Toronto Karma Condos | 165.8m | 50s | Lifetime | a—A

Karma Chameleon.

I hate to be sitting on one of those couches when the BBQ is being used right behind you:
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Haha! is this from the website?
 
building design looks really good, not sure about the floor plans... 3 bedrooms squeezed in 800sq ft? and all 3 bedrooms sharing one washroom...
 
The contents of Clewes' head can be represented as this BASIC program from the 1980s....

10 PRINT "Glass box with balconies"
20 GOTO 10
 
This is just rediculous. This is pretty close to inhumane.

The ultimate in developer greed.


Karma.jpg

This the norm these days. Get used to it. Earlier, Canderel -- developer of AURA-- had offered almost the same size units in its project DNA 3. It is my understanding that this size units sold well.

Who buys and will live in this size of unit -- we can only guess. Perhaps, individuals who do not wish to commute and do not have the resources to buy a bigger unit. Perhaps, pad is used as a 'quickie' by individuals in the financial district.

This reminds me of an old late Jack Lemon movie "The Apartment". Only the oldy fogies will remember this.
 
This is just rediculous. This is pretty close to inhumane.

The ultimate in developer greed.


ridiculous comment. if it sells then so be it. and my understanding is that these units do well esp as pied a terres. i dont think theyd build it if they werent confident there was a market for it.
 
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This is just rediculous. This is pretty close to inhumane.

The ultimate in developer greed.

That comment makes no sense and demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of real estate or construction logistics - which is somewhat surprising considering how long you've been on this site. Smaller units are actually more expensive to construct in terms of hard $psf costs and there are additional soft $psf costs associates with the additional units by splitting up the floor plate. In terms of the selling price, typically $psf is similar in most units, so there is no real financial benefit to smaller units for the developer - only additional costs and logistics to deal with. The reason the smaller units are included is that there is a high demand for them and they sell, as opposed to larger units which are slower to be absorbed and increase risks for the developer.

Let's put this another way in a simple example. If a floorplate has a net of 4,000 square feet of unit space on the market at $500 psf the revenue generated is $2 million. That space could be carved up into 4 units of 1,000 square feet or 8 units of 500 square feet - each would generate approximately the same amount of revenue. However the smaller units each require a certain additional amount of parking which is cost prohibitive (even at $25k a spot, it's a money losing proposition for the developer), that's also 8 kitchens instead of 4, additional HVAC and mechanical systems, additional development charges (charged on a per unit basis depending on # of bedrooms), additional purchase & sale agreements, legal fees, after-sales service requirements, tarion warranty responsibilities, loads on the elevators which could result in the need for an additional shaft (i.e. 3 vs 4 shafts) which reduces the net square footage on each floorplate, brokers fees and the list goes on and on.

The reality is that having to sell fewer units to reach financing thresholds, with fewer investors, fewer purchase & sale agreements and lower hard and soft construction costs would be a net benefit to the developer. So where exactly is this “greed†you speak of when the smaller units are more expensive to build? Developers create supply to fulfill demand - the marketplace is demanding smaller units, so despite the issues I've outlined above, it’s a less risky proposition to develop a product that will quickly be absorbed by the marketplace.
 
This is just rediculous. This is pretty close to inhumane.

The ultimate in developer greed.

Um, no. The developers would not offer this size of unit if there were not a demand for them. The demand for this kind of unit is there -- if I were rich, and wanted a 'cabin' in downtown Toronto for the occasional visit (with a mistress?), this would be ideal. Not to mention people just starting out, who if they want to own their own place and live downtown, can only afford something this size.

Greed has nothing to do with it -- not counting the normal profit motive which drives almost all construction.
 
I think it is safe to say that without the rental market, suite sizes would be quite different.
 

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