Butler said there’s been “severe overbuilding” in the Toronto condo market for a number of years, specifically when it comes to smaller units.
“The tiniest of tiny condos,” Butler said. “It’s weird that in a country like Canada where there’s been a consistent housing crisis for the last 10 years that if you build a very bad product, people won’t take it, it’s as simple as that.”
Butler said many of the unsold condos on the market today are ones designed for investors or real estate speculators and are not practical for most families.
“They are roughly the size of large hotel room, only meant to be rented out, and there’s been simply a massive overbuilding of non-family units,” he said, noting that many of the condos for sale in Toronto currently are 500-square-feet or less.
Hire me into Canada… promise I’ll be a good citizen… I’ve never been military before but if you made me sign up to help deal with my fellow yanks I’ll do it… Canada, if you’re listening…
Everything has a price, no one wants a 500 sqft apartment because it’s probably priced higher per square foot than a 2 bedroom.
If they are glorified hotel rooms then they need to be priced as such. One person in a 500 sqft unit would always feel more cramped than two people in 1000 sqft unit, so idk what these investors were thinking.
Investors were thinking with dollar sign eyes
That they could sell the units to people who had Air BnB accounts
Pretty sure that’s what they were thinking…
They’re not overbuilt, they’re overpriced. I know plenty of people in Canada who would do perfectly well in a 500sqft condo, and I can’t imagine there’s a shortage of them. I had a time when it was perfectly fine for me. It’s also true that such people can’t usually afford the asking price and those who can (e.g. >100k/yr) usually expect a lifestyle involving more than a 500sqft home. This is just the free market forcing the prices to meet demand 🤷
People will rent them for the right price.
About a third of the price that any reasonable rent would be, then you can just get 3 and actually have some decent square footage to work with.
The size is not the problem. It’s small and expensive. It would be fine if these units were cheap and small.
500-600 square feet is plenty for one person if the layout is good.
The floor plans are also straight up bizarre. I was in the market recently and I saw two en-suite bathrooms in a 2-bed 3-bath. Kitchen/living/dining combos that could barely serve any of those purposes. Dens that were 4sqft corners in a kitchen, or slight recess in a wall. Interior glass walls to compensate for no window in a bedroom.
Then there were just absolutely strange finishing design choices, like a wall mounted intercom in the entrance you had to kneel to read the screen or reach the keypad. I’m not that tall. Some of the UGLIEST post-modern tile work I’ve ever seen, bar fridges masquerading as kitchen fridges, shallow tubs, low shower heads (again, I’m 5’9 this is not usually an issue.)
Looking in BC and many of the places are built like bowling alleys with windows only at one end. What were these builders thinking?
To make matters worse, many (scummy) realtors are now including patio and decks space in the square footage. No, a 800 sq ft place with a 700 sq ft patio is not 1500 sq ft of living space.
Especially since the “outdoor living” season is only 3 months long.
Thats illegal
Perhaps, but it has become so prevalent that there is no way of knowing for sure from most listings what the actual living space of a place is. I think nearly half of the listings I’ve looked at on the web in the past few months are overstating the square footage by 15% or more.
Here’s a link to one particularly obvious example where the realtor says the place is 2400 square feet. It’s nowhere near that and they are including an 800 square foot ground level patio as living space. Even without that patio space there’s no way the place is 1600 square feet.
https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/27373060/114-225-belleville-st-victoria-james-bay
It’s reasonable for two people as well as a “first home.” My partner and I own a 960 sqft condo and it’s all we need. If we wanted kids it wouldn’t work but as just a couple it’s great.
so prices are cheap with the large supply yeah?
smiles at Queen Amidala
- LAUGHS IN TRANNA *
Investors and speculators should have to eat the loss, they took the risk now take the hit.
Yeah, but “risk” is just an empty buzz word that means “ownership deserves all the money”. The line has to go up. If it doesn’t go up, someone else has to pay for it!
Price them appropriately—like, less than a dollar per month per square foot rent, or maybe the cost of a used RV to own—and you might see some uptake. As things stand, I expect these are unaffordable for the people who might be able to use them.
If the idiot owners won’t budge on charging too much for too little, they deserve to go bankrupt over it.
Prices are coming down, it may take a bit of time to shake out.
Students, affordable housing, starter homes, some retirees will see a downsize opportunity, reducing overcrowding in some homes.
Lots of utility at the right price.
You say unsold condo, I say future student housing.
Jokes aside, this is why “build baby build” on its own is not going to solve the housing crisis.
I mean I’d say that “build baby build” implies building houses people can actually live in.
You say that because you’re a reasonable person and not a profit maximizing sociopath, sorry, I meant capitalist. So long as our system idiotically conflates a means to satisfy people’s basic needs for shelter with an investment vehicle for which line must go up, the implication that we are talking about “houses people can actually live in”, is not a given.
“Build baby build” with sensibility ofc. A good chunk of unsold condos in Toronto prices out a lot of people, for incredibly small shoeboxes of units.
“Build baby build” with sensibility ofc.
Exactly. This is an example of what “build baby build” without sensibility looks like.
Honestly, I’m not sure why you quoted Carney now, for 2 reasons:
- These condos were built before we even had the election.
