Markster
Senior Member
*Cue @W. K. Lis showing up in the thread to post images of TTC streetcar tracks being laid in small-town type Toronto suburbia 100 years ago.*
|
|
|
Waterloo Region Transit Developments (ION LRT, new terminal, GRT buses)
mdrejhon
Senior Member
To be fair...
This is what downtown Kitchener now looks like today.
Down the line, nearer Waterloo:
Lastly a bonus near one of the LRT stations:
(Guess what that facility is....)
Attachments
Steve X
Senior Member
KW is growing and this LRT will help support more growth but residential growth isn't a good driver for higher transit usage. Everyone living in a modern condo can afford a car. There must be a driver to get them out of their cars. Employment on the other hand brings people together. A high enough demand for road space increases attractiveness to transit. Let's hope there's more office towers going up instead of condos.
Megaton327
Senior Member
That's completely false--I'm not sure what possible logic would lead someone to that conclusion. I guess there's no such thing as renters, for instance?
mpd618
Active Member
For context, brand new condos in downtown Kitchener (City Centre, One Victoria) start around $250K for one-bedroom units, and near the University of Waterloo (Icon) condos start at $210K for a one-bedroom. This ain't the high end of the market here.
mdrejhon
Senior Member
Not to mention, my photos includes the Google Canada Headquarters expansion and the Perimeter Institute. Not all the condo-looking buildings are condos.
reaperexpress
Senior Member
When I lived in downtown Toronto, the reason I could afford to live in a modern condo was specifically because I didn't own a car. While I may have technically been able to also afford a car, it would have seriously eaten into my disposable income.
That said, it is true that employment density is more critical than residential density for transit use. Fortunately Kitchener and Waterloo are also promoting commercial intensification in their centres.
mdrejhon
Senior Member
Surprisingly, nowadays given the price of the housing market, condo living can be much cheaper than detached-house living, no matter how luxurious the condo looks -- to a certain point. Certainly you do sacrifice on size, but you have major time savings (less upkeep, less travel), no car costs, etc. A percentage (not all, but many) actually stop wanting to drive once they live in a condo.
In fact.... cars are collecting dust [photos] at this Toronto condo....
And many condos have less parking spots than dwelling units.
Telling quotes:
...“If we couldn’t sell a unit without providing a parking spot, then we wouldn’t be selling those units. The proof is in the pudding – we sold 270 units without parking in nine days. That’s a very telling story.”
...“in some cases condo developers have been left holding the bag with empty parking spots and have applied to turn the stalls into commercial parking.”
Mathing it out, owing a $400K detached house in Hamilton versus a $600K condo in downtown Toronto, you have less than 1/3rd the space but depending on the lifestyle you choose (going car-free thanks to central location) -- you apparently may actually end up paying less total bills per month (including the mortgage and monthly condo fees) when eliminating a lot of transportation expenses of various kinds, and eliminating the upkeep costs an owned house has, amongst other expenses.
But many starter condo units (studios) are available for just $300K that's steps away from transit! Now, you're paying only $1208.16/month mortgage (BMO, 25 year, 2.49% fixed 5yr, $30K downpay). Even if you have less than steller credit and need to downpay less, it's still $1,378.17/month (BMO, 25 year, 3.2% fixed 5yr, $15K downpay). And that's a spanking-new newbuild condo, sometimes with Bell Gigabit Fiber FTTH. Yes, it'd be small -- but many students pay that much for a dorm-sized unit in some parts of Toronto! But you do often get other amenities in the same building (e.g. a gym, a pool). Pay a little more, you get more space, an extra bedroom, etc.
Hop further out (sometimes much further), and you actually see studios in the lower-to-mid $200K range that's still within 1.5km / 15 minute walk of high-order transit (express bus, streetcar, subway, 2-way GO train). The sub-$1000/month mortgage appears! Newbuild too. You will quickly get tempted to the 1-bedrooms though to get a separate bedroom, as that's only a few hundred per month extra.
Even today, "along the corridor axis" (U of Waterloo, snaking along the main corridor to downtown Waterloo and downtown Kitchener) it is now slightly easier to go car-free in Kitchener-Waterloo than it is in the City of Hamilton (ugh), with all the great new express bus routes with actual transit-priority that totally obliterates that toy that TTC has (Kitchener-Waterloo ripped a slow 50 minute bus down to just ~26-28 minutes with the installation of transit priority signalling) and the LRT isn't even complete yet!
(...It's still almost mandatory to own a car in Hamilton, but this perception is slowly changing, and the Hamilton LRT will help a great deal on this. Now when you buy a $300K studio or a $400K 1-bedroom instead, and forgo a lot of other expenses, you can get a cheaper lifestyle (in terms of monthly bills) than home ownership...)
In fact, some people buy a condo because they cannot afford to buy a car. A studio condo only requires a mortgage that is barely over $1000/month at current interest rates. That's sometimes cheaper than renting! And you get pretty much all the money back when you sell. Condos may not appreciate in value as much as a house, but the right condo purchase can be far more favorable mathematically than renting.
