Downtown condos: too small, too expensive
New condos downtown are not selling well because they’re too expensive and too small. Some promoters are turning to renting them out, but at more than $2000 for 600 sq.ft. they’re not exactly competitive either.
More places are being built as rentals on purpose, but they’re not stellar deals either.
Kevin 13:08 on 2025-02-20 Permalink
WFH and the fear of another pandemic has killed the 3 and and half.
And developers/fire codes/building codes make it too expensive to build multiple-bedroom units in high rises.
Kate 19:31 on 2025-02-20 Permalink
Can you unpack why those factors have killed the 3½, Kevin?
Steph 23:29 on 2025-02-20 Permalink
People who WFH need more space. For the same reason it’s healthier to keep your bedroom uniquely as a ‘sleeping space’, closing the door to your workspace helps compartmentalize it away.
Kevin 23:36 on 2025-02-20 Permalink
I’ll do my best not to write an essay 😉
For office workers having a regular place for a home setup has become a new essential because even if only 20% are working most of their days at home (according to Stats Can), a lot more are at home 1 or 2 days a week.
Building codes require two exits in buildings over two storeys, and all bedrooms need a window.
So in Montreal that usually means a long hallway with apartments on each side, which means putting in more than one bedroom in a single unit ends up as a very large unit with some extra rooms that cannot be bedrooms.
Ian 09:49 on 2025-02-21 Permalink
Why it sounds almost like the codes were written around the concept of the plex, not apartment buildings. Which makes me kind of wonder why nobody builds walkups … is the concept just not sufficiently profitable?
I know it’s easier to sell out a new condo building full of 1 bed apartments becasuse of price point as starter homes, but if the city and or privince is serious in any way about preventing sprawl when those “new families” start having kids, there needs to be some kind of incentive in place for family units to be built. That said as long as our Minister of Housing is a real estate speculator, that’s not going to happen, lol.
Considering the current public transit “solution” seems to be encouraging sprawl (looking at you , REM-north-of-the-40) and new development for housing seems to be more about profiteering than providing homes (looking at you , 1-bed condo plexes all through Montreal’s former light industrial areas) I don’t think we’re going to see any solutions.
I know a 25 year old with a good job and decent credit who is looking for an apartment downtown and pretty much every one is roach-infested 1 bed condo building with units going for around 2k/m each that want a full credit check, a cash deposit, and to know if you ever opened a case with the TAL. Landlords don’t give AF about the toothless laws. You don’t like it? Apply somewhere else … and they’re all the same.
Kate 10:07 on 2025-02-21 Permalink
There are some relatively new walkups here and there, mostly built as fill‑ins on residential streets that had a single lot or two for development – there’s one just up the street from me – but obviously it’s not a major construction style in our time.
Ian, the Quebec government is simply not interested in fixing the housing crisis, and the probable reason is that they’re profiting from it, and meanwhile holding back the cash that was supposed to help the homeless. They really are heartless bastards.
Kevin 12:47 on 2025-02-21 Permalink
Ian
It’s more the codes are written for single family homes, and by people who watched “The Towering Inferno” and thought it was a documentary 😉
In many Canadian cities something like Montreal’s triplexes, or Parisian/Manhattan walkups, are banned, and so the only way to build an apartment block is to build it like a hotel (a double-loaded corridor). It’s why Vancouver has a housing crisis — it’s historically been composed of single-family homes and high-rise apartment buildings, and very, very little in between (ignoring the illegal granny suites).
If you want to read an essay, check out the Larch Lab.
https://www.larchlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Eliason_CoV-Point-Access-Blocks-report_v1.2.pdf
Ian 16:46 on 2025-02-21 Permalink
Single family dwellings don’t necessarily mean townhouses. The classic triplex is basically three single family homes stacked, which is ideal, I think.