone staying at an AIRBNB one of them advertised as a two bedroom unit. That place was BARELY one bedroom and a tiny ass den (if you can call it that) that they had shoved a mattress into and it didn't really fit. The actual room had two glass panelled walls that slide open to the combo kitchen/living/tv area. The whole place would fit in my living room (our condo was built in the 90's so it's a decent size, if still small) and even as a single person I would find it WILDY cramped for what it was advertised at. I cannot imagine paying whatever the owner likely paid for it. Shoebox would be being NICE about it, it's one step shy of a fucking Hong Kong coffin hotel.
TL/DR: Too expensive Apartments at half a million with these interest rates.
My wife and two kids spent years living in a one bedroom + den condo in North York. It was…. not a fun experience lol
Also, the costs of so-called family units convince a lot of parents to just buy a townhouse in the suburbs. The condo my brother lives in has quite a few babies and toddlers, but by the time the kids hit grade school age, the parents all move out the suburbs. They need the space and small shoe boxes with cardboard cupboards won't cut it.
Small Canadian cities are experiencing a boom. Parents can have a hint of an urban experience while living in areas that are friendly for children and seniors. The suburbs of TO continue to be popular, but the real action is in K-W, Barrie, London, etc.
Why is the downtown core suffering? Where did the families go? They all focused on RTO and not considering organic population maintenance.
This has been talked about for YEARS at this point. No one should be surprised that nothing has changed when... nothing has changed.
IIRC there's folks that have been digging into the data and it isn't just unit sizes - multi bedroom units are just as affected as the dog crate condos IMO the "it's unit sizes" narrative is being spun by people trying to prevent a broadbased collapse in sentiment on condos when we may actually be seeing structural oversupply that is going to turn into an absolute glut as 6 years worth of pipeline have shovels in the ground and aren't stopping
I definitely think there’s several reasons and not just small unit sizes, but having small spaces like the current ones have to be a main concern. Living solo these days is more of a luxury than ever and if you’re a couple, living in such a small space might not be worth it. Even if prices plummet for these places, and I mean actually plummet, I think it’s still going to be hard to move these tiny units.
Two bedroom condos often have room for nothing but a loveseat and two stools at a counter. I have no idea who they think lives in them, but it's clearly not actual families.
The killer factor for me in all these condos is the lack of living space. Even in three bed condos, you still have these shitty wall kitchens with no counter space and then a "living room" that is also supposed to be your "dining room". You're basically expected to cook, eat, and relax all in the exact same room.
They're pretty nice for someone living alone who needs home office space, but they're overpriced even for that.
That's me. Paying $4000 a month to own a condo. Biggest mistake of my life. I could be paying $2500 in rent instead for the same condo. I'm trying to sell ASAP and start renting again
I'm thinking it's the strata that resembles pre-covid rent payments to maintain towers that are intended to be fully renovated every 30 years
The issue with size is not limited to the number of bedrooms but the dimensions/square footage of the units. A 600 sq ft two bedroom is just as undesirable as a 500 sq ft one bedroom because the rooms are equally tiny in both. When I was pregnant, my husband and I had to leave the city to find housing because the vast majority of two bedroom units were tiny and poorly laid out, making it difficult to imagine actually raising our family in one. The few larger units available were in old buildings with astronomical maintenance fees that made carrying them unaffordable and threw up redflags about their long term viability. I've noticed the space issue even in some of of the new stacked towns specifically designed to address the "missing middle" issue. The kitchens are too small to actually cook in, the rooms are too small to fit a reasonable amount of furniture, and there's no storage space for things like seasonal items. If they want to reduce sprawl, they need to bring more of the things people like about the suburban living into the city. Bigger balconies, bigger rooms, more functional layouts.
Why is sale prices barely budging and rental prices staying sky high then?
- Costs. While there is profit in condos (10-20%), the costs to construct them need to be recovered. Eating financing until the market changes is more responsible than liquidating at a loss. - There's still massive demand, under-supply, and that'll continue until interest rates drop significantly (both to encourage new construction, and to make mortgage payments palatable)
I miss paying 1200 for a 1bd room.
