Jet-setting philanthropist Peter Munk, the 85-year-old founder of Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corp., is taking a rogue approach to real estate: he’s dumping big money into condo developments at a time when Toronto’s already overflowing with high rises and other developers are backing away. Munk is using his personal wealth to help finance CD Capital, headed by Todd Cowan and Jordan Dermer, who were previously execs at another real estate company backed by Munk. The developers’ projects include, among others, the 300-unit Sixty Colborne project near St. Lawrence Market and 155 Redpath at Yonge and Eglinton, an area Dermer argues is ripe for development. Munk, meanwhile, says the city’s starry future is reason enough to invest. Hard to argue with a billion-dollar man. [Globe and Mail]
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Real Estate Cheat Sheet: new condo projects, first-time buyers and more market news
(Image: Shane Fester from the Torontolife.com Flickr pool)
Real estate commentators usually reach for sales figures and average prices to explain what’s happening in the market, but there are a ton of other figures that are equally illuminating. This week, we’ve seen stories about the number of new condo projects in Toronto, the amount a typical first-time buyer is planning to pay and more. We round up the notable numbers below.
The Chase: an avowed west-ender takes a chance on a Regent Park condo
The buyer: Abeer Islam, a 29-year-old music producer and owner of Ivory and Hammer Music House.
The story: Two years ago, Islam bought his first home, a 600-square-foot one-bedroom loft at Bathurst and Queens Quay. It was a bargain at $260,000, but the layout was highly impractical: there was no separation between his living space and his home studio. When friends came over, they’d often end up sitting on his expensive recording equipment. Last year, he decided it was time to upgrade. He hoped to find a two-bedroom place, preferably in a west end neighbourhood with good resale potential, for less than $350,000. His six-month search took him all over the city and ended in a place he never expected.
Extreme Makeover: a ho-hum Roncesvalles Victorian gets a rustic-modern overhaul
Not long ago, Emma Reddington and Myles McCutcheon—she’s an interior designer, he’s a photo editor—were on the hunt for a character-rich historic house in the west end. But they didn’t want to tear down too many walls to make it livable. They finally chose a tired but solid Roncey Victorian with original details, including a stained glass transom and a cast iron claw-foot tub. Reddington, co-owner of the firm Marion Melbourne and founder of the design blog The Marion House Book, planned a makeover that would highlight the home’s pedigree and reflect her vintage-meets-metropolitan style. She decided to sand and oil the oak floors and re-plaster and whitewash the faded yellow walls to create a neutral backdrop for her rustic decor. Many of these items were architectural reclamation finds from the Dundas West shop Post and Beam, and antiques from the St. Lawrence Market. The only room that was demolished was the kitchen, which gained a 36-inch industrial stove and an elegant Calacatta marble wall. Reddington designed a walnut shelving unit to give the room its warmth and painted one wall black for contrast. Her work on the house isn’t done; “We just flipped the dining room and living room,” Reddington says. They have a three-year-old son, Henry, and she’s redoing the guest room for baby number two. “If I live here for 20 years, it’ll be a 20-year project.”
The Chase: two consultants brave a blind bid process for a home in Kensington Market
The buyer: Diana Wong and Avnish Babla, both 30-year-old management consultants.
The story: Wong and Babla first met at Western in 2009. They were in the same MBA program, but they almost never talked on campus. They kept running into each other in Toronto, where they both moved after graduating, and soon enough they were dating. When they got engaged in December 2011, they decided to buy a house together. They wanted three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a yard—and, at first, were adamant about staying downtown (or at least within spitting distance of downtown and on a transit line). But their $500,000 budget made that nearly impossible. They were willing to expand their search zone and to do some renovating (Babla worked in construction throughout university, so he wasn’t afraid to do the work himself). What they didn’t predict was how much more money they would have to spend to get what they wanted.
