Butler said there’s been “severe overbuilding” in the Toronto condo market for a number of years, specifically when it comes to smaller units.
“The tiniest of tiny condos,” Butler said. “It’s weird that in a country like Canada where there’s been a consistent housing crisis for the last 10 years that if you build a very bad product, people won’t take it, it’s as simple as that.”
Butler said many of the unsold condos on the market today are ones designed for investors or real estate speculators and are not practical for most families.
“They are roughly the size of large hotel room, only meant to be rented out, and there’s been simply a massive overbuilding of non-family units,” he said, noting that many of the condos for sale in Toronto currently are 500-square-feet or less.
Thats illegal
Perhaps, but it has become so prevalent that there is no way of knowing for sure from most listings what the actual living space of a place is. I think nearly half of the listings I’ve looked at on the web in the past few months are overstating the square footage by 15% or more.
Here’s a link to one particularly obvious example where the realtor says the place is 2400 square feet. It’s nowhere near that and they are including an 800 square foot ground level patio as living space. Even without that patio space there’s no way the place is 1600 square feet.
https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/27373060/114-225-belleville-st-victoria-james-bay