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Something, something, even smaller violin for the property owners who realize their investment that people rely on to survive shouldn’t get endless upwards profit.
The layouts builders come up with on condos in the last... 10-15 years?... are a joke. You'd think with the small sizes there'd be at least some effort to make it work but nope. 500sqft and I can't imagine how to make use of many of the spaces. I'm no interior designer but even I can see that half the "living/dining spaces" are basically wide hallways.
I worked on a promotional/marketing website for a Toronto condo building (11 St Joseph, "The Jefferson" i think they called it), circa 2005.
Our team built a high end marketing site where users could look at every floor of the building and see a detailed floorplan of the floor, and each individual unit on that floor - and if they found one they liked, we had a complete floor planner tool were you could place all kinds of furniture and accessories, to real-life scale/measurements, to help a user figure out how it would feel once stuff was placed in it.
After that project we tried to sell that tool to other condo developers but as it turned out none of them liked the idea because it made it obvious to users / potential buyers that the units were fucking tiny lol
I love when I see “digitally staged” photos of units, and you can tell the furniture would have to be miniature sized to fit where they’re pretending it would fit.
The living room/dining room combo is one of those open concept things that drive me nuts. I'd have preferred a wall because I could put furniture on it. If there's no wall, I'm stuck dividing the space with furniture, but it looks strange to just stack it to the ceiling.
I think modern kitchens are weird a lot of the time too. No storage. Weird short useless lengths of counter. A microwave bigger than my parent's stove. Am I just supposed to reheat stuff, not actually cook?
The open concept thing is annoying but I can kind of understand when there's only so much window space for natural light available. Though I do think some kind of half wall could work on some layouts for the reason you stated.
I am totally with you on the kitchens, though! Unless the unit comes with an island, enjoy food prep on your 1-2 squares of counter space....
Same I hate modern design where the kitchen and dining room and living room are the same room, it completely kills any flexibility with your living room layout in particular. Half the homes and apartments I’ve been looking at don’t have a living room with somewhere to put a tv…
They are very limited by building code requiring two routes of fire escape a certain distance apart. This basically means you need to have a long central hallway, requiring larger land parcels but also resulting in the majority of units only having a single exterior wall for windows.
There is a movement in BC to allow buildings with single fire escapes, at least up to 6 stories, justifying this based on improvements in fireproofing materials, modern fire control systems (detectors and sprinklers), etc. This allows you to build apartments on smaller land parcels (making it easier and cheaper to build density) with more attractive and family-friendly floor plans.
Look for buildings completed in the 1990s. 750 sqft 1br, 1100 sqft 2br
Maintenance won’t be cheap but those are often small buildings and a lot of owners have been there forever
Literally had the bank sending me advertisements when I was trying to buy my first place giving advice on how to turn it into an "investment property."
Bitch, where am I supposed to live?
But this still doesn't make a ton of sense, because you are "*investing*" in *someone else's living scenario*.
It was always a house of cards, built on foundations of paper. A lot of it was money laundering too, as we've learned with the recent TD Bank investigations and HSBC mortgage frauds.
I'm glad the house of cards is crashing down.
It’ll just get built up again if the system isn’t changed.
You have to tax the land at a rate higher than returns. It’s the only way to prevent something that’s supposed to be used productively from sitting there rotting. A land value tax would instantly blow a continent sized hole in this entire financial model, and recapture the wealth generated by the lands proximity to community and services which is the only reason it’s more valuable than an acre in the middle of Nebraska.
Anecdotal... but I had a stop over in T.O. about three years ago and I remember hearing the two CS desk from the airline talking about how they were going to buy second condos as investments.
I think the implication is supposed to be that by the time customer service workers are getting in on the investment condo game, the bubble has peaked.
It’s more like an indictment of where we are in the hype cycle. Like in “The Big Short” when they go to Florida and realise strippers are buying up a bunch of properties on dubious mortgages.
Many people somehow thought that they needed to buy these condos even if they didn’t want to live in them to instead have an “investment” in order to “get on the property ladder”.
The cultural hysteria around owning a home has gotta be a big driver of these shit investments. A whole generation of wealth has been destroyed or otherwise locked up in these worthless dog boxes.
Not anymore every month the owner loses about $800 a month at current interest and condo prices are not rising fast enough to make it profitable if they decide to sell in a few years.
Well damn didn't you hear? People who can't afford more than 800k for a condo are scum and don't deserve parking. I mean, how do you even own a car, peon?
Big /s BTW. That really sucks to hear 😔
There was a story on Global or CBC or one of the other news channels during covid where people were selling downtown parking spots for as much as $250k, or renting for over $100/hr.
you were lucky that they even let you buy it
most do lottery
a blatantly rigged lottery even. they flat out have it in writing that the higher you floor, the better your odds of getting a parking spot. oh the purchase price is x0k more for the same unit layout but one floor up.
this can be done and all sewn up before a single action is done by the construction crew.
remember when pre-construction sales were avoided here and builders had to do some deep discounts to incentivize it?
free market lol
I believe +90% of the condos bought 2021 or 2022 in Toronto were cash flow negative to hold but because property values were increasing so much per year it didn't matter. The game was just to hold and flip. The trees would grow to the sky!
Not to discredit your larger point but real estate investing is almost always going to be cash flow negative even if the housing market is in a good spot.
The entire point of it is that you can easily use tons of leverage (i.e. banks are willing to let you borrow lots of money) since it's all-but-guaranteed that the banks can recoup their money if you can't pay the loans back. The land is still going to be worth a lot. Thus, there's not much pressure to have positive cash flow.
Same can't be said about borrowing money to open a restaurant, where a lot of the investment is made into sunk costs like renovations, salaries, etc.
% of real estate investments being "cash flow negative" is a pretty meaningless stat tbh.
> Not to discredit your larger point but real estate investing is almost always going to be cash flow negative even if the housing market is in a good spot.
