Condo Extras

By Shawn Lackie

Imagine, for a second, going into a fast food place and ordering a cheeseburger. You pay for it and they deliver it to you wrapped up. However, when you open the wrapper, there it sits, just the burger and whatever toppings you ordered. No bun. Nada. That’s kind of like what the condo market morphed into the last 20 years or so.

It’s no wonder that market is in free-fall right now, and justifiably so. For years, the deck was stacked in favour of the condo developers. They were cancelling purchases and refunding money (sans interest of course) then re-listing the same unit for thousands of dollars more. They got trapped in their own web of deceit about closing. A buyer would show up and slap down a hefty deposit, all in good faith. Closing would be two years out but that was OK with the buyer. It gave them a reasonable amount of time to sell their current home or, if they were renting, give ample notice to the landlord.

About 6-12 months away from closing the shenanigans would start. The builder would say, they have to extend the closing date. Builders were seeing the prices climb and became frustrated because they couldn’t be selling homes for the inflated prices now being bandied about. Absolute avarice would set in so they would cancel the entire project, refund the money purchasers had laid out and then lay low for a while. The next thing you knew, the same developer was out selling a NEW development, with a much heftier price tag, in the same area. So, the original buyer was just shafted by the developer’s need for more dollars.

At one point, there was government intervention, preventing developers from this sort of practice. Where it sits now is, somewhere in between. Needless to say, there’s not much of an appetite for, pretty much any, condo buys these days.

Back to the original message here. Most of the condos being sold in the last few years did NOT include either a parking space OR a storage locker. Yet, the winds of change are blowing there too. Except, if you want a parking space to go along with your 500 square feet of home in the sky, that could cost you up to $268,000 more. For the right to park your car, the range in Toronto is anywhere from 100K to that 268K figure, and we’re not even talking about lockers. That’s what we have become.

I had clients, a few years ago, pre-pandemic, who wanted to live right downtown, in Toronto. In the shadow of the Scotia Bank arena, a 460 square foot unit was renting for $2,500. The biggest room in the unit was the bathroom. There was no balcony, no storage unit, and no parking space.

It looks like we have come full circle. If you want to live right in the heart of the city, you had better get used to riding the TTC. Hey, they DO call it the Better Way. Forget about having a car. Unless you want to rent a space, for anywhere from 100-300 dollars a month. Now, if you so wish, you can pay an extra 268K for the right to park where you live. Unbelievable.

Feel free to check out this story and more on my blog site, at https://slackie14.wixsite.com/buy-sell-and-more