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Toronto in the World

ttk77 said:
Toronto's vacancy rate isn't at 1%, but it is still very low (1.6%): http://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/corp/nero/nere/2011/2011-06-09-0815.cfm

When I moved into my last apartment before buying a condo, in 2004-2005 the vacancy rate by comparison was up over 4%.

http://www.toronto.ca/planning/housing.htm

If you look at the graph lower on the page in the above link though (it only goes to 2006), it appears that the very high vacancy rate of those years was just a very large blip with things more or less back to normal now. Any idea why that happened?
Click to expand...

You may be right. 1% may be just for condos. This came from the REMAX condo newsletter that is sent out each month.
 
Toronto Office Market is Booming!

Hi I found this article with the latest facts and figures of Toronto's office market from Cushman and Wakefield.

http://http://www.jacquespilondesign.com/Streetsmarts/links/C&W%20Special%20Research%20Report%20Toronto's%20Downtown%20Q2%202011.pdf

It goes over the reasons why the market is booming and compares it with other cities in Canada and the US on page 3. It shows the gap is closing with Chicago but still has a long way to go to catch up with New York.

Can someone make this into it's own thread. Im having difficulties doing so. Thanks.
 
Grump said:
Toronto Office Market is Booming!

Hi I found this article with the latest facts and figures of Toronto's office market from Cushman and Wakefield.

http://http://www.jacquespilondesign.com/Streetsmarts/links/C&W%20Special%20Research%20Report%20Toronto's%20Downtown%20Q2%202011.pdf

It goes over the reasons why the market is booming and compares it with other cities in and the US on page 3. It shows the gap is closing with Chicago but still has a long way to go to catch up with New York.

Can someone make this into it's own thread. Im having difficulties doing so. Thanks.
Click to expand...

I think it is some good stats to show Toronto's standing on the continent.

CBD inventory (sf million)

NYC: 327.5
Chicago 121
Washington DC 104.1
Toronto 84.0
Boston 60.8
San Francisco 49.3
Montreal 48
Philadelphia 43.7
Calgary 42.2

These numbers to some extent show how urban a city really is. NYC is obviously a different league (although we constantly pretend to compare with it), and Chicago is still 50% larger. Washington DC fares extraordinarily well but I suspect it is large due to its role of being the US capital.
On the other hand, cities like Boston and San Fran have much larger CBDs for their their size. For example, Toronto's population is 2.5M (city), while both Boston and SF are in the 600-800k range, yet they manage to have CBD office inventory 60-70% of Toronto's. In fact, despite doing relatively well on the numbers, Toronto's office inventory is still too small for the city's size. I calculated the inventory/city population ratio out of the curiosity and the ranking becomes like this

Washington DC 17.3
Boston 9.8
San Fran 6.1
Chicago 4.5
Calgary 4.3
NYC 4.0
Toronto 3.4
Montreal 3.0
Philadelphia 2.9

In terms of "standing", Montreal seems to be in line with Philadelphia, while Toronto still needs a lot of work to catch up with Chicago.
 
^A CBD draws from the entire metro area, not just within city limits. A meaningful comparison would compare metro population numbers.
 
kkgg7 said:
These numbers to some extent show how urban a city really is. NYC is obviously a different league (although we constantly pretend to compare with it), and Chicago is still 50% larger. Washington DC fares extraordinarily well but I suspect it is large due to its role of being the US capital.
On the other hand, cities like Boston and San Fran have much larger CBDs for their their size. For example, Toronto's population is 2.5M (city), while both Boston and SF are in the 600-800k range, yet they manage to have CBD office inventory 60-70% of Toronto's. In fact, despite doing relatively well on the numbers, Toronto's office inventory is still too small for the city's size. I calculated the inventory/city population ratio out of the curiosity and the ranking becomes like this
Click to expand...

