Toronto Condo and Real Estate Blog

A New Experience In Condominium Living

Verve Building

Today, environmental conservation is an issue that concerns everyone, and as Canada’s largest condo developer, Tridel is taking the initiative to new levels in the condominium industry. Through it’s “Naturally Better” program, the company is working to reduce harmful greenhouse gases, waste, pollution and increasing energy costs by implementing environmentally sustainable design and construction practices, along with environmentally friendly features and finishes in all its new communities. Verve, Tridel’s newest downtown condo, will be an illustration of the company’s environmental policy, with residents seeing the direct benefits of green building, through higher performance and efficiency, a healthier living environment and reduced maintenance costs.

Verve will be a new experience in condominium living that will feed off the vibrant energy of the surrounding urban environment, and the spirit of its residents. Offering resort-style condominium living, Verve will provide the comforts of home and the style of today’s coolest boutique hotels. Located on Wellesley Street East, just east of Jarvis Street, this condominium community will anchor a new masterplanned community on the former Wellesley Hospital site. Positioned right on the edge of architectural design, this stunning building will also be healthy and energy efficient, taking the lead as one of the first truly “green” condos in the city.

Pushing the boundaries in architectural design, Burka-Varacalli Architects has made Verve a powerful visual statement, in both the local neighbourhood and on the Toronto skyline, with its 39-storey point tower of shimmering glass and concrete elements, and its hip, urban 7-storey loft building linked by a central lobby. Verve’s tower facade has been shaped to take advantage of some of the unique elements of the surrounding landscape, following the curving path of Wellesley Street as it passes by.

Verve - Hip and Healthy Living Spaces

Verve will offer 344 one-bedroom, one-bedroom plus den, two-bedroom and two-bedroom plus den tower suites with nine-foot ceilings. Ranging in size from 861 to 1,085 square feet, each suite is accompanied by either a French balcony, balcony or terrace. Tower suites are priced from $303,000 to $371,000. A series of large Signature Collection suites will also be released at a later date. The loft building will be home to 86 one-bedroom, one-bedroom plus den, two-bedroom and two-bedroom plus den lofts with ceiling heights ranging from nine to fourteen feet. Every design features either a patio, balcony or terrace, and two-storey lofts make up the top floor of the building. Loft suites range in size from 629 to 1404 square feet and are priced from $241,000 to $561,000.

Verve - The Urban Resort

In addition to leading edge living spaces, Verve will offer residents resort-style living with first-rate amenities and outstanding design. Verve’s central lobby and recreation facilities have been designed as fluid spaces that are open, inviting and pulsing with the life of the community. The two-storey lobby, created by Mike Niven Interior Design Inc., has a suspended second floor made of frosted glass, translucent light panels that change colour over the course of the day, and suspended ornamental artwork that also reflect the coloured light.

The design of the party room, with its bar and caterers’ kitchen, is flexible to meet many uses, whether it be an intimate dinner party or a much larger gathering of friends. Residents can also kick back and play a game of pool in the billiards room or watch a movie in the private screening theatre. And, residents will no longer need their gym membership, as Verve’s fitness centre and aerobics studio will offer state-of-the-art fitness equipment, sound systems and televisions.
Roof Top Swimming Pool

As importantly, Verve will provide residents with an urban oasis reminiscent of South Beach amid the bustling city. On top of the loft building, residents can spend their hot summer nights relaxing while overlooking the city. The roof is home to an outdoor swimming pool with a water wall, breezy cabanas, sunning decks and patios with barbecues. With special lighting adding atmosphere in the evening, residents will be able to entertain their guests, day or night.

Verve - Toronto at Your Door

As Verve is part of the overall masterplanned community, residents will also be able to enjoy a stunning urban park designed by internationally acclaimed landscape architect, Cornelia Oberlander. Oberlander has designed public spaces for many projects including the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, the Canadian Embassy in Berlin and the Canadian Chancellery in Washington, DC. A recipient of the Order of Canada, she believes that it is imperative to provide “green living for city dwellers”, and the theme for the park is “healthy cities.”

