Tag Archives: central toronto
The ‘Manhattanization’ of Toronto will change family-housing dreams
Prithi Yelaja – CBC News
The housing dreams of families wanting to live in central Toronto will undergo a sea change in the coming decade as the supply of detached homes dwindles and the remaining ones soar in price, real estate experts say.
The pressure is already mounting with single-family homes being snatched up in fierce bidding wars for tens of thousands of dollars — and in a few cases for $200,000 or more — over asking, often with no conditions attached to the offers to purchase.
Comment: Which is where all the upward pressure on price is coming from. Not from condos. Not from foreign investors.
Along with a shrinking stock, prices for single detached homes and townhomes are projected to go up 30% to 50% in the next decade, while condo prices are expected to rise only moderately or stay flat as the oversupply in that market continues to grow.
That scenario effectively eclipses ordinary families out of the market, making condo living the default housing option for those who want to remain in the core.
It’s a phenomenon real estate mogul Brad Lamb refers to as the “Manhattanization” of Toronto.
“In New York City, even if you’re an investment banker making $1 million a year, you still can’t afford to buy a house in Manhattan, so you’re buying a condo,” says Lamb.
It’s the same phenomenon, he says, that you see in other big cities of the world, such as Hong Kong, Tokyo, London and Paris.
“If you want to live in central Toronto, you’re going to have to live in a condo. Families will be forced to buy into high-density living. It’s the natural evolution of a city,” says Lamb who develops condo projects in Toronto, Ottawa and Calgary.
Shift in expectations
For families, the transition to condo life will require a change in mindset and shift in expectations to vertical living in a smaller space, says Ben Myers, editor and vice-president at Urbanation, a real estate newsletter.
It’s a mindset that new Canadians coming here from cities like Hong Kong, Singapore and Mumbai are used to and have no problems with, he adds.
“It’s more the Canadian mindset where you have to have a piece of property, fenced in with a yard and a garage.”
Culturally and economically, Torontonians haven’t arrived at the Manhattan scenario — yet, says John Pasalis, president of Realosophy Real Estate Brokerage.
“You can’t buy a house in New York City or Hong Kong. It’s so expensive, it’s just not an option, but in Toronto we do still have affordable houses.”
Buyers can get a freehold house for around $500,000 if they’re prepared to go farther east on Danforth Avenue or farther west along Bloor Street and lower their expectations in terms of finishes, according to Pasalis.
“We’re at least a decade away before families truly cannot afford houses in Toronto and have to start considering condos as an option,” he says.
Size going to be an issue
With Toronto building more highrises than anywhere else in North America, local buyers might think they have plenty of options in terms of buying condos.
About 53,000 new condo units are due to be completed in Toronto over the next 18 months alone.
However, even when families do adjust their expectations and mindsets to embrace condo living, they will come up against a wall over a lack of larger units roomy enough to accommodate a growing family of any size, experts say.
Of the 6,005 condos ready for occupancy this year in the former city of Toronto, 63% are studios, one-bedrooms or one-bedrooms plus den. The average size is 822 square feet, according to a report by Urbanation
Meanwhile, of 9,090 condos slated for completion in 2014, 67% are studios, one-bedroom units, or one-bedroom plus dens. The average size of all these units is only 695 square feet.
The reason for this is that, typically, developers have to sell 60% to 80% of their units before they can secure bank financing to start construction, so they’re building what sells now — small units for singles and young couples who want to be urban dwellers.
“There’s just no demand for three-bedroom condos downtown. Those units sit on the market a long time,” says Pasalis.
Adds Myers, “the developers in the downtown market are catering their product to investors, who are interested in smaller units that are easier to rent or flip. The larger the unit, the longer it takes to rent out or sell.”
A looming glut in ‘micro’ units
But today’s trend may well lead to a glut of “micro” units and a looming housing crunch for families who will eventually want to live in condos.
Toronto city Coun. Adam Vaughan, for one, is worried about what he calls the “explosion” of single occupancy units in the downtown core.
