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Toronto loft with boutique hotel aesthetic

April 16, 2013 Design and Staging, East Toronto Real Estate, Toronto Soft Lofts

Madeleine White – The Globe and Mail

Address: 138 Princess Street
Asking price: $549,000
Maintenance fee: $386.13 a month
Unit size: 850 square foot
Taxes: $2,514.11 (2012)

The back story

In Toronto, a hotel room downtown can easily run you $150 a night. So for some couples that have a partner who works in the city, it often makes more fiscal sense to buy your own part-time space.

Steve Suraci, the founder of Icarus Designs, was tasked with creating a boutique hotel aesthetic for his clients at 138 Princess Street The owners, whose primary residence is in Dundas, needed a place to stay in the city on the weekend and when work trapped one of them in the concrete jungle late. So with Mr. Suraci’s help they picked out what could have been a generic “soft loft” in the city’s much-sought-after Corktown-St. Lawrence neighbourhood, near King Street East and Sherbourne, and turned it into a one-of-a-kind second home.

“The owners were looking to have something that was young, hip and a little minimalist,” he said. “A very modern look.”

To create this modern space, Mr. Suraci was brought in very early on. In fact, he had a part in deciding on the loft itself. He went to survey different units with his clients, advising them on which one he thought had the best layout. A lot of trust, no doubt, was put into his opinion, and it’s not just because he has nearly two decades under his belt as an interior designer. He also grew up with one of the owners of unit 1109, attending grade school with one of them in Sault Ste. Marie. Then many years later he reconnected with his old classmate when he designed their home in Dundas.

One of the reasons why they settled on the west-looking unit on the 11th floor was its view of Lake Ontario and the downtown core, which Mr. Suraci describes as being at a “comfortable height.” But it was also because the foundations for a chic home were already there, including the moody, but warm dark hardwood floor and the gallery-esque concrete walls.

“This space never felt like a small space,” he said. “We knew it had lots of potential.”

That said, there were a few things Mr. Suraci fixed, the biggest of which was the repartitioning of space. To do this, they knocked down part of the wall that split the 850-square-foot unit into two in order to convert the closed-off den near the entrance into an open formal dining area that was still far enough away from the living room to create a sense of separation.

“One of the things the owners were really keen on was being able to entertain, and most units in this square footage don’t have a proper dining space, which is why we reworked the floor plan,” he said. “This also allowed them to have a proper living room too.”

Another thing Mr. Suraci changed was the storage space, or lack thereof. He added a massive front closet with sliding doors that doubles as a place for coats at one end and a pantry at the end closest to the kitchen. He also added custom cabinetry in the two bathrooms and custom millwork in the walk-in closet.

The other original challenge in the unit was its light. Being long and skinny, it only had one source of natural light: the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the very end of the living room and the master suite.

The owners wanted to keep this light but not forfeit their privacy, so Mr. Suraci installed translucent blinds. He also redid the rest of the lighting.

“The lighting was a big deal because these units are dark,” he said. “We did a lot of feature lighting because we didn’t want to have table lamps and floor lamps.”

So instead the owners picked a number of chic Italian designs ordered from Eurolite, including a chandelier that’s reminiscent of paillettes on a designer dress for the formal dining room and glamorous, wiry orbs that dangle above the kitchen island.

Best features

The designer lights are certainly bold decor choices, but they aren’t the boldest. That title is easily awarded to the only wall that really divides the space in the unit. To call it an accent wall is an understatement. Covered in a wallpaper Mr. Suraci called “a modern, urban forest,” it is at once busy and minimal.

“It was a risk… and a big commitment,” he acknowledged. “But we wanted something to be a feature because it was very bare without it.”

But it works. By tying together the grey of the concrete and a lot of the furniture as well as the deep brown of the hardwood floors, it pulls all of the decor threads together and adds a pop of pizzazz with its neon green, nearly chartreuse, details.

Other noteworthy details are more subdued, such as the art rail along the two concrete walls and the fact that the gauze-like blinds were chosen with the distinct purpose of allowing enough of the purple, blue and pale yellow light from a lit-up Toronto night skyline in.

Which is perfect for its location. Princess Street is equidistant from the St. Lawrence Market and the Distillery District.

“You’re actually only a 10-minute walk from the Eaton Centre,” said Mr. Suraci, “though, you feel much farther away from it.”