Verve is also perfectly located to offer its residents the very best that Toronto has to offer. Just a short walk from Yonge Street, residents can take advantage of some of the best restaurants, shopping and entertainment. A stroll north up Yonge Street leads to the shops of Bloor Street, while a walk south takes residents to College Park, which is home to a large Dominion, the Eaton Centre and numerous restaurants and theatres. To travel further afield in an environmentally friendly way, residents also have access to the TTC at the Wellesley or Sherbourne subway stations.

Builder Known for Quality

Tridel is Canada’s leading developer and builder of condominiums residences with more than 70 years of homebuilding experience. To date the Tridel Group of Companies is responsible for producing over 66,500 homes, and continues to lead the industry in innovation, technology and design. Tridel is determined to develop condominium communities that meet the needs of today’s homeowners while safeguarding the wellbeing of future generations. The company is working to meet this goal by focusing on environmentally sustainable building design, performance in construction and corporate stewardship. Tridel is also a member of the Canada Green Building Council. In recognition of Tridel’s outstanding service to its homeowners, Tridel has also been awarded the coveted Customer Service High-Rise Builder of the Year Award by Tarion Warranty Corporation, and High-Rise Home Builder of the Year by the Greater Toronto Home Builders’ Association.

———————————————————————————

Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information

Coming Soon: King West Condominiums in Liberty Village at King West and Strachan!

Plazacorp quality in design, architecture, finishes and features is coming this spring to Liberty Village! Full-sized suites, upscale interior design, richer finishes, impressive architecture and enhanced value, hallmarks of every Plazacorp condominium, will set a new standard for Liberty Village and you will be among the first to know about it! We’ll keep you updated as soon as we have any new information. In the meantime, if you have any friends who are interested in owning a Plazacorp-quality condominium in Liberty Village, forward this blog post to them and tell them to contact us and register to be kept up to date. We’ll keep YOU posted as soon as we know more.

********************

West Harbour City Phases 1 & 2 - Construction Update

If you’ve driven by the Fleet Street site for West Harbour City Phases 1 & 2 lately, you’ll have noticed that the old Molson building is now almost completely demolished, and you would have also noticed a big red construction crane on the site of Phase 1.

The demolition process was incredibly onerous as the Molson Brewery building had been engineered to a far higher standard than any conventional residential or commercial building would ever be, in order to be able to support the massive 2-storey high beer brewing vats on each of the building’s 5 storeys, each holding tens of thousands of litres of beer. Even the below grade “demolition” was onerous, as the building used concrete and steel driven right down to bedrock in its original construction.

But the demolition is now done (and environmentally managed too; as you may have read in earlier newsletters, demolition was carried out in such a way as to ensure that the maximum amount of material was recycled, steel back to steel, and concrete crushed to make gravel for new roads).

The crane on the West Harbour City Phase 1 site is now proceeding with the construction of the underground parking structures which will form the foundations for the first phase and, in September, once all of the remaining debris from the demolition process is removed, “shoring” for phase 2 is slated to begin. “Shoring” is the process of installing perimeter walls below ground level all around the foundations of the building while excavation of the basement parking levels proceeds; the shoring walls keep the sides of the construction site in place while the Phase 2 parking is being excavated and then built. It won’t be long before there are several cranes on the West Harbour City site working on construction of Phase 1 and Phase 2 simultaneously. We’ll keep you posted on Phase 3 when we have any news.

********************

900 Mt. Pleasant - Topping Off

In every field, there are milestones that deserve to be celebrated, and, in highrise construction “topping off” is one of those milestones. When a building is topped off, it means that concrete for the top of the top floor (the ceiling of the Penthouse Suites) has been completed and, although there’s lots still to be done, it marks the point where the essential structure of the building is complete and, once the heavy rooftop heating and cooling units and elevator and other mechanical units have been hoisted up to the roof, the massive construction cranes can begin to be dismantled.

