City of mass construction: Toronto’s unstoppable condos show no signs of slowing down

[cdr108]

Unfortunately it is really making it more and more difficult for people who are buying to live in, and developments are more and more designed to be geared to be rented or flipped (smaller units, generic finishes, lack of customization, etc.). It's impossible to find a large 1-bedroom unit with 800 or more sq.ft. these days as developers are squeezing 2 or even 3 bedrooms in the same amount of space to appeal to investors/future landlords.

no kidding ...
i just saw a floorplan from Pace condos that someone posted.

625 sqft - 2 bed / 2 bath ! ? !

 

[Automation Gallery]

Toronto condo market soars higher

New condominium sales in the Greater Toronto Area climbed 62% higher in June from a year earlier, according to Building Industry & Land Development Association.

Sales of low rise homes, which includes single detached, semi-detached and town homes, rose 40% from a year ago. Overall the sale of new homes in Toronto was up 53% from a year ago.

RealNet Canada Inc., which tracks the data, said the last three months were the second best ever for sales while the first half of the year broke all records.

“Perhaps the most astounding statistic is the fact that nearly two-thirds (65%) of all new home sales in the GTA in June, and 61% from January-June, were high-rise condominium suites, which is well above the growth plan intensification target of 40%,” said Stephen Dupuis, chief executive of BILD.

RealNet says its price index for low rise homes in June was $549,371, across the GTA. That’s a 12.6% jump from a year ago. Condominiums were $461,692 in June for an 8.3% jump from a year ago.

http://business.financialpost.com/2011/07/19/toronto-condo-market-soars-higher/

Condo market surfing the heat wave, June sales up 62 per cent

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/July2011/19/c6068.html

 

[Lansdown]

Anyone have any insight as to where the capital is coming from? How many foreign investors are buying these condos?

 

[James_TheVirus]

With regards to the lack of infrastructure improvements - I notice many people now walking to work. I used to take transit to school/work everyday, but have since realised that it is only an extra 10 mins to walk vs. taking transit - not to mention how much more reliable walking is. So, I sense that a number of the people moving downtown are fed up of the TTC and travelling by car that they are now walking. It certainly saves us about $200/mth to walk which equals paying down the mortgage by another $2k/yr (we only take transit in Jan/Feb).

 

[tkip]

They're also realizing that owning/driving a car while living downtown doesn't make any sense. That and with permanent oil/gas prices, maybe they really can't afford to drive as often now.

 

[Automation Gallery]

International buyers undergird Toronto's condo market

Scott McClellan recognizes the vital role new Canadian buyers have played in the sale of his company’s downtown Toronto condo projects.

“They’ve driven our success, without question,” says the vice president of sales and marketing for Plaza (formerly Plaza Corp.).

McLellan claims his firm has sold more condos downtown in the past two years than any other developer — over 3,000 — and a significant portion of the buyers have been immigrants, a market which his company actively courts.

“A lot of affluent new Canadians come to our city and that’s fuelling our economy,” McClellan says, citing RealNet Canada Inc. statistics that indicate between 80,000 to 100,000 newcomers arrive in the GTA each year. “So we’ve made it our mission to build relationships with those groups.”

When it launched the York Harbour Club on Fort York Blvd., for example, Plaza didn’t advertise the project. The company teamed up with locally based brokers who market and sell directly to foreign buyers and new Canadians, making use of community connections here and in places such as mainland China, Hong Kong, South Asia and the Middle East.

The strategy worked: 441 of Harbour Club’s 502 condos sold in four weeks, with an estimated 60 per cent going to new Canadians and international buyers.

Plaza took a similar approach at its King West and The Tower projects in Liberty Village, and at Edge and Epic on West Queen West; again, roughly 60 per cent of the condos were snapped up by new Canadians and international buyers.

Toronto’s draw? Condos here are reasonably priced compared to cities like Hong Kong or Shanghai, explains Tony Ma, owner of HomeLife Landmark Realty, whose brokerage brought a large number of Chinese purchasers to Plaza’s projects.