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Extreme Makeover: a designer brings old Hollywood glamour to a drab Rosedale home
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Interior designer Theresa Casey lives for large-scale projects. So when she and her husband, graphic designer Robert Gray, began a house hunt, her goal was “to buy a box and make it our own.” A 1930s brick Rosedale home with a forgettable interior was the ideal big, messy job. Among its dysfunctions: a cumbersome wall divided the main floor down the middle, and Moroccan arches made rooms heavy and funereal. The sole, tiny bathroom was at the top of the stairs. After the space was gutted, Casey sourced all-new decor and had much of it custom made. She explored a period design, mixing traditional elements with 1930s modernism. The master bath now has smoky, Old World glamour, with black glass and Negro Marquina marble, cherrywood accents and vintage brass faucets. The petite kitchen is modelled after the galley in a cabin on a luxury ocean liner, with Statuario marble and unlacquered brass. Casey brought in vintage hardware and custom cherry doors for all the entranceways. The dining room’s grillwork is salvaged from the Eaton’s College Park building (now the Carlu), another dramatic art deco touch.
Extreme Makeover: a Baby Point house loses walls and gains an airy main floor
Situated on a 250-foot lot overlooking a ravine and the Humber River, Tom and Jenni Kapler’s 3,200-square-foot house in Baby Point had all the space in the world. But the 1940s home (where Tom grew up) just didn’t function for a family of five. It had an awkward layout: a collection of isolated, bizarrely proportioned rooms that felt confining, and small windows that diminished the ravine view. Architect Paul Raff started by updating the master bedroom and adding a large ensuite. Then he blew out the walls on the main floor to create a family-centric Bulthaup kitchen that’s three times the size of the original. Now, new glass doors lead out to the backyard. Raff also reimagined the living room as a modern entertainment space with a limestone fireplace and built-in shelving (joined to a picture rail) that covers up the old radiators. During the lengthy construction, the Kaplers practically cohabitated with the contractors and constantly moved around to avoid the cordoned-off areas. For a stretch, they set up a cooking area in the laundry room. “The kids totally adapted,” says Tom. “It was kind of like camping.” Read the rest of this entry »
A bungalow-heavy neighbourhood in Brampton is seething over a partially finished 6,600-square-foot house (which the Toronto Star has started refering to as “the Brampton monster home”). Owner Ahmed Elbasiouni says he originally planned to renovate the site’s original 1,800-square-foot home, but switched to the current two-story design when supporting walls collapsed during construction. The city has halted work on the site for now, and local councillors want the house scaled back to send a message to an increasing number of building permit flouters. Meanwhile, in another part of the GTA, a Re/Max agent is facing charges for jamming 11 bedrooms into a Scarborough home and charging tenants $500 to $700 a month for each—the latest illegal rooming house owner to capitalize on the overwhelming demand for affordable housing. The ungainly and ever-controversial quest for higher density in the suburbs continues.
Vaughan Mills is getting a pricey upgrade and one of Holt Renfrew’s new hr2 stores
Toronto’s malls have fully embraced a “bigger is better” mentality: Yorkdale completed its mega-renovation last fall, Sherway Gardens is embarking on a $350-million revitalization of its own, and several developers have ambitious plans for the outlet malls on the city’s fringes. This week, it was Ivanhoe Cambridge’s turn to announce plans for an $87-million expansion at Vaughan Mills, its mall-outlet hybrid just north of Toronto. Construction will begin this spring on the 14,000-square-metre addition, which will bring 50 new stores and three new anchor tenants, including a Legoland, to the space, plus an entertainment court, 450 parking spots, a redesigned food court and new finishings throughout the mall. Meanwhile, Holt Renfrew is following through with plans to convert its existing Last Call outlet into an hr2, the department store’s new off-price offshoot. According to Retail Insider, the Last Call location will close on February 2 for renovations, with the new store slated to open in April.
Grand Electric’s second floor falls victim to the Parkdale restaurant moratorium (UPDATED)
Grand Electric’s second-storey expansion, which would’ve added 40 seats to perennially packed taco bar, is on hold due to the Parkdale strip restaurant ban. Co-owner Ian McGrenaghan told Post City the suspension came as a surprise, since GE applied for the necessary permits prior to the ban and had nearly finished construction. Barring a successful legal challenge, the second floor is unlikely to open until the moratorium expires in November, contrary to what local councillor Gord Perks indicated at the time it went into effect. [Post City]
UPDATE: Councillor Perks confirmed to us that Grand Electric did indeed get their application in before the deadline. That application, however, did not conform to the building code and zoning bylaws, and was consequently rejected—after the moratorium was already in place.