The topping off for 900 Mt. Pleasant, a party held for all the workers who have laboured on the project, is scheduled for the first half of September. (This is a construction workers party only: this is still a construction site, and still a dangerous place.) If you drive by 900 Mt. Pleasant in the coming weeks, you’ll begin to see the other exterior work progressing once the structure is complete: brick is arriving daily and being “laid up” along the building, and truckloads of windows are also arriving on site daily and are going to be installed in sync with the brick and other exterior materials. It won’t be long before 900 Mt. Pleasant starts to display its finished character to passersby.

———————————————————————————

Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information

Dos and don’ts for first-time home buyers

By Joanna Smith - The Globe and Mail

Sandra Rinomato made her first foray into Toronto real estate when she stopped by a new-home development, curious about what they had to offer. She walked away as the owner of a property she admits she shouldn’t have bought.

“Don’t do it!” she says of the experience.

As a successful real estate agent and the host of the HGTV reality-television show Property Virgins, Ms. Rinomato now helps first-time buyers put their emotions aside and follow some basic guidelines.

She recently took a break from filming in Toronto to talk about the dos and don’ts of buying your first home.

Investigate your area

“Get as much information as you can before actually buying,” Ms. Rinomato says, noting that it doesn’t require a lot of time to do that. “It’s not like you have to spend six months educating yourself.”

She suggests you investigate various neighbourhoods as well as types of real estate you may not have previously considered. And find out how far your dollar will go in the neighbourhood where you would like to buy.

A lot of information is available on the Internet, but Ms. Rinomato urges people to hire a Toronto real estate agent to help interpret it properly and dispel any real estate myths.

Get solid representation

Without something called a buyer representation agreement, you are essentially in a customer-beware situation. Your real estate agent will be obligated to answer your questions honestly, but “if you don’t know what question to ask, they don’t have to divulge that information to you,” Ms. Rinomato explains.

A buyer representation agreement makes you a client, and with it your real estate agent will owe you a higher level of accountability.

While the agreement obligates you to use a particular real estate firm over a specific period of time, the firm, in turn, is required to work exclusively on your behalf - to help you find the property you want to buy. It also means the real estate agent is committed to giving you the full benefit of his or her expertise.

“[Clients] don’t have to think of the question - I have to think of it for them,” Ms. Rinomato says.

Suit your lifestyle

She remembers one childless young couple that asked whether there were any good high schools in their desired area, even though they would probably move before their kids got to be high-school age.

“A lot of times, [first-time buyers] have a limited budget and they are trying to get everything in that first house,” she says. “What they have to do … is buy a property that suits their lifestyle now and for the next few years.”

When a limited budget prevents you from getting what you want in a house and location, it’s time to start looking at less spacious but more practical options, such as smaller houses, townhouses or condos, Ms. Rinomato says.

But even potential condo buyers often limit their options by asking for features such as an extra bedroom to put up guests, she adds.

” ‘Are they helping you pay the mortgage?’ ” she wants to ask them. ” ‘How about a futon?’ ”

Don’t bid too low

You’ll only insult the seller if you offer $250,000 for the sake of bargaining when similar houses in the same neighbourhood have sold for $300,000, she says.

“In those cases, sometimes you end up either never getting the property no matter how you bid, or you have to pay a lot more than if you’d just done it sensibly in the beginning.”

Make your strongest bid

The time for bargaining is not in the middle of a bidding war.

If you really want a house, bid as much as you can possibly afford (based on what you think the home is worth, of course), because if you hold back by even just $500, you may lose it.

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re going to get a second chance.”

Buyers should remember, however, that they can always walk away without bidding when they feel the asking price is too high, she adds.

“You never have to pay more than the house is worth to you.”

A strong bid also doesn’t have any conditions, including for an inspection and a closing date.

“If they’re not offering the dining room chandelier, don’t ask for it,” she says.

And show sellers you are serious by offering a solid deposit along with your bid. With so much on the line, sellers want to be sure the buyer won’t get cold feet.

“Having that certified cheque [for a substantial amount] shows your seriousness and intent to purchase that property,” she says.

“A person with a big deposit upfront, in their hands… can outweigh a few thousand dollars on the offer price.”

———————————————————————————

Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information