So much like a hotel, it’s very much in the heart of the city. And with Mr. Suraci’s renovation, it’s not only chicer than most four-stars, it’s also far less expensive since the next owners won’t need to have any work done.

“The best part is that it’s ready to be moved into today,” he said.

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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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Toronto’s housing market rocketing upward in price, height

August 16, 2012 Luxury Real Estate, New Toronto Condos & Lofts, Real Estate Investment, Toronto Condos, Toronto Real Estate

Public Radio International

If you haven’t been to Toronto in a while, you might not recognize the place.

The skyline is starting to look a lot like Manhattan. And it’s not just the new buildings that resemble New York. So do the housing prices.

Comment: Come on, we are pretty far from NYC prices.

Real Estate agent Kevin McCarthy shows off “Museum House,” one of Toronto’s many new luxury towers. A 2000-square foot, two-bedroom and den suite is listed at $2.1 million.

“The finishes are of the highest quality. Features such as every suite has direct elevator access, and you step out your front door, and there are world class dining, and shopping, and theater, there’s everything here,” McCarthy said.

Good living… if you can afford it. The penthouse goes for a cool $12 million — though it is pretty awesome. McCarthy says apartments like this haven’t been staying on the market long.

Amy and Chris Poole are looking for something a bit more modest. They’ve been on the home hunt since October and are currently living in a small rental with their two-year-old daughter. Most of their possessions are in storage.

“This is not our furniture, this is a furnished executive rental,” Amy said. “We want our stuff, we want to unpack our belongings. We want our home, we want to plant our feet.”

The Pooles have lost out on four offers and backed out of three others. They say competition at open houses is so intense they’ve seen things get physical. Chris described a recent open house they attended.

“The listing agent is backed into the corner by the fireplace, and somebody is standing there being quite loud saying, ‘I’m going to work with you, I’m going to make sure we get this property, whatever it takes, 120, 130 percent over asking, I’ll do it,’ just to try and intimidate everyone else,” he recalled.”

Amy said that was the last open house they’ve been to.

“You just walk through and everyone is sizing each other up, giving each other bad looks,” she said.

Toronto prices are being driven by a perfect mix of factors — record-low interest rates, lack of inventory and a stable Canadian economy. The Canadian dollar has appreciated to the point where it is almost exactly equal with the American dollar.

Chris says he’s not willing to pay above a certain amount for a three-bedroom place. He and Amy are uncomfortable when I asked how high they’re willing to go. But Chris admits it’s over a million dollars, just a bit.

That’s a lot of money. And Chris is worried he’s potentially investing in a bubble, a bubble that could pop like the U.S. housing market did in the last recession.

Comment: Seriously. One more mention of the word “bubble” and I am going to have an aneurysm. With price appreciations averaging around 4% for the past 20-25 years, it is hardly a bubble. When prices spiked 127% in little over a year in the late 1980s – THAT was a bubble.

Home prices in Toronto have appreciated about 85% over the past decade. The market took a short, moderate dip in 2008, but has marched steadily upward since then.

Ask economists and housing experts where they see home prices heading in the next few years though and there’s no consensus.

“My forecast is, this year, probably price growth of 2% or 3%. 2013, probably a price decline of about 4%,” said Craig Alexander, chief economist with TD Bank.

Comment: Is that for Toronto or Canada as a whole? Those sound like national numbers to me. With Toronto prices current at around 10% annual appreciation, predicting that to fall to 2% in the next 6 months is pretty dumb. And to have that trend reverse by 14% to actual negative growth next year? I don’t think so…

“We’ve penciled in around 25% price decline,” said David Madani with Capital Economics, though he emphasizes, that’s a rough estimate spread over several years.

Comment: That is. Just. Plain. Stupid.

“We just don’t know,” said Phil Soper, president and CEO of Royal LePage Services, a real estate company.

Comment: Aha! The first honest answer.

The big fear in Toronto, and even more so in high-flying Vancouver, is this: Is Canadian real estate at risk of an American-style collapse?

Soper says no. He says Toronto’s market today is not like the U.S. housing market of a few years ago.

“The rate of price appreciation is much less than you see in the United States, or in countries, such as Ireland that had real busts,” Soper said. “The Irish situation, for example, from trough to peak, (was) four times as great a price appreciation as we see in Canada today.”

Comment: We have stable employment and solid banking. We do not have the sub-prime situation and crooked investment firms screwing everyone. That is the biggest difference.

