Condo sales numbers in and around Toronto have taken a drastic tumble so far this year, and now that the market is starting to lean towards buyers …
Have they tried building average, affordable condos instead of luxury condos?
All the new condo developments I’ve been seeing everywhere are more expensive than a townhouse nearby, and half the size of nearby apartments that are also half what the mortgage would be on a 1-2M fucking condo.
Pretty sure they can do away without the penthouse pool and hot tub and bring the price down, but it wouldn’t be nearly as profitable for them so they won’t.
Nobody is actually trying to help lower home prices because everyone’s retirement plan depends on houses being unaffordable.
Luxury needs some heavy sneer quotes. They are all made of low quality materials and then they put a stainless steel fridge in there and some quartz counters and call it luxury.
Yup, bought a townhouse, and paid a premium because the finishes were very nice, and everything looked good, even passed a pre-purchase inspection by someone with a lot of industry experience.
The tub leaked three times and ruined the ceiling in the dining room each time. The shower wasn’t properly waterproofed, so that was a $35k rip-repair-replace. None of the furnaces had proper condensation drains, so my upstairs neighbour’s A/C unit dripped condensation into my hallway for 4 days while we were on vacation, ruining the walls, causing mould. Our unit’s A/C was mismatched - the outside unit didn’t match the inside unit, and for 4 years we were constantly repairing it, until I spent $12k to replace it. There was a bunch of other small shit, but if I ever lay eyes on the builder, I’ll punch him in the face.
Have they tried building average, affordable condos instead of luxury condos?
They don’t want to, because that would mean less money. If they slap some cheap faux marble and an extra sink in the bathroom, they can charge tens of thousands of dollars more for the same space.
The rich will not accept making the same or less money for a year or so. They have to have more. A lot more.
Condos need to be built for families, give me more three or four bedrooms in the city, and make it more affordable.
Condo developers can’t build these affordable three or four bedrooms though, because on average these layouts are about 20% larger in size to their comparable European unit layout. This is all to due to building code, and something called “point access layout” vs “common corridor layout”.
If we could get more families in the city buy making costs comparable in sq/ft to a single family home in the suburb we could make cities more enjoyable and give people a better sense of belonging, as opposed to just commuting in for a few hours.
