New homes on the mar­ket include Vic­tory Con­dos, which has lim­ited availability

Suzanne Win­trob, National Post

Hous­ing sales may be boom­ing again, but judg­ing by all the bull­doz­ers and cranes pop­ping up, it appears lux­ury con­do­mini­ums are the talk of the town.

From Lake Ontario to tony Yorkville and out to the sub­urbs, there is hardly a piece of land with­out a new condo build­ing on it or one in the works. Famous hotel brands such as Trump, Four Sea­sons and Ritz-Carlton are well into con­struc­tion, while local devel­op­ers who held on to land dur­ing last year’s finan­cial night­mare have rolled up their sleeves and are back in action.

All the excite­ment has given buy­ers and investors an assort­ment of inter­est­ing lux­u­ri­ous options. There are grand res­i­dences atop hotels, chic units and pent­houses in tall tow­ers, and a new crop of lower build­ings boast­ing gar­den ter­races. Those on the mar­ket are sell­ing swiftly, while sev­eral new offer­ings are about to make their offi­cial debuts.

“We’re all a lit­tle sur­prised by how the mar­ket turned around very quickly,” admits Brian Brown, vice-president of Life­time Devel­op­ments and prin­ci­pal of sis­ter com­pany BLVD Devel­op­ments. “It was almost like some­body turned off the faucet and then all of a sud­den turned it back on. It’s as if there wasn’t a slow­down. There has been a lot of pent-up demand. For a period of time, peo­ple decided they wanted to sit on the side­lines to see how things were going to shake out. As soon as we heard some good news, every­one was jump­ing back in and try­ing to find great deals, great offers and great invest­ment opportunities.”

Lifetime/BLVD is the per­fect exam­ple of a builder offer­ing some­thing for every­one. While most of the company’s condo projects are sit­u­ated in down­town Toronto, they come in all shapes and sizes and cater to a wide demographic.

For instance, Lib­erty Mar­ket Lofts in Lib­erty Vil­lage fea­tures live-work spaces, with only a hand­ful of lofts and pent­houses left and priced to $494,990. Near Spad­ina Avenue, the pricier 12-storey project Vic­tory Con­dos on King has just a few suites avail­able. Pent­houses, boast­ing pri­vate rooftop patios that match the unit size, range from 800 to 2,500 sq. ft. and $706,900 to $2.2–

mil­lion. As an incen­tive, pent­house buy­ers will receive free stuff includ­ing: a locker, an under­ground park­ing space, an upgraded kitchen appli­ance pack­age and rooftop built-in bar­be­cue and sink. Life­time is also a joint ven­ture part­ner with Great Gulf Homes on the 42-storey X2 tower, and will launch three more tow­ers in the fall includ­ing the 41-storey Bisha Hotel and Res­i­dences in Toronto’s enter­tain­ment dis­trict. In short, dif­fer­ent strokes for dif­fer­ent folks.

“There’s def­i­nitely a mar­ket for every type of prod­uct,” Mr. Brown explains. “Peo­ple feel they’re get­ting some­thing dif­fer­ent, some­thing that fits exactly what their expec­ta­tions are with­out hav­ing to spend extra money to upgrade. It’s done very well for us.”

Ken Zuck­er­man, owner of Zinc Con­struc­tion, shares that sen­ti­ment as he pre­pares to trans­form St. Basil’s Sep­a­rate School in Yorkville into a six-storey, 25-unit tiered bou­tique condo build­ing called Hazel­ton 36. It is unique to Toronto, he claims, because it will be small but splen­did and sit­u­ated on a res­i­den­tial tree-lined street. Aver­age units will be approx­i­mately 1,800 to 2,200 sq. ft. and priced around $1-million, with pent­houses as big as 6,000 sq. ft. Expected occu­pancy is Sep­tem­ber 2012.

“It’s for peo­ple who are inde­pen­dent and want their pri­vacy and want to feel they’re some­where spe­cial,” says Mr. Zuck­er­man, who plans sev­eral more bou­tique projects now that the mar­ket is back where he likes it.

Another new­comer to the lux­ury condo busi­ness, given the eco­nomic upswing, is Dun­par Homes. Mark Mintzer, vice-president of sales and mar­ket­ing, says the com­pany has built more than 2,000 lux­ury town­homes in South Eto­bi­coke over the past 25 years but the time was right for its first condo high­rise. The seven-storey Kingsway Ter­race, at the cor­ner of Prince Edward Drive and Dun­das Street West, will go to mar­ket on April 10 with 80 units rang­ing from 700 to 2,900 sq. ft. and priced from $400,000 to more than $2-million. The suites are geared to upscale empty-nesters who live in The Kingsway and want to stay in the area.

“In build­ing our town­homes, we always had a miss­ing link for the per­son who wanted some­thing all on one floor,” Mr. Mintzer says. “Peo­ple always loved our fin­ishes and designs but couldn’t do the stairs. We were miss­ing a seg­ment of the mar­ket we should have been look­ing at.”

Dun­par Homes has owned sev­eral pieces of land on that inter­sec­tion for a decade but was wait­ing for the right oppor­tu­nity. When the econ­omy picked up, the com­pany made its move. Kingsway Ter­race is just one of three build­ings the devel­oper is plan­ning for that cor­ner over the next five years.