Soper says the rise in home prices in big Canadian cities like Toronto has been slow and steady — Toronto is the tortoise that’s moved ahead of the hare. And now, real estate in greater Toronto is suddenly more expensive than metro San Francisco or the New York area. It’s hard to say that with absolute certainty though, as Toronto calculates home prices by average, whereas American real estate figures use median. Remember, this is also metro areas, so New York City, for example, is not limited to pricey Manhattan.

Comment: Toronto prices have risen around 4% annually (compounded) for the last 20-25 years. Slow and steady is exactly right.

Alexander, with TD Bank, doesn’t see an American-style meltdown here either. He says the US housing collapse largely happened because of problems within the American banking system.

“At the peak of the U.S. housing bubble about 40% of all mortgages being originated were sub-prime loans, in other words, high-risk, high-leveraged loans,” he explained. “In the Canadian context, the mortgages are all income tested, the sub-prime market is probably about 3% of the total market. We aren’t seeing a lot of high-risk lending going on.

Comment: And that is the major difference. Here you have to actually be able to afford the mortgage before the bank gives it to you. And they test borrowers against higher rates to boot! Even with our high prices, a recent study by a leading mortgage broker showed that the average applicant was only asking for $262,000 against incomes of $125,000. Safe as pie.

“In Canada it’s boring,” he said.

But Madani with Capital Economics wasn’t so sure that Canada and Toronto’s housing market is a boring story.

“We use the word bubble. We’re not afraid to use that word.”

Comment: I am not afraid to use the word “banana”. It means just as little. When there is no bubble, no evidence for a bubble, then using the word just makes you look like you do not know what you are talking about.

Madani sees a lot of common factors between what happened in the United States in the 2000s and what’s happening in Canada today.

“We see the run-up in household debt, which is now almost as high as it was in the United States. We see the same run-up in the homeownership rate, just like what we saw in the United States,” Madani said. “And then finally, of course, we’re also seeing the over-building and the new home construction, and this is particularly true in the condo market in cities like Toronto.”

Comment: Forgetting – of course – that the past 6 months has seen debt ratios drop as Canadians pay off their bills. Home ownership is lower in Canada because we do not see it as the same “right” as Americans. And over-building is simply not happening. When 28,000 condos complete in a year when 50,000 new households are completed – that is certainly not overbuilding. When 70-80% of condos are bought before the crane goes up – that is not overbuilding. When paranoid and cautious banks lend to condo builders because they have 70-80% of units sold with 20-25% down – then they feel pretty confident that we are not over building.

Toronto is putting up the most high-rise buildings, anything from 12 to 39 floors, of any city in North America: 132. By way of comparison, the top U.S. city is New York. It’s building 86 high-rise towers.

The Pooles, the young couple looking to buy a place, are well aware of all of the construction in Toronto.

“Standing from our balcony there, we can see 14 cranes,” Chris said.

Chris has heard the warnings that Toronto is building too much too fast. But he said he knows the other side of the argument.

“Maybe we are behind what London, New York, what San Francisco is all about. Maybe this is sustainable, maybe this is the way things are going to be for a while,” he said. “It’s hard to tell.”

Comment: Exactly. We may be building more, but they already have more. We are just catching up.

Most economists and real estate insiders do agree that real estate values in Toronto will almost certainly be higher in 20 years. So for a young couple looking to invest for the long-term, there’s really no bad time to buy. That is, if there’s something they can afford.

Comment: Considering that there have only been 4 down years since 1966, I would say that predicting higher prices in the future is a pretty safe bet.

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

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The layout payout

May 29, 2012 Buying Real Estate, First Time Buyers, Investment Condos, New Toronto Condos & Lofts, Toronto Condos

How to decipher tricky floorplans

Lisa Van de Ven – National Post

In sales offices across the city, condo buyers are sifting through floorplans trying to imagine themselves living there long before the brick-and-mortar buildings actually exist. By now, Torontonians are used to making purchases based on suite layouts alone, but many of them still don’t know exactly what to look for — at least if you ask Ramsin Khachi.

“I think people owe it to themselves to understand a little more,” says the principal with Khachi Design Group. And he should know. As one of the judges for the Ontario Home Builders’ Association’s annual Awards of Distinction, it’s been his job for the past five years to help choose the “most outstanding” suite layout among the current high- and mid-rise crop.

To do so, he analyzes the submitted plans, trying to see which make the most out of the space allotted, but still stand out at the same time. “You’ve got to balance the funkiness aspect of it with the practicality,” Mr. Khachi says.