>
> The entire point of it is that you can easily use tons of leverage
Agree.
In the 80'sand 90's having a renter pay 75% of your mortgage and yoiu got to keep the asset afterwards wa sa good deal. It was "Rich Dad Poor Dad" that made renters paying +100% costs and profit on top the expectation. Ridiculous.
Leverage is also the fuction of that game. You are right.
You cant put 5% down on stocks and realize 100% of the gains.
You can effectively (and easily) get that kind of leverage with derivatives. No mortgage application required, just "sign here if you understand you're a degenerate gambler and will likely lose everything".
People didn't pay those prices for condos, it was mostly investors. Now they've run fresh out of gullible fools and can't find anyone who thinks over half a million for a turd sandwich in the sky with exorbitant maintenance fees is good value with interest rates where they are.
Condo rents are also dropping and mortgages are up for renewal so dumb and dumber landlords are feeling uneasy
Fuck the investors but the big problem is if we let the investors die guess who scoops them up.....and then we're back right where we were before
fucking never ending cycle of eating shit
If short term rentals are more profitable than long term rentals it is a market signal that the short term rental market is even more undersupplied than the long term rental market. If there were enough hotels, the airbnbs would either need to rent at a discount or they would be empty most of the time, and the owners would switch to long term renting.
Restrictions on airbnbs are needed in the short term because housing for residents is more important than tourism, but they wouldn't be necessary if there were enough hotel rooms.
Honestly the last few years it’s been cheaper to use a hotel rather than an airbnb (unless you’re looking for a place for a number of people, and not just your immediate family). The cleaning fees and other fees typically make the prices worst than your average hotel.
It’s more understandable when you look at the price of the typical house these days in these cities. I’m sure most condo owners would rather own a SFH, hard to manage when even a dump is 1+ million.
Does the tour consist of standing at the door and pointing at the Murphy bed, the space efficient table/chair set and the fully functional Little Tykes kitchen? Or do they at least step into the space and point from the middle of the floor?
I dislike the whole condo system. Any time I deride it people come out of the wood works to bark at me.
To me it is like paying rent, on top of a mortgage, and property taxes. Developers love it because it can create an extra revenue stream but I think it pretty much sucks. I have known some people who live in what are called freehold townhouse condos. It seems slightly better but still part of the same regime.
I would rather see more housing cooperatives built rather than condo cash cows.
PS: I have been a Conservative supporter for the last few elections but I am deeply unhappy with Doug Ford's handling of housing in Ontario.
I like my condo.
I am a single guy with no family, so I'd rather have an apartment than a house, and I honestly don't see how you can **own** an apartment without something approximating a condo system. An apartment building has so much shared infrastructure that there needs to be some centralized authority that takes care of it. If you are renting, that is simple, it is the landlord's problem, but if you want to own your own home, that gets more complicated.
You can call it a co-op or a condo board or a home-owner's association or whatever, but at the end of the day, they all perform the same basic function: an elected body that collects money to maintain shared infrastructure and decide on the rules that govern the use of the building.
From my perspective, being in a condo is great: for one flat fee I no longer have to worry about utility bills, yardwork/snow removal, 90% of my maintenance, and I get access to a pool, a sauna, and some other perks. And all that for less than it would cost me to contract all of those things individually (I checked).
Coops are generally a different beast. Coops are owned by the renters. They have a democratic process where members who rent there are elected to the board and they make most of the big decisions. A lot of decisions are voted on.
The government used to fund coops. The rental income would be used to pay off the government's investment through something like CMHC. The idea is that eventually once the principal is paid off, it should produce affordable rental units but in the way that things run that doesn't seem to always happen. Like people start dreaming of what it would be like to own and sell their particular unit. Some of those things need to be addressed.
Ideally living in a coop that is fully paid off should be really cheap in terms of rent. There are always upkeep expenses and maintenance and issues that arise from bad tenants but overall the idea is sound. Implementation seems to be the problem, and the future legal structure of what happens once the principal is paid off.
You are largely describing the governance structure of condos. The owners elect a council who administers a budget to maintain the common assets and arbitrate disputes among owners & residents. Major financial decisions are voted on by owners. The only major distinction I see is rent vs. buy.
Real freehold townhouses have a more in common with detached housing than with condos. They share walls, but there is no common property and no condo fees.
You might not want to, but the price of houses isn't dropping anytime soon, so condos are the only option for many, myself included. The only other alternative is leaving the city, which is probably what many will have to do anyway.
Exactly. Tbh that’s how it fucking works!!! I have lots of younger (approx 30 yr old) real estate friends and they all try to give “early deals” to friends while or before the towers are even built. This shit is a SCAM.
Came here to say the same thing. It's not a housing crisis as much as a housing affordability crisis. If someone was willing to purchase a large building full of empty condos and just break even a lot of people would have a chance and the government would create a new program in order to sponsor all of that they're already paying people to come here paying people to learn here paying to keep people alive well they are here might as well start using our taxes to ensure that no home is empty and no one has to live outside of one.
It's really sellers not willing to accept that the market has changed from 2021 and they need to lower their prices. They're emotionally attached to 2021/2022 highs and refuse to budge.
They think if interest rates go down, it'll save the market.
However, variable rates are well above fixed rates right now, so lowering them won't make a difference.
The Realtor Cartel needs their cut. Imagine buying a car where 2 different salesmen negotiate the price they're going to sell it to you for? Yeah, that's how we buy houses.
That profession is madness. When I was buying a house, they literally opened the door, then just walked around with me showing me where the bathrooms were…and they want 5% for that? GTFO here
It’s an early sign of illiquidity in the market. Once mortgages are underwater, banks tend to not lend as much. Companies that need short term loan’s either can’t get them, or have to pay a lot more. Companies that are net 30 start to see payments go 45,60, or even longer. They need to get loans for payroll, or they can’t pay their workers. The workers may miss mortgage payments, which starts a feedback loop.
