Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1385

Over the past week I’ve had 2 separate people ask me my thoughts on the future of the condo market in Toronto. One of them was working on a University study and one of them was trying to figure out what (condo) property managers would look like in the future. 

To be clear, the questions weren’t motivated by the typical “bubble” debate that the media loves to headline, rather these were questions about the long term future of condos in this city.

I haven’t written about this topic explicitly, so today I thought I would summarize my responses for the Architect This City community. There’s probably a touch of aspiration in the responses I gave, but it’s more or less what I’m thinking and what I believe has a good chance of happening over the next 10-20 years.

Here are some of my thoughts (not an exhaustive list):

Intensification is going to continue in Toronto and that is going to mean more condominiums and other types of multi-family dwellings. Rental apartments is the product type du jour right now within the real estate community.

As intensification continues, I think we’re going to see a tipping point in the near term with more families opting to have and raise children in condos in the city. Part of this will be driven by a desire to stay in the city (walkable communities), but part of it will also be driven by the economics (i.e. high price) of low-rise housing in the city.

As families begin to fill in condos (not just young single professionals and empty nesters), we’ll see developers and cities respond with more family friendly buildings, amenities, and program choices. This could mean anything from children’s play spaces within buildings to redesigned public spaces and parks.

In line with this shift, I think we’ll also see more sophisticated executions of “mixed-use.” Rather than just stacked uses (retail at the bottom, a few levels of office, and a residential condo tower above), developers and operators are going to start thinking about the ecosystem they are creating. (Related discussion in the comment section of this post .)

It’s probably a bit safe to predict that sustainability will become more important going forward. But I think that as more families and long-term end users opt for condos, that consumers will become more interested in building and energy performance. Technological advancement (both hardware and software) will also give this a boost.

Finally, and this applies somewhat to real estate in general, I believe that we’ll see a lot more openness and transparency all across the industry. There will be much better access to data and information. Similar to above, this will be aided by advances in technology and networks.

Now it’s your turn. What do you think of the above list? And what will the condo market — either in Toronto or in your city — look like in 10-20 years?

In this month’s issue of Monocle magazine (#80) they profile an interesting prefabricated and affordable housing project in Knivsta, Sweden .

A collaboration between  architect Andreas Martin-Löf  and developer Junior Living, the project contains 124 single occupancy units, each of which has 32 square meters of interior space (that’s about 344 square feet).

The way it was built is quite simple. The modular housing units were fabricated off-site and then inserted on-site into a prefabricated concrete frame. Think bottles going into a wine rack. Here’s a diagram showing how it works:

What’s truly amazing about this project though is how quickly it was built and how cost effective it actually was for end users. Construction started in January 2014 and residents started moving in about 3 months later. The sale prices ranged from €50,000 to €87,000 per unit. That’s roughly $62,000 to $98,000 in US dollars.

Finally, here’s a shot of one of the interiors:

What do you all think of this project?

Photography by Åke E:son Lindman via Andreas Martin-Löf Arkitekter

I’ve written quite a bit about the advantages of a “rail + property” model when it comes to building public transit. It’s a model that works quite successfully in other parts of the world, such as in Hong Kong.

However, in North America the notion of land value recapture or of transit authorities acting as real estate developers is still very much in its infancy. We’re myopically focused on rail. 

Which is why I said about 3 months ago that if the stations along the new Eglinton Crosstown LRT line in midtown Toronto became single storey and single purpose buildings, that we will have missed an enormous city building opportunity.

Since that post I had a number of conversations with the folks over at Metrolinx and I was delighted to learn that there were in fact plans to build additional density on top of the stations. And as of today they’ve gone completely public with that intention .

Metrolinx, with the help of Avison Young, has just issued a request for proposal (RFP) for 4 sites along Eglinton Avenue in the city. Two of them are at Keele Street, one of them is at Weston Road, and the last one is at Bathurst Street. The 4 sites could generate between $14M - $22M .

The objective is to find suitable developer partners to help them build on top of their planned LRT stations. And it’s a step in exactly the right direction for Metrolinx and this city.

Image Source: Google Streetview