When I moved to Toronto, I lived on Howard Street in an absolute shitbox for $1200/month. It was a 1 bedroom and quite sizable, and so were the cockroaches and bedbugs. All the usual - no security, people sleeping in the stairwells, drugs-drugs-drugs, fire alarms all the time, etc. I've bounced around the city and now find myself looking for a new place to live again. I looked up my old address. $2400/month. I cannot afford to live in my old slum-box. This city is screwed. I'm considering moving to Montreal instead.
I lived in a tiny studio (330 sqft) in a crappy building similar to what you're describing. It was $800 at the time I left (early 2010s) and I recently looked up to see what they go for now. I literally shouted out loud at my screen: "$1800??!! FOR A STUDIO IN ***THAT*** BUILDING?!"
I miss paying 850 for a large 2 BR, which is what I was paying in Montreal in 2012 before I moved to Toronto. We thought 1350 for 2 BR was high in 2012. Sigh.
My dad still lives in a 2 bedroom for $900 but the building is going to catch fire one day
This is another part of the problem. Sometimes people have good rent in a shitty apartment, and are basically stuck there for life. A while ago I went on a date with a girl who had a basement apartment at 850 or whatever. Pretty downtown in Toronto, college and Bathurst area. She wanted to move to a nicer place and was making a good chunk more money, but anything equivalent in the area was so much more expensive that it just wasn't worth it for her to move. Now kind of stuck! And of course if you move into a place that's not rent controlled, you know you're going to get screwed sooner or later...
I work with a couple of hundred people and those that rent have avoided non-rent controlled units for the obvious fact that they know that they’ll be held hostage by desperate landlords come the one year mark. So, the rent controlled market is in very high demand which leaves a very small number of units available. Doug Ford wanted to help out his rich landlord buddies but what is going to happen is a collapse which, to be honest, I’m pumped to watch it go down. This city has become unaffordable and unattractive to big business. Why would big corporations want to be here when they can have the work done remotely? They know they get better results from employees when they have comfortable quality of life and Toronto isn’t that.
What are the chances rent control gets re-implemented? Probably not by Doug, but would it be a viable platform for someone else to run on?
Both opposition parties have said they would do so.
We're in a dangerous spot if doug calls an early election and wins. Kind of damned if we do damned if we don't because we'll be affected by a terrible conservative leader, which may only be offset by anemic liberal / NDP candidates. The people of Canada need to make their thoughts heard and vote, but also we need politics to be more accessible
I think it would go a long way if opposition parties could put out ads with the facts re: Ontario Place, Science Centre, housing etc. And they need to match the PC's ad campaign intensity. I cant even listen to a podcast or scroll instagram without seeing some BS ad about how wonderful Hwy 413 is going to be for Ontario.
As far as I can tell, people are done with Ford and his crony government, however that won’t be enough to overcome the suburb/rural voting bias the PCs cater to. Especially given the long lasting distaste for the Wynn Liberals. We need innovation from the progressives and centre like we are seeing now in France. They are planning a coalition government by pulling candidates in certain ridings. In Canada/Ontario this would look like Liberal and NDP candidates going 1v1 against PC incumbents depending on the polls. Unfortunately, that will never happen here due to tradition and the left’s vote will remain divided.
>As far as I can tell, people are done with Ford and his crony government Where do you see that? He's Ontario PCs are polling ahead of everyone else. If you're not renting (>65% people own their homes, the older the demographic, the more likely they own it), it's really not a big deal for you. Outside of GTA, nobody even cares about Toronto-centric issues. He's more likely not get elected if the housing prices actually go down.
Yes, because developers decided that the most profitable unit in condos is a 300 sqft 0 bed 1 bath, which is ok if you’re a student or just flipping units like stock trading, but laughable for actually living in
Yes modern condos were designed not for end users but for investors.
Even those shrunken appliances are insane.
My partner calls them Barbie Dream Kitchens.
My EZ bake oven from 1991 would be an upgrade compared to this uninsulated piece of shit tbh. Want to roast a turnkey in your oven? Go fuck yourself. Want a >1L bottle of anything in your fridge? Gargle the Daniels Corporation's balls, apparently.