“Family housing has to be in all parts of Toronto not just in the suburbs,” he says. “If all we do is build this type of housing, we’ll just delay sprawl for another generation and create a simplistic monoculture downtown.”
Vaughan is pushing developers to build more family housing in his downtown ward with some success — more than 600 units of housing with three or more bedrooms have been constructed or approved in the last four years.
“I appreciate that developers are nervous about building what they can sell,” he says, “but we can’t allow market forces to do city planning.”
The city does offer incentives to developers by approving additional height and density for their projects in exchange for their building larger family-friendly units, as well as condos with knockout panels, which can be combined to make larger suites in the future, and units designed for disabled residents.
“Diversity keeps the downtown core vibrant. Diversity is accommodating different family configurations and different economic price points,” says Vaughan.
For his part, Lamb agreed to build 30 three-bedroom units in his 300-unit 32-storey King Charlotte project at King Street east and Spadina in order to get it approved.
Tough sell
But so far, only seven of the 1,000-square-foot three-bedroom condos, priced at under $600,000, have sold.
“They’re a tough sell,” says Lamb. “We’ve had to offer all kinds of incentives. It’s just not what people want right now. It’s a shame.”
Acceptance of condo life has gone through several phases, says Lamb who has been selling them since 1988.
When he started, Lamb recalls that people “turned their noses up at condos,” seeing them as an inferior housing option.
Then, through the condo boom of 2000 to 2012, builders enticed young buyers and investors with tiny “super highly-stylized Prada shoe apartments,” by selling a hip, downtown lifestyle.
Twenty years ago, studio condos — units without bedrooms — were typically 600 square feet. Today they’re more likely to be half that size at 300 square feet.
Lamb predicts the next wave of condo building will reverse the trend to pint-sized units.
“As the city matures, and there is no room for single family homes and the price gap between them and condos grows, that gap will be filled with larger, more luxurious condo units that resemble small homes.”
Toronto’s condo boom
Toronto has 132 highrise buildings, defined as between 12 to 40 floors, under construction, according to a German research company that tracks data on multi-storey buildings.
Mexico City is second with 88 and New York City is third with 86. Rounding out the top five are Chicago, which is building 17 high-rises and Miami with 16.
With 1, 875 completed high rises and skyscrapers, Toronto is second only to New York City, which has more than 4,000, and ranks just ahead of Mexico City and Chicago.
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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information – 416-388-1960
Laurin & Natalie Jeffrey are Toronto Realtors with Century 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these articles, they just reproduce them here for people
who are interested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
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Forest Hill
Forest Hill is one of the most exclusive neighbourhoods in central Toronto. Along with Lawrence Park, Rosedale and The Bridle Path, it is one of Toronto’s wealthiest neighbourhoods. Forest Hill, like Rosedale, is considered one of the finest and most prominent neighbourhoods in Toronto. While the forest has long been replaced by luxury residences, the neighbourhood, with its rolling landscape, remains one of the prettiest and most appealing places to live in Toronto.
Visitors to Forest Hill are usually greeted by the Upper Canada College clock tower on Avenue Road. Upper Forest Hill Village is dominated by Tudor and Georgian style homes, but the architectural styles range from French Colonial with terra cotta tiles to English country manors with sweeping lawns. Luxurious details such as sculpture gardens, porte-cochères, and imposing gated entrances are common and quite widespread. Forest Hill also contains a fair number of historic luxury condos and co-ops located west of Spadina on Lonsdale Road.
Forest Hill Map
Within Forest Hill is a smaller community known to locals as Cedarvale. Homes in Cedarvale are slightly smaller than those in Forest Hill, and the ravine that cuts through the neighbourhood is a source of local pride.
Notable institutions located in Forest Hill are the local Montessori School, Upper Canada College, the Bishop Strachan School, and Forest Hill Public Library. There are numerous churches and synagogues and two theatres.
