Real estate in Canadian property hotspots such as Vancouver and Toronto is notoriously expensive, but now developers have come up with a new solution. A Toronto developer is due to start construction on tiny condos of just 300 ft.², and which come with far more affordable price tags than the average apartment in the city.
These condos are already being called "micro condos" and are quite common in major cities such as New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo. The micro condos due to be constructed in Toronto will have the starting prices in the mid $200,000 mark for just 300 ft.². This isn't the first time they've been built in the country, as a development in Surrey in British Columbia offered apartments of a similar size, but these were priced at $109,000.
Even though these condos will be minute, they've been designed to have everything the homeowner could want due to utilizing the available space in the smartest way possible. The developer has pointed out that condos in Toronto have already become smaller over the past decade due to the increase in construction costs and land costs. Although these condos may have shrunk, the interior designs didn't keep pace, something that is expected to be quite different with these micro condos. Rooms such as the bathroom and kitchen have been redesigned to use the space more effectively. Furniture packs that include items designed to have a dual purpose such as beds that fold up into the wall or double up as shelving are expected to make the most of the limited space available.
According to the article in CTV news.ca some people think these properties are overpriced. This isn't something that seems to concern the developer who is aiming these micro condos at a particular sector of the market, and who freely admits they're not for everyone. Once this development is completed it's expected that similar schemes will be built in other cities such as Ottawa and maybe Montréal.