Toronto Condo and Real Estate Blog

By Derek Raymaker - Globe and Mail

There is very little room left for large-scale tract development of detached or large semi-detached housing.

There’s not much that everybody can agree on when it comes to the market for new housing in Metro Toronto, which includes the former City of Toronto along with North York, Etobicoke and Scarborough.

About the only thing that is beyond argument is that there is very little room left for large-scale tract development of detached or large semi-detached housing. Low-rise communities now under way are small-scale and, if not taking the place of recently demolished residential areas, are filling land previously zoned for other purposes.

Of the 5,141 housing starts under way in Toronto in the first three months of 2008, 4,669 were condos, followed by 268 townhouses, 76 semis and 128 detached houses, according to data collected by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.

Even in these uncertain economic times, there is still an enormous demand for condos in Toronto and a huge volume of high-rise units constantly coming on the market in response. Condos appeal to a broad swath of the market - first-time buyers, new Canadians, empty-nesters and down-sizers, investor buyers and people who simply can’t afford a traditional house.

Yes, affordability is a growing concern. The average price of a new single detached house in Toronto proper topped $1-million in the first three months of 2008 - $1,002,534 to be exact, according to CMHC. (It should be noted that this includes lavish custom houses built for high-end buyers, which skews the average-price data.)

The exception is Scarborough, on the eastern end of the city, where the average new detached price from January-through-March was $408,070, which is significantly less than the Greater Toronto (including the 905 suburbs) average detached price of $518,103.

Launching this month is Monarch Homes’ Evergreen at the corner of Midland Avenue and St. Clair Avenue East, the site of 200 houses including a large number of single detached houses, with prices starting at the mid-$300,000s and rising to the mid-$500,000s.

Monarch is also aiming to make Evergreen a showpiece of green construction and energy efficiency that it would like to duplicate elsewhere.

Monarch has taken a shine to Scarborough, where it is building Upper Danforth Village at Danforth Road, east of Warden Avenue. Seven detached houses on 30-foot-wide lots are still available for between $497,000 and $510,000, all in the 2,300-square-foot range.

Upper Danforth Village’s large detached houses are embedded in a larger community of townhouses and semis ranging from $325,000 to $421,000. All are designed to fit in with the surrounding residential community, with brick-and-stone exteriors and a variety of façades featuring peaked roofs and Victorian-style motifs.

A similar community, with an array of dwellings ranging from detached houses to townhouses, is the Conservatory Group’s Port Union Village at the eastern end of Lawrence Avenue near Lake Ontario.

About 50 detached models are still available, all of which have a maritime feel. Ranging from $435,000 to $553,000 for between 1,680 and 2,793 sq. ft., Port Union Village resembles a standard suburban development, but features easy access to the lakeshore and a variety of conservation land nearby.

In the same area, but on a more exclusive scale, is North Star Homes’ Eastlake Village II development. Only eight lots on 40- and 45-foot-wide properties were for sale, with five still available, ranging in price from $570,000 to $663,000 and in size from 2,400 to 3,309 sq. ft.

Eastlake Village’s designs take on a more stately dimension with imposing classical facades with brick construction, blending into existing houses as an infill development near the lake shore.

Also in the Port Union neighbourhood is Laura Ellis Gardens, a detached community by Fairglen Homes featuring 21 lots with 50-foot frontages. Similar to Eastlake Village in the size and stature of its models, eight detached houses remain for sale here, ranging from $590,000 to $660,000 and up to 3,402 sq. ft.

Similar detached houses can be bought at a bit of a discount in the 905 suburbs, but the proximity to the city and the lake shore make the Port Union infill communities a fairly popular niche product.

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

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The wealthy may not want to deal with the gardener any more, but they don’t want to move too far from the familiar

By Derek Raymaker - Globe and Mail

To nobody’s surprise, most new super-luxury condominium projects hitting the market this year are staking out territory in and around the fashionable and pricey Yorkville shopping and dinning district.

Our review of the ever-growing $1-million-plus condo market focused last week on Yorkville, where you can easily buy into some princely accommodations that include private elevators, gargantuan wrap-around terraces, your choice of granite, limestone or marble, and even a private lap pool.

The large volume of super-luxe condominiums now on the market in Yorkville has tilted the whole submarket into the price stratosphere. As of March, the last month for which data is available, the average price of a new condo suite in Yorkville — the high-gloss corridor along Bloor Street between Yonge Street and Spadina Avenue — stood at $970 a square foot. That’s more than double the overall average price for Greater Toronto at $415 a square foot, according data collected by RealNet Canada.

Of the 17 active projects in preconstruction sales or under construction in Yorkville, six have an average price of more than $1,000 a square foot.

The market research compiled since 2006 — when super-luxury condos started to show up in large, measurable numbers — shows that many of these buyers are not just the fabulously wealthy, but also a lot of empty nesters from Toronto’s well-to-do central neighbourhoods with the ability to cash in big on their traditional houses. But Yorkville isn’t for everyone; it’s often congested and there is heavy road and building construction currently under way. And a lot of those house-rich empty-nester buyers want to stay near the neighbourhood from whence they came.

One such neighbourhoods is Forest Hill, between Spadina Road and Bathurst Avenue north of St. Clair Avenue. Tower Hill Developments has launched a 14-storey landmark condominium here, aiming to appeal to long-time residents who are tiring of paying landscapers to care for their immense lots and contractors to repair their aging manses.

Overlooking Sir Winston Churchill Park and an immense ravine network on Spadina Road and St. Clair Avenue West, construction is now under way with prices ranging from the mid-$800,000s for 1,500 square feet of living space to $2.5-million for 3,300 square feet. Among these suites are four 2,500-square-foot designs on two floors. All of the suites feature floor-to-ceiling windows curving outward in the middle of the building to give it an oval shape and allowing for unique suite layouts even in the smaller sizes.

Other neighbourhoods that are now fertile ground for super-luxury condo developments aimed at existing residents are strung along Bayview Avenue, especially south of Lawrence Avenue East.

The newest addition in this pocket is Huntington, recently launched by Tridel Corp. It will consist of a five-storey and a six-storey building with a total of 91 suites ranging from $1-million to $5.7-million and sizes of up to 6,000 square feet. Huntington will look out over the Sherwood Park Ravine just west of Bayview Avenue, with Sunnybrook Park and Wilmot Creek Park on the other side of Bayview.

Tridel is going to great lengths to make sure the structures integrate into the verdant landscape as much as possible, as well as make sure that residents can enjoy the outdoors with expansive terraces that are as large as 4,000 square feet.

Cresford Developments has also just launched a Georgian-flavoured high-rise-and-townhouse project in the neighbourhood, a few blocks north on Bayview Avenue south of Lawrence. Called the Stratford, the project calls for three high-density buildings with 67 suites ranging from $1.2-million for 1,500 square feet to $4-million for about 3,000 square feet. Surrounding them will be 17 four-storey Georgian townhouses and all the classical ornaments that come with it, designed by architect Joe Brennan.

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