Forest Hill was originally incorporated as a village in 1923, and later annexed by the City of Toronto in 1967, along with the Village of Swansea. The village was named after the summer home of John Wickson; previously it had been known as Spadina Heights (a name that continued to be applied to the neighbourhood into the twentieth century). Spadina Heights is a derivative of the Ojibwe word “ishapadenah”, meaning a hill or sudden rise in land. Oddly enough, the historically accurate pronunciation is “Spad-dee-na”, though time has changed the way we say it to the current “Spa-die-na”.
In the late 1960s, the City of Toronto planned to construct a highway that would run from Highway 401 to downtown Toronto via the Cedarvale Ravine and Spadina Road. Forest Hill and the Annex would be bisected by the proposed route and numerous local houses would be sacrificed for the new expressway. Jane Jacobs led local residents to rise to protest and raise the awareness of the greater public. The provincial government was forced to withdraw its support for the so-called Spadina Expressway in 1971. The upper half of this route remains today as the Allen Expressway.
When Forest Hill was annexed by the City of Toronto, the agreement granted local residents the right to have their garbage picked up from their doorstep rather than from the curb. It wasn’t until 1993 that the public learned that this extra service cost $420,000 a year and was paid for by the municipal government and public opinion of other Torontonians forced the city to discontinue this favour to Forest Hill residents
Forest Hill Village
The neighbourhood’s original boundaries were Bathurst Street to the west, Upper Canada College to the east, Eglinton Avenue to the north, and Lonsdale Road and a portion of Montclair Avenue to the south. Neighbourhoods north of Eglinton are sometimes though not unanimously regarded as Forest Hill.
In 1999 Robert Fulford compared Forest Hill to Rosedale, the other traditional home of Toronto’s elite: “While Rosedale has remained stable for half a century, Forest Hill’s prestige has been growing steadily. There’s a key tonal difference in the architecture of the two places: where big Rosedale houses shout ‘history,’ big Forest Hill houses shout ‘grandeur.’ More than any other district in the central city, Forest Hill has become the site of spectacular new ‘neo-traditional’ homes built on a grand scale, usually with lawns to match.”
Forest Hill Village is a part of Forest Hill occupying most of the original area of the village and extends roughly from Briar Hill Avenue in the north (the Upper Village, officially part of Forest Hill North) to Heath Street in the south (the Lower Village, officially the major part of Forest Hill South) along Spadina Road between Bathurst Street/Cedarvale Ravine (whichever is further east) and Avenue Road. The designations Upper and Lower are simply based on land height and not on positions on a map or along a watercourse.
The Lower Village was completely developed by the 1930s and is known for its upscale shopping and dining, although the actual mix of stores includes several modest enterprises. The Lower Village has attracted extensive residential development (especially of apartments), both within the original boundaries of Forest Hill and in adjacent neighbourhoods to which developers have now extended the Village and Forest Hill names.
The Upper Village was slower to develop due to the fact it had previously been occupied by the old Belt Line Railway, and then by industry. Its houses were built mostly in the 1940s and 50′s. Many homes have been significantly renovated, with some being torn down completely to make way for newer “monster” homes.
Forest Hill Real Estate
Forest Hill North extends from Briar Hill Avenue in the north to Eglinton Avenue West in the south, and from Latimer Avenue in the east to Allen Road and Marlee Avenue in the north-west and south-west, respectively.
As the name would imply, Forest Hill South is directly south of Forest Hill North. It extends from Eglinton Ave West in the north to Tichester Road in the south, and from Bathurst Street in the west to Elmsthorpe Road in the northeast and Avenue Road and the Oriole Parkway in the east. There is an additional stretch of Forest Hill South between Bathurst Street and Spadina Road, north of Lonsdale Road.
The density in Forest Hill is fairly low as composed of mainly low-density housing. The housing is predominantly detached houses with several semi-detached and town homes. Although it is mainly low-density housing, the lots are not as large as the ones found in the suburbs. Forest Hill detached homes are mostly on smaller lots with the houses close to each other. Higher-density and mixed uses are found at the major roads and nodes of the neighbourhood mainly on Eglington Ave, St Clair West and Spadina Ave. At those major roads, it is the only place we see different uses other than residential. There are grocery stores, convenient stores, coffee shops and offices in those areas.