Toronto has other attractive attributes: “It’s an amazing city in terms of multiculturalism and tolerance,” Ma says. “Every culture or ethnic group can work here and study here, the job market is strong and our economy and politics are very stable. Plus, we have a world-class university.”

Plaza is certainly not alone in reaching out to immigrants and international buyers. Most GTA developers and brokers regard foreign investors and new Canadian purchasers as essential to the success of their condo projects, and they pursue these markets vigorously.

Just ask Barbara Lawlor. Her firm, Baker Real Estate, constantly deals with foreign buyers and new Canadians, selling them on the virtues of Toronto and its hot condo market.

“Toronto has become truly international, and it’s because people are coming here from all over the world,” Lawlor says. “The one unifying thread on our sales floors is that all of these people are newcomers and their backgrounds are diverse, both culturally and geographically.”

Toronto projects that have sold particularly well with immigrants and international buyers, according to Lawlor, include Cinema Tower (sister project of the Festival Tower/TIFF Bell Lightbox); Exhibit on Bloor; The Yorkville; and Pace Condos at Dundas St. E. and Jarvis St..

Ma says that One Bloor, Hullmark Centre and the Concord megaprojects Park Place and CityPlace have been popular with his Chinese clients.

More.....http://www.yourhome.ca/homes/newsfe...ional-buyers-undergird-toronto-s-condo-market

 

[Automation Gallery]

Market News: Record sales in eight months

More than eight billion dollars. That’s how much new condominium buyers have spent throughout the Greater Toronto Area in just the first eight months of 2011 alone. By the end of August, they’d purchased 18,055 new condo units and spent $8.1-billion.

That’s more than the GTA sees in new condo sales annually in most years, says George Carras, president of real-estate research firm RealNet Canada. “If we didn’t sell another condo, it would already be the best year of the last decade, save 2007 and 2010,” he says. “If you finished 2011 at the same rate that you finished 2010 — and so far we’ve actually been tracking about 42% higher than 2010 — you’d finish at about 27,000 units, which would be a record year for new-condo sales

More.......http://life.nationalpost.com/2011/10/17/market-news-record-sales-in-eight-months/

 

[Markster]

“If we didn’t sell another condo, it would already be the best year of the last decade, save 2007 and 2010,”

So, by "best year of the last decade" he means "third best year of the last decade".

 

[grey]

http://business.financialpost.com/2011/10/18/torontos-condo-boom-about-to-bust-report/

The market for condominiums in Canada’s biggest city could undergo a 15% correction and stagnant construction over the next several years, economists Ryan Bohren and Sheryl King said in the report.

“We think investors are underestimating the wall of inventory about to come on the market in the next 12-24 months which could dampen price appreciation and investor returns,”[/b] the authors said, noting that Toronto could follow the path set by a recent overbuild in British Columbia.

Anecdotal evidence suggests the vast majority—about 60% according to some estimates—of pre-construction sales in the city are to investors, the authors said.

“Although the motivation for investor pre-sale buying varies, they are likely getting a false signal from a very robust and tight resale market in Toronto,” Mr. Bohren and Ms. King said.

 

[Automation Gallery]

No housing bubble in Toronto

Sales have edged higher and annual price growth has exceeded 8 per cent in recent months. Once again, listings are beginning to rise, which is expected to slow price growth. Therefore, Toronto’s market is not only balanced, but is also perceived to be balanced by most, and no one is talking about a bubble anymore.

In truth, there was never a serious bubble threat in Toronto. Even in Vancouver, the speculation about a housing bubble is overblown. Earlier this year, the Conference Board demonstrated that much of the increase in average house prices in Vancouver has to do with a surge in sales of high-end homes.

Toronto’s housing market has a bright future, given expected strong population growth. The future of the market likely will see increasing density. For now, single-family units still make up about half of all sales in Toronto. During the first half of 2011, singles’ median price was up about 8 per cent from a year earlier.

More......http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1075255--no-housing-bubble-in-toronto

 

[Automation Gallery]

CMHC: Toronto Housing Market to Hold Steady in 2012

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Nov. 3, 2011) - Toronto's housing market will see few changes next year as sales flatten out, prices stay near current levels and condominium apartment construction remains strong, according to Shaun Hildebrand, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's Senior Market Analyst for the Greater Toronto Area. CMHC released its latest forecast for the GTA today at the annual CMHC Toronto Housing Outlook Conference.