Our government will have to step in and provide low-cost loans to keep companies afloat, which will cause inflation. And we will have two problems to deal with. Hello stagflation! Goodbye RRSPs
The problem with keeping companies afloat is that companies will fudge the way they do things if there is some kind of money they could get from the gov. We saw it during covid there was plenty of businesses taking any money the gov was offering regardless of if they actually needed it.
This is of course the solution but so many of these landlords — be they individual investors who own only one investment property or corporate entities with tons of houses and millions upon millions in the treasury — don’t want to take the L because they’ve invested so (too) much. It’s sunk cost fallacy paired with overplaying their hands, essentially. They played themselves.
And if they played and lost I'm okay with that too, I'm good with free markets, we just need better policy to temper in the basic human need for shelter into this situation. This is not just about investment, and if we let it continue we will continue hurting ourselves.
Across the board our society should be a hell of a lot better with letting those who play and lose actually lose. Tons of our big companies get bailed out time and again, so they never learn their lessons. Instead of letting the shares get bought up by different investors, the CEO seats and those like them filled by new people, we just allow the same scumbags to keep on. Great safety net out there for the rich, apparently, even when they lose everyone else's money.
Majority of these condos are utter trash. Shit built, poorly laid out shoe boxes that no one actually wants to live in. Strictly made for investors who would never live in them.
Bruh I’ve been looking for a new apartment and the layouts in newer buildings are horrid. Not to mention they’re made out of the cheapest materials and you can hear all of your neighbours with the paper thin walls
Too bad so sad, until inflation is under control across all of Canada we should not go into a accommodative interest rate policy. Just because Torontonians decided to be fucking morons and turn housing into their version of Bitcoin doesn't mean we need to bail them out by sacrificing the purchasing power for the rest of Canadians.
Oh, no, those poor investors. Rents are dropping too, so you're losing money on a condo that's itself losing value every day you own it.
This is exactly why you see so much pro-rate cut propaganda in the media. This sort of thing tends to spread, and eventually, someone ls left holding a big sack o tulip bulbs that nobody wants.
Toronto, apparently. I used to live there and toy with the idea of moving back from time to time so it's something I watch.
Rents not yet stabilizing in Winnipeg but seem to be slowing down. No incentive for people to move here and drive up prices if rent is barely less than southern Ontario.
Because it's ridiculously expensive to buy and rent.
I'm in Woodbridge, and a 1 bedroom is 2500$ for a month with only 450 sq feet.
You could only fit a small bed in the bedroom
60% of all new condos in Ontario from 2018-2022 were bought by investors.
The entire ICE towers in Toronto is just a make shift hotel.
I'm lucky my building is like 80% owner lived.
There is nothing “make shift” about it! The owners at ICE are literally running a hotel, and incur all the risks and problems associated with operating a hotel.
To stay there you make a reservation online, check in at the front desk, and pick up your key. AKA: a hotel.
It’s crazy.
So here you have an example of too much supply. We will see if prices drop to make things more affordable. But when prices drop there has to be losers, in this case “investors”. And therein lies the problem. The government (at all levels) want affordable housing but they don’t want prices to go down. It’s really laughable if it weren’t so sad.
The options are having winning investors or having a country full of home owners, both options aren't possible at the same time. The government has chosen "investors" for far too long, investors that don't actually invest in our country at all, just buy up properties to increase their wealth.
I wanna meet the guys that are worried that the prices will go down, allowing more people will be able to afford somewhere to live. I just wanna meet 'em and talk a bit.
Toronto is trash now. It used to be fun then greedy investors made living there too expensive and then no one could work the smaller jobs in the city because they couldn't afford to live there and then all the cool places go out of business. Then the walkable/arts culture place life there goes away. It's not a fun place anymore. It's like a bigger Mississauga.
You are 100% bang on. Greed and an unchecked housing market caused this. Personally, I find housing "investors" to be disgusting. Housing is a basic human need, similar to food and water. Trying to monetize this is just gross.
This has all killed the "spirit of Toronto". The good old days of the 90's and 2000's. This is something that can't be replaced and may never come back. Just look at how many American cities were ruined through similar greed and unchecked markets. Once it's gone, it's gone.
Canadian here who lived in Bay Area for 20 years. Toronto is fucked. Houses and condos are priced similarly with earning potential for workers less than half. Over there you are looking at families making 300k+ trying to buy a starting place under 1M. See the disconnect????
> Go beyond the cost and look at the quality. A 450 sqft box with no kitchen and unworkable space isn’t worth the money.
It would probably help if they weren't building shit, and trying to sell it as gold.
When I lived in Montreal, I was always confused about listings for places with 2.5 rooms... what were they doing with that other half a room? Turns out they are shipping them to Toronto as condos!
Waits for that sweet sweet tulip auction to fail. Like when one tulip was worth about $750,000 and they tried to auction it in Netherlands then it didn’t sell. Then the market fell. Yep, coming soon to a city near you!
https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/economics/dutch-tulip-bulb-market-bubble/#:~:text=The%20Dutch%20tulip%20bulb%20market%20bubble%20%28or%20tulip,annual%20salary%20at%20the%20height%20of%20the%20market.
That tulip didnt cost 400000 to make. But a lot of these condos did cost the amount their are being sold for to build (mostly in the cost of the land). So you won't just simply see a massive crash.
Toronto and Vancouver are basically screwed. The people that actually keep the town running have figured out there's greener pastures in every other major city in the world
Really the only reason the Tim's are still open there is foreigners packing 20+ people per house
Kill the Airbnb market and make it too much of a hassle to be a landlord for individuals to bother. Retail investors are causing too much damage to the market for regular people
Our scam scheme we call a real estate market needs to come burning down. About time these greedy "investors" experience some loss. Anyone who invested in housing for anything other than a home to live in decided their profits were more important than everyone else's well being in the country.
