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| #1 top spot for a condo - in the heart of the GSM |
Montreal has not, up until now, been a big-time place for condo-high-rise living, at least compared to cities like Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary.
James' Lorimer's excellent The Developers, now about 40 years old, demonstrated that compared to Vancouver and Toronto, Montrealers tend to live in triplexes rather than high-rises. He then showed surveys indicating that this is the preference of most residents and his conclusion was that residents in those other cities were duped by developers into living in towers.
They're not making any new land, so the towers are shooting up here.
A peek at the red dots on the MLS condo-for-sale page will make your computer screen look like Jackson Pollock only had red paint left.
Here are my thoughts about condos:
The absolute best place to buy would be between Guy and Peel and Sherbrooke and Dorch (RLB), anything outside of those boundaries has to cost you less (although above Sherbrooke is fine, less so for below that hill on the south). The perfect geographical location is the Mount Royal Hotel condos. (Cours Mont Royal) because you could walk in all four directions and find some cool spots.
Also, having spent a lot of time in Griffintown, I can tell walking to downtown from there isn't much fun. It takes longer than you think, there's the hill and then there's the pigeon-dropping underpasses you've got to go under, so get a discount if you're going there and prepare to walk a lot to get downtown or even to the metro.
Don't buy a property if there's no parking spot that comes with it. Get two if you can. Parking is everything in life.
Bring a measuring tape. The square footage advertised in the documentation is almost surely bullshit and while you might not really care that much if your 900 sq ft unit is really only 860 sq ft, the next buyer might.
Only after years did condo sizes become mandatory on ads and yet they're still notoriously unreliable. So bring your tape measure. After years of agitating the square footage descriptions are now mandatory but they're still frequently untrue.
Take this ad, for example, sure this place at Mountain and Dorch is only $215,000 (in a building with condos of $1.3 million, ie: 1,300 sq ft, $1,500 per month fees and taxes) it is advertised at 534 square feet but after calculating the actual rooms as listed below, it adds up to only 456 square feet, so yeah there might be 122 square feet of hallways... but maybe not.
The condo fees seem to be clearly stated but my impression is that these things can be changed at meetings that you're probably too busy to attend, working to pay those condo fees.
There appear to be no condos with more than two bedrooms, (here's a rare exception 3 bedroomer at $429 k up the hill from Sherb) so if you plan to have a family you might consider a bungalow in Chateauguay. That might sound dull but value counts.
If this new world seems strange to you, it does to me too. My modest house has six bedrooms, three bedrooms in my house in NDG and I only paid $100,000 for this loveable dump 10 years ago, so alas those deals are gone for good it seems
That being said, while it's expensive as hell, and leaves staggering mortgage and condo/tax payments to pay each month, there's really no greater fun than living in the Golden Square Mile, so it's pretty tempting, plus you can sell the sucker later, most likely for a good sum more.
As for whether prices will continue to rise or crash when interest rates go up or if there's a condo glut.. can't answer that.. I don't know the future, sorry.
Nice article.
ReplyDeleteCondo fees will always go up and services down. Condo associations are made of megalomaniacs who have too much time on their hands and know nothing about managing a building, also know that the equipment in that gym you paid extra for will break and no one will want to pay to fix it. Same goes for the fountains, lobby furniture etc..
You don't need to know the future to see a condo glut and real estate prices crashing, only common sense and history lesson of Montreal real estate. The streets of Montreal are littered with the corpses of rags to riches and back to rags real estate tycoons. As I believe I have said here before, the scary part is when everyone and their butcher thinks they are a genius real estate investor because they made a profit on their cheaply built condo so bought 3 more. Speculators screw everything up for the rest of us. Unqualified speculators create total disasters.
Oh ya, don't pay the same price per square foot for the balcony as you pay for the livable parts.
the one you linked to is a hotel-condo, you can only live there 67 days a year... and maintenance fees of 500 a month!!!
ReplyDeleteYou couldn't GIVE me a condo downtown or anywhere else for that matter, and I have stated my opinions elsewhere in the website on this topic and of the quality of neighbourhoods in general.
ReplyDeleteWith the world still suffering economic woes and still no relief in sight, the smartest way to go for the average, middle-income person is still renting; a Montreal tradition which has stood the test of time through good times and bad. With a yearly-renwable lease, you can come and go as you please and therefore not ever be stuck trying to unload a condo in a down market or, if the quality of your neighbourhood starts to take a dive and you may be forced to sell at a loss or hang on living there longer than you would like.
Condo "developers" hold all the cards. They know the tricks and don't even have to be resident in Canada, so attempting to track them down for any potential legal reasons may prove time-consuming and problematic. These characters would love to turn Montreal into Vancouver and Toronto with their overpriced dwellings out-of-reach for most.
Anyone willing to sign up for a $200K plus condo needs to look the head guy right in the eye and not his proxy, real-estate flunky who has been trained to fast-talk buyers into committing themselves before they've done their research.
Besides, who wants to live downtown with the noise, air pollution, and crime unless you're a self-centered, party- animal reprobate with wet-dreams of bimbo-collecting, compulsively hitting the nearby bars night after night.
Raise a family in a downtown condo?! I couldn't even imagine perpetrating such an injustice on my kids, living in what would essentially be an "upscale tenement", obliging them to remain indoors most of the time or otherwise have them play in the nearby streets and laneways. Families would be much better off moving to the suburbs.
