How to make a house horrible
La Presse has a piece on the transformation of a pleasant but nondescript little duplex in Villeray into a black cube that sucks in all the light and has as cold and relentless an interior as any I’ve seen. The transformation also inevitably turns a two-household dwelling into a single, as these things do.
Oh, and there’s the breakfast bar. Of course.
Jonathan 14:00 on 2020-06-06 Permalink
I wish people didn’t treat these so positively. This is pure speculative flipping, and takes a unit out of the market, during the time of a housing crisis.
Luckily the borough has now passed a new ordonnance which disallows any conversion of duplex and triplex. There is a lot of opposition to this. The borough had received 19 questions during the last council meeting on only this subject (meaning these owners are organized). Usually the most one subject receives is 5 or 6 questions, mostly complaining about parking. I had a person knock on my door asking me to sign her petition to allow the conversions but I refused. Every owner has the possibility of asking for an exemption, and I think this is a good mechanism to make sure that these conversions are done tastefully (and I don’t consider the one on du Rosaire tasteful one bit) and to ensure it improves the housing conditions in the borough (affordability,access to housing, reduction of mineralized surfaces, etc).
Raymond Lutz 14:42 on 2020-06-06 Permalink
I’m worried, this erodes our ownership rights… What’s the use of having a ‘business oriented’ PM if he lets this kind of thing happen?
mare 16:15 on 2020-06-06 Permalink
Evaluation: 458 700 $
Asking price: 1 950 000 $
My guess is that they spent too much money on the acquisition and renovation, forgetting the old real estate expression: Location Location Location. I’m surprised the agent agreed to list it for that price.
If you want and can afford a house like that, it’s unlikely you want to live in that part of Vileray.
david33 16:22 on 2020-06-06 Permalink
This type of renovation should be prohibited full stop.
The city and even the boroughs have it within their power.
JaneyB 17:20 on 2020-06-06 Permalink
@Mare – They will never get $1.9 million for any residence in Villeray, LMAO. The agent’s probably a friend. The project itself and publicity in La Presse are undoubtedly to push the name of the architect to get other business, probably commercial from the look of the decor. Likely they got the publicity because the writer grew up in the house.
walkerp 22:14 on 2020-06-06 Permalink
LOL that bathroom!
dwgs 10:10 on 2020-06-07 Permalink
I actually don’t mind the exterior. The interior though, blech. Have fun eterneally Windexing those walls.
Also, before we condemn all conversions, I converted a small over/under duplex in NDG because it’s what we could afford. We rented out the upper until we had kids and then 900 sq. ft. just wasn’t enough. It was either buy something bigger we could afford (which would probably mean leaving the city centre ) or take one rental unit off the market. It wasn’t a hard choice.
DeWolf 11:22 on 2020-06-07 Permalink
The great thing about plexes is they are inherently flexible, which includes being able to combine two units into one. Rather than prohibiting that kind of conversion outright, maybe we should make it easier to add an extra floor or back alley unit to rent out. Cities change, the trick is to manage that change, not to (uselessly) try to prevent it.
mb 12:09 on 2020-06-07 Permalink
Tasteless generic renovation screaming for attention disguised as architectural gesture. Black has become the colour of arrogance in Montreal architecture of the past years. The price is a joke, more a measure of the owner’s self-esteem than of this piece of real estate.
Alison Cummins 12:46 on 2020-06-07 Permalink
Dark colours for building exteriors was cool until about five years ago, at which point it had already started to look dated. These days, interestingly, white is what stands out to me. “Oh how clean and fresh!” whereas before white just looked sad and dusty.
The interior… well, sure, lots of windows and open space is always beautiful. But how are you managing heating and cooling in Montreal’s variable weather without doors to allow separate temperature control for different parts of the house? There’s not even an entryway door to keep January wind out of the house when going in and out. I guess the plan is to do this american style, where the front door is just for decoration and the real door is in the [heated] garage? But that would go against the whole point of living in the city, which is walkability and closeness to neighbours who just pop in.
Yes, I am all for encouraging extra floors.
Jonathan 13:45 on 2020-06-07 Permalink
I’m not necessarily against these conversions. At present the approval of the conversion is an administrative process. With the new by-law my understanding is that it is not allowed except through an exemption, which makes it an approval process that goes through council and the citizen consultation committee. This would mean that the borough council, planners and committee can require certain conditions. For instance, it could disallow the conversion in the article because of the fact that it looks like a flip. It could make a condition that there be two units, or one rental, or require that an extra floor be added with a rental unit, etc.
david88 16:46 on 2020-06-07 Permalink
“The great thing about plexes is they are inherently flexible, which includes being able to combine two units into one. Rather than prohibiting that kind of conversion outright, maybe we should make it easier to add an extra floor or back alley unit to rent out. Cities change, the trick is to manage that change, not to (uselessly) try to prevent it.”
This a good idea that I obviously support enthusiastically.
Practically, however, nobody but a developer is going to build an extra floor or lane unit when they simply want a well-located 8.5. You’re talking about $40,000 in renovation costs vs. $200,000 in constructions costs (conservatively).
We need to prevent conversions such as this for a variety of reasons, but chief among them is to avoid Manhattanization of these neighborhoods – where the population density decreased as the area gets wealthier. It threatens the entire commercial and social eco-system of a given neighborhood.
We should be going the exact opposite way.
Mary 16:02 on 2020-07-13 Permalink
There have been at least five houses sold in Villeray that fetched more than $1.5 million. One recently sold for $2.2 million. One of the most sought-after neighbourhoods in the city. But just because one can does not mean one should. Save the shoebox houses, say I.