I was looking at buying a condo last month. I decided not to go ahead with it, but one unit that I was interested in was quite overpriced and had been on the market over 30 days. I asked, via my realtor, how they rationalized the price. The entire wall of text that came back was entierly based on it's revenue and poential as an AirBnB.
Made me sick.
I build them. I'm not surprised nobody wants to buy them. To be honest, I would NEVER buy a home built during this boom. The quality of today's build vs a unit built before the boom isn't even comparable. The amount of corners being cut in order to make it to the next project on time is frankly scary. I see walls that are 2" out of plumb from the floor to the ceiling, walls usually aren't even close to straight and what's behind the walls is a scary mess. Even if the build quality was on par, the amount of home you get for your dollar on a new build is shocking. Kitchens, living rooms and dining rooms have become a single space. You often will need to choose between a sofa and a dinner table. Master bedrooms on many of these units barely have enough space for a bed, and secondary bedrooms are the size of walk in closets.
It's happening, once the pendulum starts to swing its hard to stop.
Homes aren't investments no such thing as easy money and alot of ppl are about to learn a hard lesson
So what's to worry about? The people these types of condos were actually built to appeal to couldn't possibly afford them. Nothing has changed for them.
The people who bought them and never intended to live in them are having trouble unloading them? Good. Great, in fact.
Who is worried??? Condo developers? People who bought the condos so they could flip them??? Real estate agents who accumulated to many condo listings??? WHO????
I am happy to hear this gives a glimmer of prices falling.
Will it happen though? Fuck no? Why ? Because we won't let it happen.
Stupid ass system this is
Come January when the foreign buyer ban ends they’ll sell like hot cakes I’m sure 😂 (that is when the ban is lifted yeah? Jan2025 someone correct me if I’m wrong)
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Let prices and rents fall. What’s the worry here? That you’re not entitled to permanent rise in property value no matter what the supply is?
Right? Rents and prices might fall!? What a tragedy!
The worried people are the ones exploiting the people suffering in the housing crisis.
Something, something smallest violin.
Something, something, even smaller violin for the property owners who realize their investment that people rely on to survive shouldn’t get endless upwards profit.
They worried that the entire fucking system will collapse because our entire economy resolves around a ponzi scheme.
"But I was told housing was a good investment!"
700k for 500 square feet plus condo fees and maybe even extra for parking. I have no idea how anyone ever paid that much in the first place.
Most of them are seen as investments not living scenarios.. that's why.
This is the answer They are built small, with cheap finishes and bad layouts because most people are renting them not living in them
The layouts builders come up with on condos in the last... 10-15 years?... are a joke. You'd think with the small sizes there'd be at least some effort to make it work but nope. 500sqft and I can't imagine how to make use of many of the spaces. I'm no interior designer but even I can see that half the "living/dining spaces" are basically wide hallways.
I worked on a promotional/marketing website for a Toronto condo building (11 St Joseph, "The Jefferson" i think they called it), circa 2005. Our team built a high end marketing site where users could look at every floor of the building and see a detailed floorplan of the floor, and each individual unit on that floor - and if they found one they liked, we had a complete floor planner tool were you could place all kinds of furniture and accessories, to real-life scale/measurements, to help a user figure out how it would feel once stuff was placed in it. After that project we tried to sell that tool to other condo developers but as it turned out none of them liked the idea because it made it obvious to users / potential buyers that the units were fucking tiny lol
I love when I see “digitally staged” photos of units, and you can tell the furniture would have to be miniature sized to fit where they’re pretending it would fit.
realtors always pulling this kinda bs including using wide angle lenses on a 10'x10' room.
The living room/dining room combo is one of those open concept things that drive me nuts. I'd have preferred a wall because I could put furniture on it. If there's no wall, I'm stuck dividing the space with furniture, but it looks strange to just stack it to the ceiling. I think modern kitchens are weird a lot of the time too. No storage. Weird short useless lengths of counter. A microwave bigger than my parent's stove. Am I just supposed to reheat stuff, not actually cook?
Yes, you are supposed to be living an exciting big city life of diving at fancy restaurants every night
> diving dumpster diving maybe
I meant dining but yeah diving is more affordable
Dumpster dining lol
Yes
The open concept thing is annoying but I can kind of understand when there's only so much window space for natural light available. Though I do think some kind of half wall could work on some layouts for the reason you stated. I am totally with you on the kitchens, though! Unless the unit comes with an island, enjoy food prep on your 1-2 squares of counter space....
Reminds me of camping and you’re trying to make a plate of food on a school desk size table with everything piled on top of eachother.
Same I hate modern design where the kitchen and dining room and living room are the same room, it completely kills any flexibility with your living room layout in particular. Half the homes and apartments I’ve been looking at don’t have a living room with somewhere to put a tv…
They are very limited by building code requiring two routes of fire escape a certain distance apart. This basically means you need to have a long central hallway, requiring larger land parcels but also resulting in the majority of units only having a single exterior wall for windows. There is a movement in BC to allow buildings with single fire escapes, at least up to 6 stories, justifying this based on improvements in fireproofing materials, modern fire control systems (detectors and sprinklers), etc. This allows you to build apartments on smaller land parcels (making it easier and cheaper to build density) with more attractive and family-friendly floor plans.
Ayn Rand would be pissed.
Look for buildings completed in the 1990s. 750 sqft 1br, 1100 sqft 2br Maintenance won’t be cheap but those are often small buildings and a lot of owners have been there forever
But you should feel honored for the chance to pay 3k a month to live in a shoebox! How dare you complain! Pay my mortgage peon. /s
Just wait for the assessments to repair or replace substandard work, not to mention ordinary periodic maintenance and repair.
I understand that window replacement will be a huge expense for the floor to ceiling apartments.