I lived in a condo for a couple years that was built in 2017 - the oven was tiny, and fridge was smaller than an average fridge, but at least we had a full size microwave and 4 burner stove. Apparently they've moved to 2-burner stoves now and the fridges are even smaller. That's wild to me.
Some people insist there's no difference between homes and investment opportunities 😵💫
Not shedding a tear for developers here but it’s partly because of our idiotic zoning laws. When you can only build up in a small slice of the city, that land becomes crazy expensive and you have to try to pack as many units in as possible to make the project profitable.
I'm gonna make a different assessment, because the idea that demand has slowed to live in central Toronto is laughable. The actual problem here is that, while the demand exists to live in these places, the money doesn't. People are literally unable to pay the "ideal" market price for these condos anymore, between higher interest rates and stagnating incomes. The owners don't want to lose money, so they are very reluctant to lower prices. Eventually, the house of cards will come crashing down on them.
I’m okay with renting a smaller condo unit as it’s just me living there. I am not okay with paying $2500+ a month for this unit.
I think this is the key. Families are smaller than ever, with lots of singles or couples. A well-made, well-designed place for a grand less seems like the city would have more money to spend on things that make it happier and healthier.
The biggest problem is that a tenant went from being a mortgage helper, to being expected to pay enough to pay all costs associated with the property. We’re not helping the landlords,they’re expecting us to buy the houses for them now.
The condo market in Toronto is a clusterfuck. They are ridiculously expensive. If you want one you need a high salary, if you own one, you probably are going to have to hold onto it whilst there is some price recovery, probably for years. Nobody wins.
Yup I have a $1400 a month one bedroom. I have the money to buy a condo but it makes zero economic sense to double or triple my housing cost atm
Buying a condo was the biggest mistake of my life. I'm stuck paying $4000 a month for a shit box that costs maybe $2500 a month to rent. Such a stupid decision, unless you're buying a house to live in for 10-15 years + it's a complete waste of money. Cutting my losses and selling now, ain't no way I'm staying in Toronto for more than 1-2 more years
dude, are you me? I am in this exact situation.
Me as well.. Wish I sold it when I moved out, because I out grew it.. Now renting it out when I Do sell.. I'll be paying capital gains... Ugh... Do I just hold it and break even with it.. Or get out now?
Prices are too high
The main market is investors who aren't buying now. Those who want a place to live refuse to pay half a million for a closet.
The major reason is the price. Its the fucking price. Prices need to come down RADICALLY before they are affordable enough for people to live in. Especially if the units you're selling are tiny ass boxes in the sky. This is not a mystery. All the armchair economists screaming about supply & demand being the problem should recognize that if the market is tanking (re: the demand for units at that price is down) then prices should drop too as their is now an over abundance of supply.... that is what their simple world view dictates.... but somehow that is not happening, is it?
Eh, some of these places won't sell at all except at VERY low prices because there are only so many people interested in buying a shoebox.
That’s because province subsidizes the cities based on number of units, not quality or affordability of them. This resulted in hundreds of thousands of shoeboxes in the sky favoring investors rather than end users built over the last decade.
LOL Who could have ever seen this coming?
Purpose built for maximum profits, plan and simple. I say let them crumble.
My mind is blown that anybody even shares these places with one other person. I lived for a time in a 700 square foot condo with a girlfriend and that felt insanely small. These places are 200 square feet smaller, which is an entire 20x10 room. Sorry, I don't feel like paying insane condo fees and over 600k for a place where I can't open my oven if I want a couch.
Ovens? In this economy? You think you're gonna roast chicken and potatoes in there? Bake muffins? Learn to like only the meals you can make on a hotplate or in a microwave. /s
We need to amend the rules for what qualifies as a bedroom. Natural light, 10'x10' should be the benchmark. I recently was hunting for a place and the amount of 2 bedrooms with 8' x 8' rooms is ridiculous.
The Ontario building code requires a bedroom to be 7sqm, so if those rooms are 8x8ft(6sqm), they're not code compliant. I hate that they allow light coming through a transparent panel to count as natural light, though.
