Toronto U Condominiums | 183.79m | 56s | Pemberton | a—A

doesn't mention how well they're doing since November.

Would like to see some more recent numbers. When they say sales, do they mean the firm deals?
 
Musters - they've had previous sales and are mostly in the construction stage (except Aura & l-Tower), but the sites I listed all still have unsold inventory that will take a long time to get through unless things pick-up.

Argos - it doesn't mention how well sales have gone since November as the November numbers were only recently released, unfortunately there is often a time drag on the release of good data from most real estate tracking organizations. Anecdotally as far as I hear December isn't going to be any better than November.
 
Mike, my anecdotal information is that things have slowed to a crawl, at least at some condo projects where I have some information (not including any of those you named above).

There seems to be a similar effect in the condo market as in the resale market, namely, people have stopped buying in the expectation that prices are going down. (Why buy today if you expect to buy more cheaply in three months?) This of course becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
 
Out of curiosity what projects do you have information on.
Or at least what general area are the projects in.

Thanks!
 
Taal,

Everything except brand new projects aren't selling much of anything - the "launch effect" is still bringing in some buyers, but then nobody follows those buyers into the sales centres in the weeks that follow.

Right now it looks as though there won't be any major project openings save one or two in Q1 and already many developers are looking to delay projects intended for a Q2 opening or scuttle projects that have lingered on the market with disappointing sales. We have a serious inventory problem right now and a lot of that needs to be absorbed for the health of the market, so don't expect much in the way of new product in 2009 despite some interesting projects that are in the planning process and being discussed in other threads on the forum.

The Toronto skyline may be full of cranes, but those are the success stories of 2005, 2006 and 2007, the next couple of years may be very slow.
 
Thanks Mike, your posts as always are both accurate and measured in their response. I have no insider information as you do, but yes, I'm sure this is what will happen, that many of the current projects will go ahead, but new ones will be delayed or cancelled outright. In a few years, we will have some lean times, then things will snap back.

On another note, I also feel that in addition to the drop in activity that occurred in the 1990's there was also a drop in the quality of architecture. The mid-to-late 1990's was a bit of a dire time, design-wise (except for some great co-ops). I hope we don't see the same this time round.
 
Archivist said:
Thanks Mike, your posts as always are both accurate and measured in their response. I have no insider information as you do, but yes, I'm sure this is what will happen, that many of the current projects will go ahead, but new ones will be delayed or cancelled outright. In a few years, we will have some lean times, then things will snap back.

On another note, I also feel that in addition to the drop in activity that occurred in the 1990's there was also a drop in the quality of architecture. The mid-to-late 1990's was a bit of a dire time, design-wise (except for some great co-ops). I hope we don't see the same this time round.
Click to expand...


As noted in another thread with 2500 units still available and 2009 projections of 800-900 sales for the year, that alone is almost 3 years of inventory.

I truly hope the quality of architecture doesn't drop in this RE market cycle correction. I think the consumer is more design savy and expects/demands it now, plus developers looking to make their project stand out from the rest will need to step up to the plate if they want sales with better design (exterior and interior), features, prices, etc.
 
Mike in TO said:
Taal,

Everything except brand new projects aren't selling much of anything - the "launch effect" is still bringing in some buyers, but then nobody follows those buyers into the sales centres in the weeks that follow.

Right now it looks as though there won't be any major project openings save one or two in Q1 and already many developers are looking to delay projects intended for a Q2 opening or scuttle projects that have lingered on the market with disappointing sales. We have a serious inventory problem right now and a lot of that needs to be absorbed for the health of the market, so don't expect much in the way of new product in 2009 despite some interesting projects that are in the planning process and being discussed in other threads on the forum.

The Toronto skyline may be full of cranes, but those are the success stories of 2005, 2006 and 2007, the next couple of years may be very slow.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Mike.
Does the same situation hold true in all regions of the GTA though?
i.e. including, NYCC, MCC, how's downtown Markham doing ... and the like?

Thanks again.
 
The slowdown is across the region (although Tridel did pretty well with the Hullmark opening). In terms of excess inventory there are different areas/submarkets that are more problematic then others. Next few months should be interesting.
 
Mike in TO said:
The slowdown is across the region (although Tridel did pretty well with the Hullmark opening). In terms of excess inventory there are different areas/submarkets that are more problematic then others. Next few months should be interesting.
Click to expand...

If I were to guess I'd say NYCC is fine along with MCC and STC, downtown T.O. is struggling.

by fine I mean not to much excess inventory.
 
Mike in TO said:
Taal,

Everything except brand new projects aren't selling much of anything - the "launch effect" is still bringing in some buyers, but then nobody follows those buyers into the sales centres in the weeks that follow.

Right now it looks as though there won't be any major project openings save one or two in Q1 and already many developers are looking to delay projects intended for a Q2 opening or scuttle projects that have lingered on the market with disappointing sales. We have a serious inventory problem right now and a lot of that needs to be absorbed for the health of the market, so don't expect much in the way of new product in 2009 despite some interesting projects that are in the planning process and being discussed in other threads on the forum.

The Toronto skyline may be full of cranes, but those are the success stories of 2005, 2006 and 2007, the next couple of years may be very slow.
Click to expand...
So, where does that leave projects like Aura and Ice? I guess we'll have to wait and see.
 
^ It would be extremely surprising if Aura doesn't go ahead, more or less on its original timetable, given strong sales and the strong track record of the proponents, as well as the fact that commercial space is being actively pitched. At Ice, there are reports of good sales for the first tower (the only one being marketed). It will be built, although I don't know if anyone can vouch for the actual time frame. The timing of the second tower will be very problematic and I certainly wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it.

Taal, in Miss. City Centre, all of the projects currently being marketed have already been around for a number of months (Chicago, Onyx, and the first two buildings of the Amacon "Parkside Village"). All of them have done well, especially Chicago, which sold very quickly (but that was then ...). I'm not sure how well Amacon is doing with sales at Elle, and I'm not sure either about WideSuites, although it is under construction.

The last project which came to market in MCC was the first two towers of Parkside Village, in June 2008. It slid in just as the downturn was beginning. I'm not aware of anything coming to market in the first half of 2009. When the market comes back to some semblance of life (late 2009? early 2010?) I'd expect the third Parkside Village building.

I can't speak for NYCC at all.
 
Observer Walt said:
^ It would be extremely surprising if Aura doesn't go ahead, more or less on its original timetable, given strong sales and the strong track record of the proponents, as well as the fact that commercial space is being actively pitched. At Ice, there are reports of good sales for the first tower (the only one being marketed). It will be built, although I don't know if anyone can vouch for the actual time frame. The timing of the second tower will be very problematic and I certainly wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it.
Click to expand...
I do hope you're right, though I would like to see the second Ice tower built as well. Perhaps it will just be put on hold until economic conditions improve rather than cancelled outright.
 
Observer Walt, I appreciate your well thought out answer (as always) to another post before it...

But everyone, please discuss Ice and Aura and whatever other projects in their respective threads. It's clamp-down time again as many of you have become lazy about keeping to thread topics. Please try to keep posts relevant to the title of the thread.

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