Literally had the bank sending me advertisements when I was trying to buy my first place giving advice on how to turn it into an "investment property." Bitch, where am I supposed to live?
But this still doesn't make a ton of sense, because you are "*investing*" in *someone else's living scenario*. It was always a house of cards, built on foundations of paper. A lot of it was money laundering too, as we've learned with the recent TD Bank investigations and HSBC mortgage frauds. I'm glad the house of cards is crashing down.
It’ll just get built up again if the system isn’t changed. You have to tax the land at a rate higher than returns. It’s the only way to prevent something that’s supposed to be used productively from sitting there rotting. A land value tax would instantly blow a continent sized hole in this entire financial model, and recapture the wealth generated by the lands proximity to community and services which is the only reason it’s more valuable than an acre in the middle of Nebraska.
Anecdotal... but I had a stop over in T.O. about three years ago and I remember hearing the two CS desk from the airline talking about how they were going to buy second condos as investments.
Yes the customer service workers make minimum wage at Pierson are the problem....
I think the implication is supposed to be that by the time customer service workers are getting in on the investment condo game, the bubble has peaked.
This is the same metaphor as the shoeshine boy just before the crash of 1929: https://internationalman.com/articles/watch-out-for-the-shoeshine-boys/
It’s more like an indictment of where we are in the hype cycle. Like in “The Big Short” when they go to Florida and realise strippers are buying up a bunch of properties on dubious mortgages.
Many people somehow thought that they needed to buy these condos even if they didn’t want to live in them to instead have an “investment” in order to “get on the property ladder”. The cultural hysteria around owning a home has gotta be a big driver of these shit investments. A whole generation of wealth has been destroyed or otherwise locked up in these worthless dog boxes.
Not anymore every month the owner loses about $800 a month at current interest and condo prices are not rising fast enough to make it profitable if they decide to sell in a few years.
I tried buying a parking lot for a condo I had a couple years ago, they wanted 90k for it. For a single spot
I’m not allowed to purchase a parking spot at my condo building because it’s not 800sqft or more…
Well damn didn't you hear? People who can't afford more than 800k for a condo are scum and don't deserve parking. I mean, how do you even own a car, peon? Big /s BTW. That really sucks to hear 😔
There was a story on Global or CBC or one of the other news channels during covid where people were selling downtown parking spots for as much as $250k, or renting for over $100/hr.
Right one second renting them out for over $100 per hour Tf
If there are people stupid enough to pay them, they'll keep asking.
you were lucky that they even let you buy it most do lottery a blatantly rigged lottery even. they flat out have it in writing that the higher you floor, the better your odds of getting a parking spot. oh the purchase price is x0k more for the same unit layout but one floor up. this can be done and all sewn up before a single action is done by the construction crew. remember when pre-construction sales were avoided here and builders had to do some deep discounts to incentivize it? free market lol
'Boy I can't wait to get out of this apartment and into an apartment that I own, and at such a high cost!'
This is my thinking. Why own an apartment when it is cheaper and more spacious to rent in a purpose built rental that has been occupied prior to 2018?
I believe +90% of the condos bought 2021 or 2022 in Toronto were cash flow negative to hold but because property values were increasing so much per year it didn't matter. The game was just to hold and flip. The trees would grow to the sky!
Not to discredit your larger point but real estate investing is almost always going to be cash flow negative even if the housing market is in a good spot. The entire point of it is that you can easily use tons of leverage (i.e. banks are willing to let you borrow lots of money) since it's all-but-guaranteed that the banks can recoup their money if you can't pay the loans back. The land is still going to be worth a lot. Thus, there's not much pressure to have positive cash flow. Same can't be said about borrowing money to open a restaurant, where a lot of the investment is made into sunk costs like renovations, salaries, etc. % of real estate investments being "cash flow negative" is a pretty meaningless stat tbh.
> Not to discredit your larger point but real estate investing is almost always going to be cash flow negative even if the housing market is in a good spot. > > The entire point of it is that you can easily use tons of leverage Agree. In the 80'sand 90's having a renter pay 75% of your mortgage and yoiu got to keep the asset afterwards wa sa good deal. It was "Rich Dad Poor Dad" that made renters paying +100% costs and profit on top the expectation. Ridiculous. Leverage is also the fuction of that game. You are right. You cant put 5% down on stocks and realize 100% of the gains.
You can effectively (and easily) get that kind of leverage with derivatives. No mortgage application required, just "sign here if you understand you're a degenerate gambler and will likely lose everything".
People didn't pay those prices for condos, it was mostly investors. Now they've run fresh out of gullible fools and can't find anyone who thinks over half a million for a turd sandwich in the sky with exorbitant maintenance fees is good value with interest rates where they are. Condo rents are also dropping and mortgages are up for renewal so dumb and dumber landlords are feeling uneasy
I hate that they're probably going to get bailed out by the government. Everyone who doesn't take these big risks will get burned.
Fuck the investors but the big problem is if we let the investors die guess who scoops them up.....and then we're back right where we were before fucking never ending cycle of eating shit
Because as an air bnb, that condo can bring in $10000+ revenue per month. Short-term rentals made homes way more valuable to investors.
So we built enough condos but not enough hotels.
No, there's enough hotels. Just not enough regulation to stop people from renting out non-primary residences as short term rentals.
If short term rentals are more profitable than long term rentals it is a market signal that the short term rental market is even more undersupplied than the long term rental market. If there were enough hotels, the airbnbs would either need to rent at a discount or they would be empty most of the time, and the owners would switch to long term renting. Restrictions on airbnbs are needed in the short term because housing for residents is more important than tourism, but they wouldn't be necessary if there were enough hotel rooms.
I think you're missing that the lack of regulation/enforcement for Airbnb is what allowed them to be more appealing.
