Steady as She Goes for Condo Market

It seems like we’ve heard this non-news before (a few times) — according to a Genworth Canada/Conference Board of Canada report, we’re looking at neither bust nor boom for the condo market this year; growth and employment gains are expected to keep the market “healthy enough to absorb the supply of new units,” says CBC.

While experts continue to watch major markets such as Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto for signs of implosion as construction continues at a rapid pace and sales slip off, the report says demand continues for condos partly because of their affordability.

The fundamentals say the condo market will stay strong, according to Conference Board of Canada director Mario Lefebvre.

"Our economy has been reasonably firm. It’s not breaking records but it’s doing well. The U.S. economy is finally showing signs of life. Population keeps on growing in Canada – it’s also aging and that's good for the condominium market," he told CBC's The Lang & O'Leary Exchange.

Lefebvre said he isn’t concerned about rising debt or rising interest rates, since many Canadians have locked in for five years at mortgage rates of less than 3%, which means that although their debts are high, they’re paying off their mortgages quickly.

Boomers approaching retirement age and looking to downsize mean more good news for the condo market. The report predicts that prices in all major markets will rise over the next couple of years.

Normally, it seems undeniable that what goes up must come down, but apparently the Canadian condo market is not familiar with the laws of physics.

***

Tarion, the new home warranty folks, have overhauled their website to make important information more easily accessed by home buyers who loathe small print (and who doesn’t?). A new online Homeowner Information Package is readily available from your computer or mobile. There’s still time to participate in the organization’s public consultation regarding Enhanced Vendor and Building Education Requirements, too; a detailed discussion paper resulting from Tarion’s 2012 Builder Education Taskforce is available online, fully outlining proposed enhanced education requirements and their implementation. Input must be received by Friday, Oct. 4.

Their series of online videos covers a variety of topics including nail pops and managing your warranty online, all available through the site. Remember, Tarion exists for buyers. If you’re thinking of buying a newly constructed home, check out the revamped site and let them know if you easily got what you needed out of it — and perhaps more importantly, if the site readily made you realize you needed more than you thought.

***

Pickering’s airport is still up in the air, if you’ll pardon the pun. While Finance Minister Jim Flaherty maintains that an airport would turn Durham Region into a transportation hub, the 40-year stewardship of 5,000 acres of prime land by the federal government continues.

(The Post reported yesterday on an “awkward” (says the Post) Transport Canada study that says Toronto “might” (says the study) need more airport capacity — by 2027.)

The Post’s Chris Selley says it’s time to sell the land and use the money plus whatever would have gone into a Durham airport to improve transit links between our “existing, perfectly good and below-capacity” airports, Billy Bishop (mired in controversy of its own over jet planes), Pearson (really?), Hamilton, and Waterloo (too far, and too far respectively). He says we have plenty of capacity, just a problem getting to, from and in between the airports we already have.

Selley also makes the point that a lot of Pearson’s traffic is devoted to the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridor, which could be well served by a high-speed rail link, but I wonder if Ontarians will ever take to trains. They never seemed to catch on in these parts, not like they have in Europe. He also raises the valid point that Pickering airport could well be another Mirabel — another hard-to-reach spot that goes in too far ahead of its infrastructure.

All of which begs the question — where’s the planning in all of this? The Pickering Lands Needs Assessment study doesn’t seem to have any answers. The only thing I do know is that all that land sitting there for four decades is insane. As the Post article asserts, once this land is gone, there will never be another parcel like it. Dare we hope they do the right thing — whatever that turns out to be?

***

Self-confessed skyscraper nerd Scott Dickson took 100 hours to create a rendering of the Toronto skyline, circa 2023, and while it may not be quite at Hong Kong levels (where there are 7,000 skyscrapers), “given the size of Toronto,” says the artist, “we’re definitely punching above our weight class.”

The piece is about a year old but attracted new interest last week when it was posted to Reddit. Dickson didn’t start with a photograph, but rather created the “night magic-hour” rendering from scratch, including the sky and the water.

I love it. Why do things in half-measures? We’ll still have great street-level neighbourhoods like the Beach and Kensington Market, which definitely need protection from becoming too tall, but with the downtown core already a sky-scraping neighbourhood, why not go all the way? We’re already starting to feel like Manhattan-light. The real surprise is not that the city might look like this, but that it’s only 10 years off.