"The market will feel somewhat slower than previous periods of high activity as buyers practice more restraint in light of slowing economic fundamentals," said Shaun Hildebrand. "Low interest rates will help keep a decent sales pace, but expect resistance to price increases as more supply enters the market," added Hildebrand.

While the headline numbers won't change much in 2012, several subplots within the diverse GTA housing market will be worth paying attention to.

Highlights of the conference include:

•Price growth for condos will wind down as a large number of units under construction reach completion.


•High levels of condo construction will help alleviate some pressures on vacancy rates as rental demand remains strong.


•Ownership affordability will remain in check as first-time buyers gravitate towards relatively less expensive pockets of the GTA.


•The downsizing trend will gain momentum in the coming years as more baby boomers enter their retirement years.

As Canada's national housing agency, CMHC draws on more than 65 years of experience to help Canadians access a variety of quality, environmentally sustainable and affordable homes. CMHC also provides reliable, impartial and up-to-date housing market reports, analysis and knowledge to support and assist consumers and the housing industry in making vital decisions.

http://www.marketwire.com/press-rel...ing-market-to-hold-steady-in-2012-1581665.htm

 

[TrickyRicky]

Automation, you should invest heavily in the condo market in Toronto right now because the future is so bright

 

[jje1000]

This is why people who say keep on talking the skyline over the the streetscape make me roll my eyes. 50 floor residential towers with a single floor of retail (Aka The Pinnacle Centre) do not make for a city worth walking through!

Mildly ironic: aA is talking about vibrant neighbourhoods when it continues to design the same wrapped-balcony glass boxes over and over again. Their 1000 Bay project looks promising, but I do wish they'd innovate a bit more.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...ty-that-just-keeps-growing-up/article2226336/

The down side of a city that just keeps growing up
TAMARA BALUJA
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Published Saturday, Nov. 05, 2011 6:00AM EDT

Some might see quaint and charming, but when Richard Witt looks at his old-fashioned High Park home, he sees red.

“I hate the poorly constructed, outdated house that I live in that constantly needs to be fixed,” he said. Mr. Witt, an architect with Raw Architects and Designers, would like nothing more than to move back into a loft apartment from his pre-marriage days. Call it a common architect’s dilemma: Peter Clewes, an architect with architectsAlliance, lives in a 20th-century Beaches home, but longs for a downtown condo in one of the sleekly modern buildings that he likes to design.

“The problem,” he says, “is that the downtown core, where a lot of tall buildings are being constructed, is not an area I would want to live in. It is not an issue of height and density, but of neighbourhood quality.”

High rises are sprouting up across the city: In September, 132 new high-rise buildings were under construction in the city – almost 50 more than our nearest North American competitors, Mexico City, according to a recent survey by the German-based company Emporis. Once characterized by urban sprawl, the pace at which Toronto is morphing from a horizontal city to a vertically stacked one has left some critics arguing that the construction is random, with insufficient thought given to long-term planning.

“It is being forced upon us with some very deliberate external policies,” Mr. Clewes told a crowd gathered Wednesday night for a panel discussion called “How Tall Is Too Tall?” at the Harbourfront Centre. The Greenbelt legislation introduced by Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals in 2005, he argued, is one of the reasons behind the increased densification of Toronto’s downtown core. The legislation, which Mr. Clewes says encourages urban planners to be “smart about our growth,” protects nearly 1.8-million acres (over 700,000 hectares) of farmland and forest. It was meant to put the brakes on urban expansion, which has already swallowed swaths of prize agricultural land around the GTA.

Now, he says, based on the province’s Places to Grow policy, the city will have to find a way to house an additional 1.5-million by 2020. He speculates, based on housing demand, that most of the residents will likely end up living in the downtown core, bounded by Spadina Avenue to the west, Sherbourne Street to the east, Bloor Street to the north and Lake Ontario to the south, although the inner suburbs also will see some vertical development.