Well duh, maybe it has something to do with the fact that Boston and San Francisco survived the amalgamation craze of the 90s.
Boston is 90 sq. mi. while Toronto is 243 sq. mi.
Now let's see what happens once you remove Etobicoke, Scarborough and North York from the equation. All of a sudden Toronto's inventory/population goes higher.
Your calculation is beyond flawed that's why such a calculation is never used.
Toronto's CBD is huge by NA standards. Only Chicago and NYC are higher. I won't factor Washington into the equation just because it's a huge government town.
 
Nothing that we already did not know..but here is the article...

Highrises? We’re tops on the continent

Toronto’s condo boom is not slowing down anytime soon as the latest statistics show the city is building more high rises than anywhere else in North America.

The September 2011 data from German research company Emporis — the world’s largest source of information on multi-storey buildings — is included in a presentation to be discussed by the city’s economic development committee on Friday.

There are currently 132 highrise buildings under construction in Toronto, according to the figures. Mexico City ranks a distant second with 88 and New York City is in third with 86. The field drops off dramatically after that: fourth-ranking Chicago is building 17 highrises, while Miami rounds out the top five with 16.

Emporis defines a highrise building as between 35 and 100 metres high, or 12 to 40 floors. Buildings taller than that are considered skyscrapers.

Toronto already has the second-highest number of completed highrises and skyscrapers in North America, with 1,875 — just ahead of Mexico City and Chicago — according to Emporis. They all trail runaway leader New York City by more than 4,000, however.

Provincial and municipal land intensification policies, such as Ontario’s Greenbelt, have led to a shift away from low-rise development in the city, said Matthew Slutsky, founder and president of BuzzBuzzHome, which catalogues new residential projects in Canada.

“If you combine the construction with low-rises, the overall building is about average for Toronto,” he said, calling the growth of high-density development along transit lines a “fantastic” alternative to suburban sprawl.

“What we’re seeing is actually a tale of two housing markets, with low-rise in a substantial decline and highrise in steady increase,” George Carras, president of RealNet Canada Inc., wrote in the Star earlier this year.

Highrise units now make up 60 per cent of new home sales in the GTA, compared with only 25 per cent in 2000, according to Carras.

Emporis’s statistics do not distinguish between residential and office development, so the numbers include more than just condos.

But “you could probably count on your hand” the number of rental highrises and office buildings going up in the city, said Ben Myers, executive vice-president of market research firm Urbanation, which tracks condo development in the city.

There is little fear among industry experts that Toronto construction is outstripping demand, despite Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney’s warning about a national condo price bubble back in June. In fact, some are worried about the opposite.

There are more than 39,000 condo units under construction in the region, according to Myers — “and 88 per cent of those are already sold.”

A further 118 buildings are in pre-construction, he said, and three-quarters of those are sold. “We’re just continually getting larger and larger and larger.”

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1064773
 
It's not as far as I can tell- at least for precise building heights. It makes you wonder if they are accurate for some other cities as well.
 
Here is the first page of the Emporis list of all buildings in Toronto. Noticeably absent from the list are Aura, Number One Bloor, Shangri-La, Ice and L Tower (but Trump and Four Seasons are included, so under construction buildings are included). Make of this what you will.

edit -- actually, going through the list it appears that it only includes U/C buildings that have topped off. Why this is, I do not know.

ScreenShot138.jpg
 
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Heights according to SSP (which seem accurate from what I can tell):

Ritz 209.6m (Emporis claims 208m -- a 1.6m difference)
Four Seasons 204m (Emporis claims 190m -- a 14m (!!) difference)
RBC Dexia 185.9m (Emporis claims 208m -- a 22.1m (!!!) difference)

According to Emporis, RBC Dexia is 18m taller than Four Seasons, when in fact it is 18.1m SHORTER!
 
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Yes that is quite a significant difference. They also have Trump at 257m (843 ft) which is only accurate if you do not take into account the spire- which is an integral part of the design. However for some other buildings they include the spires/masts; Montreal's Le 1250 Boulevard René-Lévesque is listed as 226m (741 ft) for instance, but that is only accurate when the mast is included. So there is inconsistency there as well.
 
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