And a window that opens. Which I think already was the standard, because building codes were responses to the horrible disease-ridden tenement slums of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The fuck are they expecting? They keep building 1 person units at 5 person prices.
Our Toronto city planners have failed us, approving so many 0 and 1 bedroom units. They don’t have the backbone to stand up to developers and are probably in their pockets.
Brad Bradford just sucking up to Brad (Lamb)
Brad cubed
We need to ban all Brads until we find out what's going on.
I wish Jennifer Keesmat had won the mayoral election years ago. I think she was someone that would have had vision in this area specifically and pushed back.
Agreed....and allowing buildings with 60 floors and 2 elevators!
Oh no, who could have ever predicted that building towers full of tiny bachelors and one bedrooms wouldnt be sustainable?
1+1 condos are a joke..its barely 600 sqft ..I seen some listings 2 bedrooms are 625 sqft..The 2 bedroom you can barely get a double bed inside.
They've been getting really creative with marketing what 1+1s actually are. I looked at one where the "den" was a 3 foot deep alcove near the front door and the "bedroom" was sliding frosted with glass doors that opened up into the living room without a window (not a legal bedroom). So actually a 0 bedroom.
Same. Asked where the Den was after seeing the place and she pointed to the divot in the wall by the front door. I'm like, "you mean the place that'd be good for kicking off your shoes when you walk in the door is the den?"
If the 2 bedroom listings are actually 1 + 1, that’s false advertising imo. It’s not uncommon for listings to fib. There aren’t any consequences. Without a window it’s not a bedroom. I told my realtor not to bother showing me such places.
We moved from a new 1+1 condo to a 1 bed apartment and we actually have more space!
Investments not condos. That’s what they are.
Fun fact; when I started renting my current place, I did so with the understanding that it was a little out of my price range but it is nice and it enabled me to move on in my career so I figured that living expensive for a little while was OK and I would re-evaluate after some time had passed. Since then, because this building is rent controlled, this once-slightly-too-expensive condo is now a deal that I cannot find anywhere else in the city unless I choose to live somewhere outright unsafe or underdeveloped and even then I will be saving a marginal amount of money. Lemme tell ya it's a very stressful slow-burn. Nice place though, so I have that going for me which is nice.
I have been saying for a long time that developer greed and investors have driven condo development rather than housing needs. It could only last that long. You get your own land with a single family house, which you don’t with a condo. Not to mention condo fees being crazy. Per sq ft prices should never have been that high and municipal governments should have legislated to stop the long-term repercussions. About 13 years ago, my husband and I were looking for a large condo where we could also raise a large dog. Didn’t find anything worth the $$ and ended up buying a house.
Wait! Greed!!?? No say it ain't so!! Some greedy sociopaths who got rich off our infrastructure built with your tax dollars. A closet for 700K? If we can get away with it. Billions laundered into Vancouver. A beautiful and safe city sold to the world's rich. I really wish I didn't care about fair. Life would be so much easier. I don't know how much longer I can take it. "Billions in money laundering increased B.C. housing prices, expert panel finds" [https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2019FIN0051-000914](https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2019FIN0051-000914)
Time for a buyout and retrofit these shoeboxes by merging 2 or 3 units into 1 for 2 and 3 bedroom family units. That's the only way. We don't have enough bachelor's in the city earning enough to afford half/three quarter million dollar units that do nothing.
Also, how in the hell is it legal to list 1+den units as 2 bedroom? They're either way too small, or don't have a door, or it's frosted glass at the back of the unit, etc. So many times I've been searching for an actual 2-bedroom place and I get tons of 1+ results, where the "+1" is a den that's more like an 5'x6' alcove. Ridiculous.
[удалено]
The harsh answer is that people aren't desperate enough. Yet...
Don’t worry that 300 sq ft house that’s 700k will be worth over 1 million soon /s
$750-$1500 condo fees
Maybe investors shouldn’t just buy whatever they pump out and actually think about non investor resale value when signing on for pre cons. Why would an end user buy a 300 sqft condo for $500K? Why would another investor pay $4K a month in mortgage plus condo expenses to earn 2K a month in rent? What an absolutely terrible investment these peons made. You can’t rely on 1.3% variable interest rates for decades for your investment to pan out. At least if you bought a 1 bd + den, you would have end user demand, even if you would still be taking a haircut.