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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information – 416−388−1960
Laurin & Natalie Jeffrey are Toronto Realtors with Century 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these articles, they just reproduce them here for people
who are interested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
—————————————————————————————————–
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Condominium builders battle for the middle ground
High-rise projects sandwiched between downtown and the suburbs have to offer more to compete effectively
By Derek Raymaker – The Globe and Mail
The vast choice in new high-rise condominium suites in central Toronto has wedged prices and demand in a nice equilibrium, if temporarily.
At an average price of $331 a square foot across Greater Toronto, condominium prices are not spiralling out of control in the same way as new detached homes, even though four high-profile super-luxury projects, including one under the Ritz-Carlton banner, have been launched, driving up the average price.
And Torontonians should be surprised and satisfied to know that condo prices here are in line with most other Canadian cities, and actually a bargain compared with Victoria, Vancouver and Calgary.
When you pull yourself away from the economic analysis (which shouldn’t be too hard) and visit the sales centres of new downtown projects, you’ll find finely tuned marketing machines aiming directly at the lifestyle-oriented instincts of buyers looking for convenience and trendy design.
But it’s location that will always trump these other factors, and a hot corner can be worth all the granite countertops in the world. There are over two dozen condo sales centres currently open in central Toronto, and there would seem to be something for everyone .
The new projects competing with them in Etobicoke, North York and Scarborough need to offer more.
Developers in this grey area of the high-rise market — not quite downtown, not quite suburban — have also gravitated to particular locations featuring either scenery or convenient transportation.
In Etobicoke, the western lakeshore straddling the mouth of the Humber River continues to hit the right notes with buyers. The subway — and subway extensions — have guided North York’s high-rise development. And the Scarborough Town Centre transit and highway corridor is the site of pretty much all of the high-rise projects in that former borough. Of course, these all come with the discount you’d expect for being out of the trendy loop that exists south of Eglinton Avenue.
None of this is rocket science to any savvy marketing team. But there is one key advantage these traditional low-rise neighbourhoods have over the trendy downtown projects that bodes well for future high-rise development. That is the prevalence of tens of thousands of older couples who want to sell their large maintenance-intensive houses, but not leave their neighbourhoods.
There’s also the added bonus that many of these older buyers are able to buy a high-end two-bedroom suite priced at $500,000 or so with no mortgage after they sell their family house for $750,000 in pockets like Lawrence Park or The Kingsway.
Bayview Avenue has been a particularly popular spot for new empty-nester buyers looking for a well-appointed suite with larger square footages than you’d find in downtown Toronto‘s shoeboxes in the sky to handle all the family heirlooms.
Daniels Corporation’s Kilgour Estates, just south of Lawrence Avenue, has been a huge hit with homeowners from the immediate area, with prices starting at $474,000 and going up to $1,586,000 for between 1,072 and 2,293 square feet.
Further north on Sheppard Avenue is Shane Baghai’s St. Gabriel Village, on a site to be shared with a church and to feature an emphasis on energy conservation. It has been on the market for a year with prices at $479 a square foot.
The overall price picture outside of downtown features many projects with fairly expensive suites like those mentioned above, and loads of traditional high-rise condos catering to the first-time buyer on a budget, but not much in between.
The early data for 2006 indicates it’s been a soft market overall in these areas, with a lot of building going on but not much buying.
In west North York, the average high-rise suite price reported for February was $269 a square foot, up a modest 3.8% from February, 2005, according to data compiled by RealNet Canada. The North Yonge Street corridor reports a price of $316 a square foot, up 1.6% from February, 2005, while Scarborough was at $276 a square foot, up 6.1% from February, 2005.
Etobicoke average suite prices are actually above the Greater Toronto average at $359 a square foot in February, up 3.1% from $348 in February, 2005.
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- Toronto condos tighten their grip By Derek Raymaker – Globe and Mail High-rise condominiums not only...
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