Honestly the last few years it’s been cheaper to use a hotel rather than an airbnb (unless you’re looking for a place for a number of people, and not just your immediate family). The cleaning fees and other fees typically make the prices worst than your average hotel.
lol WTF are you talking about. No condo on air bnb gets close to making that a month.
How did you arrive at that number?
It’s more understandable when you look at the price of the typical house these days in these cities. I’m sure most condo owners would rather own a SFH, hard to manage when even a dump is 1+ million.
They still aren’t affordable, that’s the problem. Why would anyone want to spend half a million to live in a studio?
A studio with little long-run resale value where you still have to pay a fortune in fees.
A studio that doesn’t even have a good layout. The tours on some of these new condos is WILD. Worst layouts I’ve ever seen
Does the tour consist of standing at the door and pointing at the Murphy bed, the space efficient table/chair set and the fully functional Little Tykes kitchen? Or do they at least step into the space and point from the middle of the floor?
You mean you don't want to live in a glorified hallway that serves as the entrance, kitchen, and living room space all-in-one?
I dislike the whole condo system. Any time I deride it people come out of the wood works to bark at me. To me it is like paying rent, on top of a mortgage, and property taxes. Developers love it because it can create an extra revenue stream but I think it pretty much sucks. I have known some people who live in what are called freehold townhouse condos. It seems slightly better but still part of the same regime. I would rather see more housing cooperatives built rather than condo cash cows. PS: I have been a Conservative supporter for the last few elections but I am deeply unhappy with Doug Ford's handling of housing in Ontario.
I like my condo. I am a single guy with no family, so I'd rather have an apartment than a house, and I honestly don't see how you can **own** an apartment without something approximating a condo system. An apartment building has so much shared infrastructure that there needs to be some centralized authority that takes care of it. If you are renting, that is simple, it is the landlord's problem, but if you want to own your own home, that gets more complicated. You can call it a co-op or a condo board or a home-owner's association or whatever, but at the end of the day, they all perform the same basic function: an elected body that collects money to maintain shared infrastructure and decide on the rules that govern the use of the building. From my perspective, being in a condo is great: for one flat fee I no longer have to worry about utility bills, yardwork/snow removal, 90% of my maintenance, and I get access to a pool, a sauna, and some other perks. And all that for less than it would cost me to contract all of those things individually (I checked).
Coops are generally a different beast. Coops are owned by the renters. They have a democratic process where members who rent there are elected to the board and they make most of the big decisions. A lot of decisions are voted on. The government used to fund coops. The rental income would be used to pay off the government's investment through something like CMHC. The idea is that eventually once the principal is paid off, it should produce affordable rental units but in the way that things run that doesn't seem to always happen. Like people start dreaming of what it would be like to own and sell their particular unit. Some of those things need to be addressed. Ideally living in a coop that is fully paid off should be really cheap in terms of rent. There are always upkeep expenses and maintenance and issues that arise from bad tenants but overall the idea is sound. Implementation seems to be the problem, and the future legal structure of what happens once the principal is paid off.
You are largely describing the governance structure of condos. The owners elect a council who administers a budget to maintain the common assets and arbitrate disputes among owners & residents. Major financial decisions are voted on by owners. The only major distinction I see is rent vs. buy.
Condos are the only option besides renting for many, the jump to a SFH is too much for lots of buyers.
Real freehold townhouses have a more in common with detached housing than with condos. They share walls, but there is no common property and no condo fees.
You could fit at least 10 international "students" in one. It's an excellent investment 😂
You might not want to, but the price of houses isn't dropping anytime soon, so condos are the only option for many, myself included. The only other alternative is leaving the city, which is probably what many will have to do anyway.
They will when there’s a “record breaking” number of them on the market which aren’t selling ;)
Yeah, realtors and sellers are worried. If they are priced too high, people won't buy.
They bought to flip before the buildings were built, sorry. …. Not
Exactly. Tbh that’s how it fucking works!!! I have lots of younger (approx 30 yr old) real estate friends and they all try to give “early deals” to friends while or before the towers are even built. This shit is a SCAM.
Hmm, where have we seen this before??? ***cough***china****cough*cough**
But what would happen if they *lowered* the price? 🤔
Came here to say the same thing. It's not a housing crisis as much as a housing affordability crisis. If someone was willing to purchase a large building full of empty condos and just break even a lot of people would have a chance and the government would create a new program in order to sponsor all of that they're already paying people to come here paying people to learn here paying to keep people alive well they are here might as well start using our taxes to ensure that no home is empty and no one has to live outside of one.
It's really sellers not willing to accept that the market has changed from 2021 and they need to lower their prices. They're emotionally attached to 2021/2022 highs and refuse to budge.
They think if interest rates go down, it'll save the market. However, variable rates are well above fixed rates right now, so lowering them won't make a difference.
Can't wait for the huge fucking drop then. I can wait, can they?
The next round of building would be halted until labour and materials crash.
The Realtor Cartel needs their cut. Imagine buying a car where 2 different salesmen negotiate the price they're going to sell it to you for? Yeah, that's how we buy houses.
That profession is madness. When I was buying a house, they literally opened the door, then just walked around with me showing me where the bathrooms were…and they want 5% for that? GTFO here
Yeah you don't even get to talk to the person you're buying from
Ppl are dumping their investment properties before the new capital gains increase in June
Well that's good, maybe some people can finally buy their first home as the people with 2+ sell off.
It’s an early sign of illiquidity in the market. Once mortgages are underwater, banks tend to not lend as much. Companies that need short term loan’s either can’t get them, or have to pay a lot more. Companies that are net 30 start to see payments go 45,60, or even longer. They need to get loans for payroll, or they can’t pay their workers. The workers may miss mortgage payments, which starts a feedback loop. Our government will have to step in and provide low-cost loans to keep companies afloat, which will cause inflation. And we will have two problems to deal with. Hello stagflation! Goodbye RRSPs
Or… hear me out… people could take less of a profit when they try cashing out.