Before the situation gets out of hand, many architects and urban planners are saying it’s high time we gave this scenario some critical consideration. For one thing, many feel the city’s vibrant street culture would be lost in the race to build taller towers.

“Toronto is in danger of losing too much of its urban fabric,” said Roberta Brandes Gratz, a New York-based award-winning journalist who writes for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. “A concentration of single-purpose residential towers, even if beautifully designed, is the suburbs in reverse.” While the Emporis figures do not distinguish between residential and commercial development, it seems that most of these new buildings are designed as condos.

She argues that Toronto needs more mixed-income and mixed-use towers built to a medium-rise height. In conjunction with local mom-and-pop stores, she says, this will encourage a vibrant street culture with residents engaging with their neighbourhoods.

Another caution is that, particularly in lower-income areas, high rises can morph into “towers of poverty.” Susan McIsaac, president and chief executive officer of United Way Toronto, argues for mixed-income, mixed-use development, although her concerns are slightly different than Ms. Gratz’s.

The group’s 2011 report, Vertical Poverty, found that, in 1981, one out of every three low-income families in the City of Toronto rented a unit in a high-rise building. By 2006, this had increased to 43 per cent.

Tall towers may be a “practical” solution to the high demand of housing in the city, says Ms. McIsaac, “but we just don’t want to see them become places that are overcrowded and in disrepair,” she said. “As we continue to build, we really want to make sure that we don’t create towers of poverty. We want to be creating mixed-income neighbourhoods where towers do not represent a concentration of poverty but rather individuals of a variety of economic backgrounds, and that the neighbourhoods around the towers are also mixed-income and mixed use, so that it’s a vibrant community.”

The trick, many architects say, is shifting the “endless” debate away from the height of towers to their functional use and architectural design.

“People don’t really look up and take notice of tall buildings,” said Mr. Witt. That’s why he and Mr. Clewes told the panel that it’s usually the first 50 feet of a tower that really matter. Bruce Kuwabara of KPMB Architects, whose recent projects include the TIFF Bell Lightbox, concurred. “It’s not about height, but how you organize tall buildings vertically,” he said.

Nothing is quite so “deadly boring” and “sterilizing” as seeing a bank at the corner of a tall building, he added.

Instead, they pointed to examples like the Barbican in London, or places in the upper east and west sides of New York City as models for high rises that don’t infringe on the neighbourhood feel of the communities in which they are located. In Toronto, the King and Spadina area, and the Bloor street development also appear to be heading in that positive direction, said Mr. Clewes. “We’re about 50 years behind from what’s happening in New York, but it will be very interesting to watch what happens in these emerging developments,” he said.

The solution lies partly architectural designs that complement pre-existing structures, Mr. Clewes added.

If developers are building a tower in a commercial neighbourhood such as Bloor Street east of St. George, he suggested designing a building that fits into the continuous street wall. On the other hand, Charles Street, which is on a more residential zone, requires different treatment with landscaped lawns, he said.

“I don't think that high-rise neighbourhoods are inherently problematic,” said Mr. Witt. “As long as the neighbourhoods are mixed use – containing employment, living spaces, community facilities and retail, and provide animation and walkability at the street level they will be successful. … What we need is economic incentives to bring more employment uses back to the city centre – and better standards and guidelines for the upper levels of the buildings to ensure that we build a sustainable and diverse skyline.”

Given that Toronto will be building vertically, Mr. Kuwabara argued there is a strong case to be made for pushing Toronto’s skyline even higher.

“I would argue that Toronto is too short [in comparison to other world-class cities],” he said. Just consider examples like New York’s Empire State building, Seattle’s Space Needle or Toronto’s very own CN Tower.

“Tall buildings have an incredible power to identify places in the world, and if you subtract them, you lose identity globally,” he said. “Toronto has that opportunity still.”

 

[Softee]

Most of these new condos are being built on former parking lots. I don't see how a new building (with retail on the ground floor) on what used to be a parking lot can threaten to damage the city's street culture and urban fabric?

 

[jje1000]

The problem is that in most cases (Central Waterfront, Bay Street), an overabundance of residential towers makes for a very residential and withdrawn area.