Toronto Condo and Real Estate Blog

After the Toronto Star announced the most expensive house in Toronto, they just had to nose around at the low end of the property scale.

Excerpt from an article by Andrew Chung - The Toronto Star

Perhaps only in property-frenzied Toronto, where home prices have gone through the vaulted ceiling, would you find that the cheapest house isn’t even a house.

And it belongs to Larry McGill, a 55-year-old Toronto real estate agent with a love for the water and a keen eye for practicality.

The houseboat’s price is $129,000, and McGill says it’s a steal. The carrying and maintenance costs are way better than for anything else you’d find on Toronto’s waterfront. With mooring costs, taxes, heat, hydro and satellite TV, you’re looking at about $750 a month.

Everyone knows that Toronto real estate is almost too hot to touch. The average asking price of a home at the end of June? $358,035. The most expensive home on the market? An ultra-modernist concrete and glass marvel on the Bridle Path valued at $15 million.

Take the 3-bedroom semi-detached brick rambler on Old Weston Rd. that’s being sold “as is.” It’s listed for $159,000 as an “Opportunity For Home Renovator/Handyman.”

The cheapest detached home available, according to the Multiple Listing Service as of July 7, is selling for $185,000 in Scarborough.

“You can’t find anything in this town that’s standing and has plumbing and wiring for less than $279,000, and that’s on a busy street and it’s pretty shabby,” says McGill. “Finding anything under $300 G’s is pretty hard.”

A lakefront property, he added, would be around $1 million just for the lot itself. Which, he says, perhaps predictably, makes his houseboat such a nice find.

The 18-metre boat, called “Palm Beach,” has over 650 square feet of living space, a gorgeous hot tub that’s made hot in cool weather and cool in the hot weather, two bedrooms - one in the back and one in the front - new carpeting, a full kitchen, a galley dining area, a sofa and two rattan chairs, and of course, satellite TV. The main deck can seat six people comfortably for entertaining, which McGill and his wife Joan Fenton do all the time under the harbour stars.

The boat is currently moored in the Outer Harbour Marina adjacent to the Leslie St. Spit. It’s a no-frills harbour. No tennis courts, swimming pools, or cold drinks like at some of the yacht clubs. But it’s close to the Bay St. towers and the rest of downtown, should the buyer be so inclined.

“Or it’s a cheap cottage, or it’d be perfect for empty nesters or snowbirds who want to live here in the summer,” McGill says. “People forget there’s a lake right here and they don’t have to fight traffic to get there.”

Wintertime is a bit trickier. To stay where it is, the boat must be put up on blocks, rendering it unusable when the snow flies. However, a spot could be reserved at Bluffer’s Park in Scarborough, or in Port Credit, which allow live-aboard boats in the winter, McGill explains.

Read the full article

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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information - 416-388-1960

Average cost of typical 2-storey home rockets 54.6%
Toronto real estate sales lag at 4.4% in moderating market

Excerpt from by Tony Wong - Toronto Star

In the east, things were much less frenzied as real estate agents reported fewer bidding wars, and even price reductions on some listings.”We’re moving to a more transitional summer real estate market in Toronto, so you’ll see volume dropping off from a great market to a good market, and certainly nothing like Alberta,” Lawby said.

House prices in Toronto increased by a solid but not spectacular 4.4% in the second quarter of 2006, compared to the same time last year, as the market continued to moderate, according to the LePage report. The average price of a standard two-storey home - the most sought-after type of Toronto property - rose to $474,766.

Meanwhile, a detached bungalow averaged $373,504, up 5.5%. Toronto condos showed the most appreciation, rising 6.7% to $256,178.

“We saw the market move from a seller’s market to a more balanced market at the end of the fourth quarter of last year, so buyers should be able to get a better shake,” Soper said.

Royal LePage is forecasting that the average price increase for all types of property in Toronto should be in the 5.6% range by the end of the year.

Century 21 is slightly more optimistic in its Toronto real estate forecast, which predicts price increases in the 6 to 7% range.

However, neither real estate firm is expecting sales in the Toronto area to break last year’s record.

Of the 23 Toronto neighbourhoods surveyed by LePage, Riverdale showed the highest year-over-year appreciation. A shortage of listings meant the standard two-storey home hit $350,000, up 14.8%.

Richmond Hill and Markham also had strong growth, with prices for a standard two-storey up 13.3% and 11.7% respectively.

Meanwhile, areas such as the Beach district and Cabbagetown, which have posted stellar appreciation, took a breather. In Cabbagetown, the two-storey was up only 1.9%; in the Beach, down 0.7%.

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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information - 416-388-1960

In a city where the skyline is dotted with construction cranes, at least one condo project now underway is noteworthy for being built without one of these highly visible symbols of the Toronto condo building boom. The Steam Plant Lofts in downtown Toronto is converting an old power plant into a six storey, loft-style condo project with 29 units.

Converting old industrial buildings - with their sturdy structural systems, high ceilings and banks of oversized windows - is a tried-and-true recipe for success in Toronto’s downtown condo market.

However, there’s one, not-so-little problem with the loft conversion process for The Steam Plant Lofts: a 61-metre-high smokestack. The solution was to build the Toronto condo development the old-fashioned way.

Constructed in 1953, the building being transformed into The Steam Plant Lofts was the power plant for the Wellesley and Princess Margaret hospitals. (The Wellesley and the original Princess Margaret have since been demolished and their former sites are slated for highrise condos.)The Toronto loft conversion involves doubling the power plant’s original height of approximately three storeys.

The work requires adding new foundations and increasing the size of the original foundations, as well as adding new concrete shear walls and slab floors.

During demolition, old boilers and other power-generating equipment had to be dismantled and removed, along with some of the building’s original structural system of steel beams and columns.

While the smokestack may have been a curse during construction, it’s proved to be a blessing on the sales side. Three units built inside the cleaned-out smokestack will have a round bedroom or den and the stack’s original red-brick work exposed.

Straightaway, the stack was the unique feature - all the units with rooms in the stack, they all went the first day.One-bedroom condos and units with one bedroom plus den remain available in The Steam Plant Lofts. Prices range from $234,900 to $339,900. Parking spots are $25,000, storage lockers are included in the price and monthly maintenance fees are estimated at 39 cents per square foot.

Occupancy is expected to begin in May 2007.

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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information - 416-388-1960