The Celtic Invasion: why the arrival of hundreds of Irish construction workers benefits Toronto’s building boom
Sean and James McQuillan left Ireland for Toronto in 2010
In the mid-1990s, companies such as Microsoft, Intel and Apple, attracted by Ireland’s well-educated workforce, tax incentives, minimal regulations and low wages, opened offices in Dublin with a speed that surprised even the gravest doubter. By the time the Celtic Tiger, as the exploding Irish economy was dubbed, had fully deployed its claws, the unemployment rate had dropped to just under five per cent, one of the lowest in the developed world. Ireland’s GDP grew to one of the highest in Europe, exports doubled in just five years, and the average income was climbing seven per cent a year, almost triple the Read the rest of this entry »
eurozone average.
For months, market gurus have been predicting that condo prices would stagnate due to new mortgage regulations and a multitude of new condo towers (and many many more in the making). They were actually on point this time: over the summer, pre-construction sales (and prices) fell off, and now, for the first time since the recession, resale condos are also flattening. According to MLS figures for the third quarter, the average high-rise resale price was $334,204, only a modest rise from the $332,969 average price in the third quarter of 2011. Also, as increasing supply has moved power from sellers to buyers, a similar situation has shifted power from landlords towards tenants in the renters’ market. Average rents still rose, but only by 3.4 per cent for one-bedroom units (to $1,605) and 2.2 per cent for two-bedroom units (to $2,097). Of course, those figures only take into account units leased through MLS, which isn’t exactly the most popular avenue for renters. [Globe and Mail]
CBC reminds us that Toronto wasn’t always condo crazy
(Image: Seekdes)
It can be difficult to imagine a Toronto skyline uncluttered by the recently finished Shangri-La or Concord’s perpetually under-construction CityPlace—both feel like fixtures, despite their youth. The CBC must have thought so too, because it borrowed a fun format from the New York Times to help everyone remember life before the forest of downtown high-rises. Old and new photographs of the same vista sit next to one another, and a slider lets you scroll across to instantly populate the skyline—or level it. Dramatic before-and-afters like this usually involve black-and-white photos crammed with Model Ts and bowler hats, which makes it all the more arresting that most of these “before” images are from the ’90s (one is even from 2002). See all the photos [CBC] »
David Mirvish and Frank Gehry want to raze the Princess of Wales Theatre to build condos
(Image: Gehry International, Inc)
Over the weekend, theatre tycoon David Mirvish unveiled a grand plan to knock down a section of the entertainment district that includes the Princess of Wales Theatre, and replace it with three 80-storey condo towers designed by Frank Gehry. (At the moment, the renowned Toronto-born architect’s redesign of the AGO remains his only major contribution to the local cityscape.) The project, which would nestle along King Street between the Royal Alexandra and the TIFF Bell Lightbox, would contain all manner of development goodies, according to Mirvish:
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The Sell: a developer builds a million-dollar pet project in a dodgy east-end pocket
The Seller: Rambod Nasrin, the 36-year-old president of Upside Development.
The Property: An 800-square-foot 1950s bungalow near Coxwell and Cosburn recently converted into a 2,400-square-foot three-bedroom.
The Story: In 2010, after almost a decade working for the construction giant Tridel, Nasrin decided to branch out on his own. He was tired of churning out functional, formulaic buildings. His plan was to buy a cheap house on a decent-sized lot, tear it down and build a modernist masterpiece on top. Nasrin chose the area near Coxwell and Cosburn because he saw a glut of young buyers coming to the neighbourhood, and he thought they might be interested in something other than the boring brick and stucco houses that were already there. He found a bungalow for $424,000 that fit the bill, but it was a risk. There was no precedent for this kind of modern architecture in the area—and no precedent for the price Nasrin would have to list it at to make any money. Still, he believed in the power of good design, and decided to take a chance.