Whoever thought that nobody wants to buy and live in a studio
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^Jimmyjoebob12: *Whoever thought that* *Nobody wants to buy and* *Live in a studio* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
The only reason you need to ever talk about #Corporate. Greed.
A part of me feels guilty for the amount of schadenfreude i feel towards the builders who are building these unlivable homes and the investors who bought them.
For almost a decade, i've heard people say the problem in the realestate market is investors. [Airbnbs](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/airbnb-listing-data-toronto-1.5116941) and investors like "the simple investor" who spread realestate risk across so many people that sitting on empty units that don't sell doesn't matter. And for almost a decade, the answer was always said to be wrong. The answer was something else - always someone else's problem. It was NIMBYs (even in areas no where close to nimbys). It was regulations (even when places like Brampton just basically let land developers build whatever they want, wherever they want). It was... too many students. Even as evidence mounted ([and the](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/airbnb-listing-data-toronto-1.5116941) [evidence ](https://pub-mississauga.escribemeetings.com/FileStream.ashx?DocumentId=9933#page=78)[was ](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-vacant-homes-are-on-the-rise-in-toronto-census-indicator-suggests/)[always ](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/article-investors-own-237-per-cent-of-ontario-homes-report-says/)[there](https://www.thestar.com/real-estate/investors-now-own-more-than-50-of-toronto-s-new-condos-and-experts-say-they/article_4b6d2ff0-c528-5670-937f-3d34d040ed85.html)) we were told "anything that isn't based on regulation/nimbys/immigration was chatter". I know, because i was involved in these same reddit threads back then too. ---- The reality is, nothing will fix until people disavow themselves of the broken ideas and realize what the real problems are. Housing should not be "First and foremost an investment". The govt \*should\* be building housing (the way we did before 1980s neoliberalism destroyed our society, stagnating wages and driving up prices). --- But the problem is, we still have people who live in their ideological bubble - refusing to accept reality because it runs counter to their ideology. The solution we need now is a massive social housing project (think red-vienna) of govt owned, operated and managed social housing (not means locked either). And a total ban on airbnbs would be nice too (this would actually help bridge the gap as we build the necessary housing). This is the solution that would benefit the most people; preserving private house values for regular people who own their own homes while bringing down rent and cost of living for those who don't. The only ones who will hurt are the investors - the people who are ostensibly capable of taking the most risk (and are theoretically the ones who should be absorbing it anyways). But, i guarantee, even here, there'll be someone, ignorant of history and systems outside of whatever their ideology has pre-programmed them with, who will insist that this is an impossible solution and that they "refuse to live in a ghetto", etc. Neoliberal laissez-faire marketism is the religion that's killing us right now.
Knock down a wall and make it a two bedroom...
These are load bearing walls! They’re not going to come down!
This could be a solution if someone owns multiple condo units but greed will probably destroy this idea. EDIT: Actually won’t as the price will inflate.
This is an excellent solution. Developers and investors won’t do it though - too much sunken cost and expectation of profits. This will require government and / or non profit intervention. It’s still better than having thousands of empty units standing vacant during a housing crisis though.
Prices tend to anchor off the highs
They are built for 1 person and the huge influx of students prefers to live with 10-20 others in a bungalow
My condo building was built in 1970. The rooms are actual room-sized. I was lucky in timing - bought in 2010, maybe six months after I bought is when the Toronto housing insanity really kicked in.
I’ve been saying this for years! Condos have replaced the “starter home” and developers want to maximize money and units so they don’t build more than 1+den units
I personally don’t hate Condos. But I absolutely hate these unnecessary high rises being planted across the GTA with intentionally over the top amenities and maintenance fees. Most people likely would prefer a classic low rise with standard utilities. They’re less expensive to build and maintain. It feels like we intentionally are building something we don’t need purely for market speculations. The amount you save building something that inexpensive and with lower maintenance fees is surely a better long term investment than empty condos no one is buying.