I am a homeowner, but have also lived in condos (at the time, I was car-free too) -- one of those gleaming glass towers with gym, pool, party room, BBQ deck, shared big screen home theater room -- so I understand the lifestyle and how the bills are different.
--> some people buy a condo because they cannot afford to buy a car. <--
In fact.... cars are collecting dust [photos] at this Toronto condo....
And many condos have less parking spots than dwelling units.
Telling quotes:
...“If we couldn’t sell a unit without providing a parking spot, then we wouldn’t be selling those units. The proof is in the pudding – we sold 270 units without parking in nine days. That’s a very telling story.”
...“in some cases condo developers have been left holding the bag with empty parking spots and have applied to turn the stalls into commercial parking.”
Mathing it out, owing a $400K detached house in Hamilton versus a $600K condo in downtown Toronto, you have less than 1/3rd the space but depending on the lifestyle you choose (going car-free thanks to central location) -- you apparently may actually end up paying less total bills per month (including the mortgage and monthly condo fees) when eliminating a lot of transportation expenses of various kinds, and eliminating the upkeep costs an owned house has, amongst other expenses.
But many starter condo units (studios) are available for just $300K that's steps away from transit! Now, you're paying only $1208.16/month mortgage (BMO, 25 year, 2.49% fixed 5yr, $30K downpay). Even if you have less than steller credit and need to downpay less, it's still $1,378.17/month (BMO, 25 year, 3.2% fixed 5yr, $15K downpay). And that's a spanking-new newbuild condo, sometimes with Bell Gigabit Fiber FTTH. Yes, it'd be small -- but many students pay that much for a dorm-sized unit in some parts of Toronto! But you do often get other amenities in the same building (e.g. a gym, a pool). Pay a little more, you get more space, an extra bedroom, etc.
Hop further out (sometimes much further), and you actually see studios in the lower-to-mid $200K range that's still within 1.5km / 15 minute walk of high-order transit (express bus, streetcar, subway, 2-way GO train). The sub-$1000/month mortgage appears! Newbuild too. You will quickly get tempted to the 1-bedrooms though to get a separate bedroom, as that's only a few hundred per month extra.
Even today, "along the corridor axis" (U of Waterloo, snaking along the main corridor to downtown Waterloo and downtown Kitchener) it is now slightly easier to go car-free in Kitchener-Waterloo than it is in the City of Hamilton (ugh), with all the great new express bus routes with actual transit-priority that totally obliterates that toy that TTC has (Kitchener-Waterloo ripped a slow 50 minute bus down to just ~26-28 minutes with the installation of transit priority signalling) and the LRT isn't even complete yet!
(...It's still almost mandatory to own a car in Hamilton, but this perception is slowly changing, and the Hamilton LRT will help a great deal on this. Now when you buy a $300K studio or a $400K 1-bedroom instead, and forgo a lot of other expenses, you can get a cheaper lifestyle (in terms of monthly bills) than home ownership...)
In fact, some people buy a condo because they cannot afford to buy a car. A studio condo only requires a mortgage that is barely over $1000/month at current interest rates. That's sometimes cheaper than renting! And you get pretty much all the money back when you sell. Condos may not appreciate in value as much as a house, but the right condo purchase can be far more favorable mathematically than renting.
I am a homeowner, but have also lived in condos (at the time, I was car-free too) -- one of those gleaming glass towers with gym, pool, party room, BBQ deck, shared big screen home theater room -- so I understand the lifestyle and how the bills are different.
Utter garbage. Bilge ballast. Read the above.
--> some people buy a condo because they cannot afford to buy a car. <--
Last edited:
Steve X
Senior Member
True for downtown Toronto but not everywhere. In the burbs like Mississauga or even along the Sheppard subway, there's a lot of people that still rely on a car to get around. Suburb condos come with a parking space as majority of the buyers need it. Condos do reduce the use of a car but not completely eliminate it.
If we look at the Sheppard subway, ridership hasn't gone up in the last decade with all the new condos around it. There isn't lot of pedestrian nor cyclist traffic around the area. Congestion in the area seems to be getting worst. It seems to me that the car is the way to go. It's close to the 401 after all.
My opinion isn't true for every condo. Kitchener downtown probably supports a better car-less living style.
As for living in a condo, I don't know how that would work out for 25+ years old condos. Based on the super cheap construction employ in every condo buildings these days, the repair bill could go up the roof when everything is due for replacement. I don't know how affordable that would be when they reach that age.
drum118
Superstar
ottbike
Active Member
Pretty great video update by the ION project team:
Megaton327
Senior Member
I'm really loving their videos with all of the drone cam footage and date-vs-date comparison shots. When I've visited Waterloo, I've been impressed by some of what I've seen but it's hard not to feel the impact of the construction more; but these sweeping overview shots really drive home how excellent ION's progress has been...shame that Bombardier is going to screw them over.
TransitBart
Senior Member
mpd618
Active Member
mdrejhon's last photo is of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, which is along the ION corridor. If that's what you were asking.
TransitBart
Senior Member
Yup. Cool. Tx.