- I’ve heard some claims that, thanks to zoning laws (arguably bad), prevention of urban sprawl (good), parking requirements (bad but for a non-construction related reason), and NIMBYs (ugly), condos have become one of the only types of building that construction companies would even consider building to be able to make a profit. Not sure how much of that is true or whether they are said by people who actually know what they’re talking about (they all claim to know enough, but it’s hard to verify such things, even if they work in the field), but I can see how some of these reasons that are outside of the control of construction companies can make this happen. All that’s to say is, it may not be fair for us to try and criticize construction companies for their attempts at actually building something for the past 10+ years.
Sorry, but I think I read your original comment and thought it was unnecessarily snarky, and thought I’d make a comment about it.
The trend I’m pushing back against is uncritical yimby-ism, that doesn’t account for the financialization of housing.
I don’t know why you’re bringing federal politics into this. But since you went there, let’s go.
Carney popularized the slogan for a supposedly easy solution to a problem that has festered under decades of neoliberal housing policy under the LPC and the CPC. I don’t have confidence in a Liberal government to go against this deeply ingrained policy. Specifically, I don’t think they have any interest in going against the richer half of the electorate that has invested in real estate. In their attempt to placate the propertied classes’ need for housing values to keep rising, they will screw this up, which I’m afraid will further inflame the resentment of young men driving them towards the open arms of the far right.
If that’s the case, then I actually don’t disagree with what you’re getting at.
And I was thinking that you started the mention of federal politics by quoting “Build Baby Build”, and that’s why I mentioned it.
And I don’t disagree with your take, and wouldn’t even dissuade your doubts that the LPC wouldn’t be effective at addressing the problem either, and exactly due to their policies of the past, and how it’s abundantly clear that there’s no political appetite from all the major parties to even point to the elephant in the room. I also agree that we are absolutely at risk of a hard rightward shift should this government fail to address our poly-crisis to a point where enough people would feel like they’ve gotten to a more decent place in life.
What I don’t think, however, is that people actually think that we should just build whatever. If anything, right now, I think most people don’t even have a good idea of what sort of houses are even needed, given Canada’s long history of just building SFH and condos, with nothing in between.
I do hope that whatever Carney’s planning with the Build Canada Homes initiative, that it would be based on informed plannings based on learnings we can bring in from around the world and not just Canada. Not holding my breath for it, but that would definitely put my mind at ease. There is, ofc, a lot more to expect out of this: how do you prevent opportunistic investors, individual and corporate, from buying out these units and essentially scalp the housing market; can we make sure that the most vulnerable amongst us can put a roof over their heads through this initiative, and not just helping those who are close to home ownership get over that barrier and we just end up with the same situation with a larger crowd of homeowners; how much resources are we actually talking about that would be required for this initiative, where are we sourcing them, and how will this affect our environment; zoning law changes; missing middle? Again, not holding my breath, cause there’s, so far, quite little proof to who have they talked to, and there’s very little message at the moment about all this. So I guess we will find out.
We are in complete agreement.
$5 dollas
Cool. Let the owners go into bankruptcy, then have Druggie buy the units and rent them out as affordable housing … which is a hell of a lot better than him begging Carney for money for a fucking tunnel.
While it is a bunch of bullshit that so many were built, we should find a way to use it. People without a home don’t care how small it is so these unsold condos sound like they would make great transitional housing, student housing, etc.
Agreed.
We should change the definition of ‘suitable housing’ so that a family of four can be housed in a closet with a toilet.
/s
Agreed.
We should change the definition of ‘suitable housing’ so that a family of four can be housed in a closet with a toilet.
/s
You should find a better hobby.
It’s really unfortunate that only families of 4 are unhoused 😔. We were so close to finding some relief from the housing crisis on Canada
/not s
You can’t just put most of our unhoused in these condos with no support structure. We have tried that before and failed.
I believe that I once read of a successful housing model that includes on site support and counseling which works with a very high success rate. I think the study was in Murca.
Our current model of supportive housing isn’t very successful.
9.3% of renters are not in suitable housing. Putting some tiny apartments up for rent doesn’t help the average family.
Recall, these units are around the $4,000 a month range, condo fees included.
Gonna need some evidence to back that up. I’m right downtown and 1bdrm ~600sqft condos are rented at about the $2500/month mark. There are some $3k+ outliers but they’re few.
May need to tweak the filters.
I did not say ‘rented for’, this is what they ‘sell for’. Many rental units are still under rent control.
The use of per month seems arbitrary in the case of a sale as that would depend entirely on the circumstances of the buyer and negotiated mortgage, if any.
These are ‘starter homes’ only in theory. Really, they are investment properties for rental purposes. One would be foolish to put any more than 10% down on them, you could get a better return by investing the money elsewhere and using rental income to pay the mortgage. No intelligent person in today’s market would actually purchase one of these dormitories for their own residence. Even less would one pay out the entire price or even a large fraction of it to buy one for rental income, the return on investment would be far too low. You would get a higher return from GIC’s.
That’s why so many are just walking away from their pre-payments. They can not justify getting a mortgage for the remainder, and they probably can not get one anyway, given that there is no equity in the property. The mortgage would have to be greater than the unit is worth.
You’re correct
It’s not an ‘unsold condo market’, it is an ‘unsold overpriced aiirbnb’ hotel room’ market. These units are the size of a hotel room, and only useful for short-term accommodation.
noting that many of the condos for sale in Toronto currently are 500-square-feet or less.
Holy crap, that’s basically studio for single. I wonder how much they’re actually selling