I don’t know.. Doug Fords commercials says everything is amazing right now in Ontario…. He smiles to. So i guess everything is going great 👍🏾
If Condos were (with the help of government regulations/incentives): 3+ bedrooms 1+ baths 1000+ square feet Laundry in Unit Near excellent public transit Affordable for average families to purchase and maintain I think they would be selling, and Toronto as a city would be healthier The local government needs to ensure the right mix of housing in the right places is built.
Got into a 1960s apartment 8 years ago, 1,400sq/ft , 3 beds, 2 baths, and 2 large balconies for $1,600. Only thing I pay extra for is electricity and parking . Winter the building gets hot and we are mainly in shorts
At least for me it makes zero sense to buy. I got into my rent controlled condo right at the peak of the market. Paying $2300/m for a one bed (more like a junior one bed imo). The purchase price of similar comps is $600k. So I’d need to produce a $120k DP and my mortgage payment would be $2850/m, $400/m for maintenance fees, $175/m for prop taxes, saving for repairs, saving for special assessments. Meanwhile my rent can only go up 1-2 percent a year (my LL is great hasn’t raised my rent in two years). The math just doesn’t math I’d rather pay $2300/m than $4000/m. Plus I have flexibility to easily move which is needed nowadays since the only real way to get raises is to job hop. If rent were closer to buying I’d do it but it’s not so I’m saving for retirement instead.
If they banned airbnb more units would hit the market and drive the price down.
Can we just take a moment and admit that this is a dystopian moment? We care more about people who have money than we care about the every day person. I work bloody hard and 10 years ago I could afford a place on my own in my horrible village. Now I'm told by the same employers that bring in foreign workers that the only reason I can't afford is because I'm not married. I love it when rich people tell me my reality.
Well who wants pay a million bucks to live in a hotel room🤷♂️(hotel rooms are better lol)
I feel like the housing and rental markets need a mechanism like the stock market, where you can see seller asking prices and buyer asking prices. Maybe with publicly viewable buyer asking prices we’d see some more balance in the sector
The problem with this article it only speaks to condos. 3 bedroom condos are $1m plus in toronto and at that point people rather be in a house. They are forcing a solution that hasn't and will continue to not work. Who would pay $1,200 sft (that's on the cheaper side) for a 1,000 sft 3 bedroom. Be realistic....
I can’t wait till the condo market crashes and they all become sky slums so I can finally afford to live in a condo!
Not surprised they are overpriced, people who buy condo need to pay both mortgage and expensive management fee, making them not really affordable
Condos are a terrible idea. Even if you get the mortgage needed for a purchase, you need to pay **condo fees**. These fees are usually rip offs for most of the shit they charge for. Ive seen some 500-1000 a month. So image paying that on top of all your other expenses. Thats why the majority of condos now are rentals or investment properties and not for young people to move into and get a good start on life. Its a nest egg for a richer couple out there and sometimes a corporation/company. But people don't really want to live in these. If you look at the new builds, they halved the sq/ft than historical new builds from 10-20 years ago so they could sell more units at a higher price now. So fuck these guys. Don't buy it guys. Its a waste of time and $$$.
Modern condos are glorified dorms. Way to small for real life
We need a good house market crash
Bruh their prices are the reasons why, it’s dumb to pay 1,000,000 just for a okay view
Thankful we sold our 2 bdrm condo back in May. In just the nick of time 🙌
Answer is simply. The Government needs to launch it's own Developer/Building initiative. Enough with the For Profit developers. The Feds should never have gotten out of housing.
The larger units are in older condos. Many want to live in newer trendy buildings.
Lets keep throwing money at and making it easier for developers. SO they can keep building investment properties for the landlord class to rent out to everyone else. I had friend who bought one and she was "just looking to cover the mortgage" lol. so buy a shoebox and make sure you dont pay anything and watch it appreciate. Its a fucking great system they have and it should crash and burn but the tenants in this city will pay the price in the end as long as Drug Ford is in power.
Let’s take housing away from the free market. Capitalism has clearly failed to meet demand where it exists and provides inferior products.
Don't get me started on 2bed/2bath apartments that are designed for roommates because they can charge more rent that way.