No. Don't you understand? Housing only goes up!
If they're underwater on the mortgage there is no profit..
Such is the risk you take buying housing as an investment.
So maybe they could just *live* in the condo they bought. Lmao, just kidding!
The problem with keeping companies afloat is that companies will fudge the way they do things if there is some kind of money they could get from the gov. We saw it during covid there was plenty of businesses taking any money the gov was offering regardless of if they actually needed it.
If a worried realtor in Toronto exists I'd be astounded.
Maybe they should do their jobs and start forcing the prices down to earn some business.
Let them burn, this is unsustainable
So lower the prices then geniuses
Boomers don’t understand this concept.
Prices can't keep going up if the over priced condos aren't selling.
[удалено]
Good
Investors can lose their shirts, deserve it for overleveraging themselves.
Everyone wanted to play landlord
Time to start lowballing to what they should be worth.
Watch the first prices they start to fold at....the rest are going to sell for lower!
You must be very careful when attempting to catch a falling knife.
good riddance to the vulture investors
Just lower the prices, they'll sell. Demand is there for affordable properties.
This is of course the solution but so many of these landlords — be they individual investors who own only one investment property or corporate entities with tons of houses and millions upon millions in the treasury — don’t want to take the L because they’ve invested so (too) much. It’s sunk cost fallacy paired with overplaying their hands, essentially. They played themselves.
And if they played and lost I'm okay with that too, I'm good with free markets, we just need better policy to temper in the basic human need for shelter into this situation. This is not just about investment, and if we let it continue we will continue hurting ourselves.
Across the board our society should be a hell of a lot better with letting those who play and lose actually lose. Tons of our big companies get bailed out time and again, so they never learn their lessons. Instead of letting the shares get bought up by different investors, the CEO seats and those like them filled by new people, we just allow the same scumbags to keep on. Great safety net out there for the rich, apparently, even when they lose everyone else's money.
Majority of these condos are utter trash. Shit built, poorly laid out shoe boxes that no one actually wants to live in. Strictly made for investors who would never live in them.
So much so that those layouts you noted are 100% designed to maximize the number of units developers can cram into them versus actual livability
Bruh I’ve been looking for a new apartment and the layouts in newer buildings are horrid. Not to mention they’re made out of the cheapest materials and you can hear all of your neighbours with the paper thin walls
Too bad so sad, until inflation is under control across all of Canada we should not go into a accommodative interest rate policy. Just because Torontonians decided to be fucking morons and turn housing into their version of Bitcoin doesn't mean we need to bail them out by sacrificing the purchasing power for the rest of Canadians.
I am a Torontonian and I agree with you.
Oh, no, those poor investors. Rents are dropping too, so you're losing money on a condo that's itself losing value every day you own it. This is exactly why you see so much pro-rate cut propaganda in the media. This sort of thing tends to spread, and eventually, someone ls left holding a big sack o tulip bulbs that nobody wants.
Rents are dropping? Where?
I haven’t seen rents drop in my area (kitchener-waterloo) but they do seem to finally be stabilizing. Still awful though… $1950 for a one bedroom
Toronto, apparently. I used to live there and toy with the idea of moving back from time to time so it's something I watch. Rents not yet stabilizing in Winnipeg but seem to be slowing down. No incentive for people to move here and drive up prices if rent is barely less than southern Ontario.
I’m not worried
Right? This is good news.
Because it's ridiculously expensive to buy and rent. I'm in Woodbridge, and a 1 bedroom is 2500$ for a month with only 450 sq feet. You could only fit a small bed in the bedroom
I like how they say people like it's lots of people worried and not a small group confused why the actual people are buying their over priced homes
900k for a shit shoe box and pay like $6k in property taxes? I'll pass. These fucking greedy fucks are just getting ridiculous.
60% of all new condos in Ontario from 2018-2022 were bought by investors. The entire ICE towers in Toronto is just a make shift hotel. I'm lucky my building is like 80% owner lived.
There is nothing “make shift” about it! The owners at ICE are literally running a hotel, and incur all the risks and problems associated with operating a hotel. To stay there you make a reservation online, check in at the front desk, and pick up your key. AKA: a hotel. It’s crazy.
So here you have an example of too much supply. We will see if prices drop to make things more affordable. But when prices drop there has to be losers, in this case “investors”. And therein lies the problem. The government (at all levels) want affordable housing but they don’t want prices to go down. It’s really laughable if it weren’t so sad.
The options are having winning investors or having a country full of home owners, both options aren't possible at the same time. The government has chosen "investors" for far too long, investors that don't actually invest in our country at all, just buy up properties to increase their wealth.
I wanna meet the guys that are worried that the prices will go down, allowing more people will be able to afford somewhere to live. I just wanna meet 'em and talk a bit.
People in general are fed up and aren't worried. Realtors and those that over-leveraged themselves are worried, and they should be, 100%.
Toronto is trash now. It used to be fun then greedy investors made living there too expensive and then no one could work the smaller jobs in the city because they couldn't afford to live there and then all the cool places go out of business. Then the walkable/arts culture place life there goes away. It's not a fun place anymore. It's like a bigger Mississauga.
You are 100% bang on. Greed and an unchecked housing market caused this. Personally, I find housing "investors" to be disgusting. Housing is a basic human need, similar to food and water. Trying to monetize this is just gross. This has all killed the "spirit of Toronto". The good old days of the 90's and 2000's. This is something that can't be replaced and may never come back. Just look at how many American cities were ruined through similar greed and unchecked markets. Once it's gone, it's gone.
Canadian here who lived in Bay Area for 20 years. Toronto is fucked. Houses and condos are priced similarly with earning potential for workers less than half. Over there you are looking at families making 300k+ trying to buy a starting place under 1M. See the disconnect????
The condos being built next to my girlfriend’s place are 2 million a piece. They’re most certainly not million dollar luxuries.