Last year, the winner was W2C, a 1,045-square-foot two-bedroom-plus-den unit at The Madison at Yonge and Eglinton by Madison Homes. The corner suite has a split-bedroom layout with a den off the front entry, windows in both bedrooms and a balcony that hugs one corner. “We pay very close attention all the way through to make the space feel as big as possible,” says Nelly Zadanski, Madison’s vice-president. “I think there are ways that you can do that and ways that you can destroy it, too.”

Getting the suite layouts right can mean happy residents and better word of mouth once the building is completed. But “good design takes work,” Mr. Khachi says. The folks behind Madison spent a year tweaking the floorplans to make sure they were “100% satisfied” before they got to market, Ms. Zadanski says. Developers consult architects, interior designers and even the sales team, who can tell them what buyers are looking for at any given moment.

They consider livability and efficiency, and they look at trends. After all, what makes a good layout today is different from what it was 10 years ago.

“We try to learn continuously from what the market is telling us,” says Mimi Ng, vice-president of marketing for Menkes, the developer of Fabrik Condos at Richmond and Spadina. “But there are certain things that are always a given, that we understand people generally look for. People want as much storage as possible. They really want functional spaces, and typically they want outdoor space, such as a balcony or a terrace, or if that’s not possible even a French balcony.”

But those are things buyers know to look for. Ms. Zadanski explains there are smaller key features purchasers might not even notice, until they’re already living in their suite. For instance, she notes the developer always makes sure there’s an appropriate wall for the TV in the living room, across from which there’s space for a sofa. Mr. Khachi, during his judging duties, looks out for bulkheads that jut against windows — making it difficult to hang curtains or blinds — and laundry areas that back on to a bedroom wall (a nuisance at night when you put a load in before bed). Walk-in closets should be at least 5×8-feet to work effectively, he adds, and “silly nooks and crannies” are a no-no.

In fact, in an age where suites are getting smaller, any waste of space, and that includes hallways, is frowned upon. “Every square foot of space should be useable,” says designer Jeff Schnitter of Seven Haus Design, who helped lay out the units at Streetcar Developments’ The Carlaw. “If we can save 10 square feet of space by eliminating the hallways, that makes the bedroom 10 square feet larger, which, when you’re talking about a bedroom that is condo-sized, makes a huge difference.”

As suite sizes shrink, there’s another danger too. Furniture needs to fit, says interior designer Elaine Cecconi of Cecconi Simone, which helped assemble the suite layouts for INDX, the Bay and Adelaide site by Lifetime Developments and CentreCourt Developments. Many developers include suggested furniture positioning in their layouts, but Ms. Cecconi goes a step further, always making sure the master bedrooms fit a queen-sized bed and that spaces are generous enough to take into consideration how people actually use furniture. “What we find is that sometimes you look at a floorplan and it looks great, but then you realize there’s no place to put your sofa or your bed doesn’t fit into the bedroom,” she says.

It all comes down to livability, explains Larry Blankenstein, president of Lash Group of Companies, the developer of Cloud9 Condominiums in Etobicoke. And as lifestyles change, suite layouts will as well. Today, buyers are looking for more natural light than ever, and want kitchens that are open to the living room, as open-concept living continues to be embraced. Dens are also becoming more popular, Mr. Blankenstein says, which are ideal as more people are working from home.

Developers learn from trends and from the successful suite layouts they’ve had in the past, but for Mr. Blankenstein, the litmus test for any layout comes down to one thing: Could he live there himself? “We always feel that what’s good for us would be good for our purchasers too,” he says.

Mr. Khachi agrees. Each year, as he judges a new collection of suites for the OHBA, he imagines himself settling down in each space.

“I honestly look at it as if I’m the average person, and [ask myself] how would I like living there,” he says.

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

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Laurin and Natalie Jeffrey are Toronto real estate agents. We would be happy to help you find your new Toronto home — be it house or condo or loft. We would also be more than pleased to help you sell your current Toronto property.

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The vast majority of content on this blog is not written by Laurin or Natalie Jeffery. It is written by many different authors, for many different publications and websites.

We re-print these articles here as a collection of Toronto real estate news and information. We aim for this blog to be a one-stop shop for people looking for information on Toronto real estate.

We do not claim any of the information we did not write as our own. We do not work for any publication, nor any builder. We are Registered Real Estate Sales People working for Century 21 Regal Realty Inc. Brokerage.