Some builders are entic­ing buy­ers with nos­tal­gia. The Nicholas near York-ville is a throw­back to the 1960s, with floors, fix­tures and fur­ni­ture in the 29-storey, 255-unit build­ing designed as an ode to Mad Men. Mark Reeve, a part­ner at devel­oper Urban Cap­i­tal Prop­erty Group, describes the build­ing as “afford­able lux­ury” given the “first-class” fin­ishes and Cec­coni Simone-designed kitchens. The ’60s theme is so ingrained in mar­ket­ing the prop­erty that “one adver­tis­ing exec­u­tive wanted to call it the Ster­ling Cooper build­ing [like on the TV show] but we said that was going a bit too far,” Mr. Reeve quips.

Then there’s the “some­thing dif­fer­ent” cat­e­gory. Con­cord Adex’s 1,800-unit Parade project, cov­er­ing two city blocks in down­town Toronto, com­prises two 38-storey tow­ers linked by a two-storey bridge at the 28 to 30 lev­els. Parade II – the phase now under con­struc­tion – boasts two Mike Niven-designed Sky Suites sit­u­ated within the bridge. Each 4,000-sq.-ft. Sky Suite has three lev­els, with the liv­ing room and din­ing room located on the bridge and the bed­rooms in the tower. There is a walk­out from the mas­ter bed­room to a pri­vate gar­den on the bridge’s roof deck. Cost of own­er­ship: $6-million.

“Our tar­get is the typ­i­cal rich and famous, the type of per­son­al­ity that only looks at prop­er­ties that are one of a kind,” says Brian Fong, senior man­ager of project mar­ket­ing at Con­cord Adex.

The com­pany has never offered such exclu­sive suites at any of their other projects around the world, he says. They are being sold through a select group of real estate agents.

For those look­ing for single-family lux­ury, only three bun­ga­lows remain at The Bun­ga­lows at Kil­gour Estates, rang­ing from $1.7-million to $2–

mil­lion. Simona Anni­bale, vice-president of mar­ket­ing at Daniels Corp., says they offer “some­thing very unique in today’s mar­ket­place that even nearby Lawrence Park or Rosedale do not: an inti­mate con­nec­tion to the Kil­gour Club – an all-encompassing fit­ness, social and recre­ational oasis designed by Brian Gluck­stein.” Buy­ers can move in this year.

Condo/hotels are doing brisk busi­ness, too, with the big-name brands com­ing together nicely. The 60-storey Trump Toronto is almost halfway up (“We’re aver­ag­ing about a floor every week and a half,” says spokesman Howard Tikka) and the first stage of the granite-and-glass cur­tain wall is com­plete. The res­i­dences are 60% sold but the remain­ing are exquis­ite, rang­ing from a 36^th-floor, 1,310-sq.-ft. suite from $2.1-million to a 51^st-floor 3,275-sq.-ft. suite from $5.8-million. Hotel con­do­mini­ums start at $900,000. Trump’s peo­ple are hop­ing for a Feb­ru­ary 2011 hotel open­ing, with res­i­dence and condo occu­pancy fol­low­ing that fall.

The 53-storey Ritz-Carlton Toronto is also mak­ing inroads, with the build­ing now topped off and 80% of the 159 res­i­dences sold. As incen­tive, buy­ers will receive a $150,000 gift card they can use at any Ritz-Carlton prop­er­ties around the world.

“Most of our buy­ers have stayed at a Ritz-Carlton hotel or resort across the world,” explains Tina Amato, senior vice-president at Baker Real Estate. “They are very famil­iar with the brand, they know the ser­vice and they know what they’re going to get by liv­ing above a Ritz-Carlton Hotel. The gift card … is a really spe­cial incen­tive for them to buy.”

Not to be out­done, the 55-storey Four Sea­sons is now at the ninth floor and the glass cur­tain wall is going in. The com­plete project com­prises two tow­ers – a 55-floor tower hous­ing the hotel plus exquis­ite res­i­dences begin­ning on the 24^th floor, and a 26-storey tower made up entirely of res­i­dences. Both will be com­pleted at the same time, with res­i­dence occu­pancy in mid-2012. The res­i­dences are also 80% sold.

Of par­tic­u­lar note is the 55^th-floor pent­house. At 9,032 sq. ft., it takes up the entire floor and includes 12-ft. ceil­ings, floor-to-ceiling glass on every wall, four ter­races, and a sep­a­rate 680-sq.-ft. staff suite. The lucky owner gets four pri­vate park­ing spaces and a Four Sea­sons address. Price tag: $30-million.

“Ninety to 100% of our buy­ers own res­i­dences else­where in the world, but most have some Cana­dian [con­nec­tion] – maybe they used to live here, or they still live here, or they have kids who go to school here, or they have fam­ily or busi­ness here,” says Jan­ice Fox, direc­tor of sales for Four Sea­sons Pri­vate Res­i­dences. “Much less than the major­ity will live here full-time … so [own­ers] are never going to have to wait long for an elevator.”

With so much activ­ity, 2010 is shap­ing up to be a busy year for devel­op­ers – and a lux­u­ri­ously sat­is­fy­ing one for those seek­ing the finest in con­do­minium living.

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