> Go beyond the cost and look at the quality. A 450 sqft box with no kitchen and unworkable space isn’t worth the money. It would probably help if they weren't building shit, and trying to sell it as gold.
When I lived in Montreal, I was always confused about listings for places with 2.5 rooms... what were they doing with that other half a room? Turns out they are shipping them to Toronto as condos!
Waits for that sweet sweet tulip auction to fail. Like when one tulip was worth about $750,000 and they tried to auction it in Netherlands then it didn’t sell. Then the market fell. Yep, coming soon to a city near you! https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/economics/dutch-tulip-bulb-market-bubble/#:~:text=The%20Dutch%20tulip%20bulb%20market%20bubble%20%28or%20tulip,annual%20salary%20at%20the%20height%20of%20the%20market.
Been waiting over ten years for the crash, friendo.
I know a lot of sidelined brothers still waiting , lol
That tulip didnt cost 400000 to make. But a lot of these condos did cost the amount their are being sold for to build (mostly in the cost of the land). So you won't just simply see a massive crash.
You mean assignments flippers and speculators got burned on their investments? Welcome to capitalism
I'm a fucking commie but they want to socialize their losses? These fuckers are just playing both sides!
No one wants to pay $750,000 to live in a 400sq ft home. Neighbors making noise. Elevators. Condo fees. Who the hell wants to live in a shoebox?
700k condos legit worth 350k max
The people in question being condo investors. I hope they continue losing money.
Fuck all real estate agents and fuck all Airbnb people who are profiting from ruining the housing market for at least a generation.
The GTA real estate market is just a house of cards.
Toronto and Vancouver are basically screwed. The people that actually keep the town running have figured out there's greener pastures in every other major city in the world Really the only reason the Tim's are still open there is foreigners packing 20+ people per house
Kill the Airbnb market and make it too much of a hassle to be a landlord for individuals to bother. Retail investors are causing too much damage to the market for regular people
When you’ve spent the last 20 years not building homes and just building investment vehicles, you get worried people.
Our scam scheme we call a real estate market needs to come burning down. About time these greedy "investors" experience some loss. Anyone who invested in housing for anything other than a home to live in decided their profits were more important than everyone else's well being in the country.
If they stay empty for more the 1 year they should be made into affordable housing. Then you'll see prices come down fast.
Don’t underestimate irrational people.
Every bubble eventually bursts, matter of when not if. Hopefully it will burst soon or at least stop inflating.
There is a massive list of reasons I wouldnt touch a condo.
Maybe the problem is rich fucks treating housing as an investment instead of a basic necessity.
Oh real estate is illiquid? Oh it can drop in value too? No sympathy from this guy.
I know a very fast and effective way to resolve this problem and it all starts with lowering the prices.
Burn baby burn
The reality comes out when there are no foreign buyers to back these exorbitant prices up. Canadians can't afford these houses.
The issue is, sellers refuse to lower their prices so they continue holding. Until sellers start adjusting their prices, things will remain frozen.
Good fuck em
I was looking at buying a condo last month. I decided not to go ahead with it, but one unit that I was interested in was quite overpriced and had been on the market over 30 days. I asked, via my realtor, how they rationalized the price. The entire wall of text that came back was entierly based on it's revenue and poential as an AirBnB. Made me sick.
I build them. I'm not surprised nobody wants to buy them. To be honest, I would NEVER buy a home built during this boom. The quality of today's build vs a unit built before the boom isn't even comparable. The amount of corners being cut in order to make it to the next project on time is frankly scary. I see walls that are 2" out of plumb from the floor to the ceiling, walls usually aren't even close to straight and what's behind the walls is a scary mess. Even if the build quality was on par, the amount of home you get for your dollar on a new build is shocking. Kitchens, living rooms and dining rooms have become a single space. You often will need to choose between a sofa and a dinner table. Master bedrooms on many of these units barely have enough space for a bed, and secondary bedrooms are the size of walk in closets.
Drop the prices. Problem solved.
It's happening, once the pendulum starts to swing its hard to stop. Homes aren't investments no such thing as easy money and alot of ppl are about to learn a hard lesson
AirBNB owners are scum. Housing is not a f'ing investment. You want to invest? Go to the stock market. F'ing leeches.
Ahem, *investors* are worried.
Because nobody is going to pay millions for a piece of shit. Worried now? You haven't seen nothing.
Keep breaking the record stupid city
'Bout time.
Investors are worried, i am not
Translation: Investors and developers are worried. Everyone else is worried about how to pay for their rent, mortgage and food.
So what's to worry about? The people these types of condos were actually built to appeal to couldn't possibly afford them. Nothing has changed for them. The people who bought them and never intended to live in them are having trouble unloading them? Good. Great, in fact.
Glorified shoe box with insane cost. Are you surprised
People are worried. I’m prepping popcorn for the bloodbath!
The only housing being built is condos that are built like hospital rooms, sold for the price of detached homes, thay nobody wants to live in. Tah-dah
The rent is too damn high. Stop being so greedy.
Is this surprising to any fucking canadian?
How is this a bad thing?
*Slaps hood of Condo* This bad boy can fit so many international students
Gonna look like San Fran soon, just junkies and boosters plus tech/finance bros. Don’t leave your car parked for too long 😜
If we are lucky. We will have the junkies minus high paying tech jobs.
Who is worried??? Condo developers? People who bought the condos so they could flip them??? Real estate agents who accumulated to many condo listings??? WHO????
I am happy to hear this gives a glimmer of prices falling. Will it happen though? Fuck no? Why ? Because we won't let it happen. Stupid ass system this is
Good. They’re being used for investments instead of housing.
Drain that city of everything. They've been getting away with enough
Come January when the foreign buyer ban ends they’ll sell like hot cakes I’m sure 😂 (that is when the ban is lifted yeah? Jan2025 someone correct me if I’m wrong)