Then you will also stumble across condos and "lofts" in the most unlikely and even undesirable of locations, often on narrow tracts of land previously occupied by factories and warehouses right up against industrial parks such as along the Outremont sector of Bates Road, for example--a truly dreary and inconvenient place to live unless you don't mind using your car every time you need to visit the pharmacy, supermarket, etc. These are properties that condo developers have snapped up for next-to-nothing and then hopefully sell to the ignorant.
Sure, if you're a high-salaried lawyer or judge required to live within a reasonable distance to the court houses, owning a condo near Old Montreal and Griffintown would obviously be appropriate.
I will end my rant by pointing out that all of these "99 per-centers", pot-bangers, and spoiled, self-righteous students with their misguided parents are targetting the wrong people. Instead of blocking streets and smashing the windows of hard-working, small businesses that are suffering enough, why aren't they protesting in front of condo work-sites instead, taking these deep-pocketed "developer" magnates to task?
These azzholes with their "greed is good" mentality are seemingly "under the radar". It is they, along with the neverending parade of "media thugs" like Rupert Murdock and outrageously-overpaid "professional sports heroes" who threaten to quit their home team unless their multi-million dollar contract demands are met, who seem to be deliberately ignored and escape unscathed whenever the serious issues of our unbalanced society emerge.
Condos are a royal, imperial, czarist rip-off, both in real-estate value and (therefore) taxes. So are suburban bungalows.
ReplyDeleteGiven two identical buildings, one with condos and one with appartments, the condo will pay twice as much in taxes for exactly the same amount of services. No wonder the city is frothing at the mouth with all those condos being built!
About 5 years ago, the city built a big 4-5 story appartment complex right on top of the Jean-Talon métro station; on the signs outside, they posted the total cost for X units. The average cost per unit came to less than $45,000, and this was for a concrete building with elevator. So when you see identical low-end wooden condos sold for $300,000, you know you have a colossal rip-off, even if there is a whirlpool, granite countertops and stainless steel appliances, and it’s not a government that rips you off.
They'd sell the condos for half the price and still make a decent profit!
Then there is the question of the bungalow in Châteauguay. Sure, it’s gonna be cheaper. But you’ll need, let’s say, one extra car.
The official CAA car ownership figures say that it costs $10,000 per year to have a car, on the average.
That extra car is going to cost you a quarter million dollar over 25 years, extra money that would easily buy you a triplex with two rental units in the city. And if you manage to do it with zero cars, that’s an extra half-million dollar in your pocket. That, or you can afford to have that fantastic job that pays you less, but that is so much more interesting and fun to get up to go to in the morning.
And that quarter million does not account the time wasted in traffic, away from your loved ones!
So, when comes retirement time, who do you think is gonna be better financially? Those who squandered their money for a car in Châteauguay, or those who got a triplex in Montréal?
Speaking of raising kids, the crime rate is at the lowest in 40 years, by the way. So it is definitely not a concern when you raise kids. And in the suburbs, since you cannot go around without a car, the kids are stuck there, get bored and do drugs and/or stupid things. Then, when they hit 16, the parents have to buy them cars, because they’re getting sick and tired to taxi them all over the place to soccer practice and whatnot. And those cars are even less money in your pocket…
Growing up in the city makes kids much smarter and wiser. Look at all those moronic, socially-awkward kids, unable to function in the world. That’s the result of growing in the ’burbs.
So you also get ripped-off when you buy a house up the sticks.
I grew up in the city. When I was born, we lived in an appartment building in Snowdon. Then we went through a few duplexes near the Université de Montréal until my parents bought a triplex in Outremont (which they sold for three times the price 25 years later).
I remember my parents going to look at suburban developments on the south shore, or old houses as far as Verchères or Richelieu. Then those visits suddenly ceased.
Years later, I learned that my mother told my father "no fucking way I'm gonna raise my kids in the suburbs". She grew up in the Waste-Island, and when she was a teen, she could not go to the movies or the theater because she would have missed the last train to go home. She didn't want her kids to go through that ordeal (my father, a country hick, never knew what it is to be intellectually stimulated until he got out of his country hellhole).
No, the best way to live is in the city, where there is good transit so you can avoid the scourge of owning a car.
I totally agree that the suburbs can become very unappealing to teenagers, especially when there are no facilities for them. I have been there and done that. Of course, not all suburbs are created equal.
ReplyDeleteI should have been more specific in making my point that bringing up small children through about age 12 in a downtown condo would likely be detrimental to their health and happiness, and that the suburbs would be a safer environment for them.
After age 12, puberty sets in and they become restless, need more mobility, and unless they can indulge in interesting hobbies, they could very well end up drinking, doing drugs, and getting into all sorts of mischief from peer pressure.
Update:
ReplyDeleteCondos a risk to households, economy, etc.
See: http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/overbuilt-condo-market-poses-risk-canadian-economy-bank-144029587.html
"Bad neighbour" condo rules due for a revision.
ReplyDeleteSee:
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/condo-owners-throw-judicial-weight-neighbours-hell-200356359.html
Another condo fiasco. The inevitable abuse:
ReplyDeletehttps://ca.news.yahoo.com/condo-building-overrun-short-term-013640961.html
Is all of this condo madness finally coming to an end; to be replaced by more reasonable rental units? Let's hope so. See:
ReplyDeletehttps://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/toronto-vancouver-experiencing-rental-renaissance-appetite-condos-wanes-110058793.html
I have always wondered about the job descriptions of those who presumably have the means to purchase a condo in the first place.
How many are in fact highly-paid professionals such as doctors, lawyers, company executives, etc.? Dare I suspect that some owners may even be shady characters with ill-gotten gain? How many average Canadians can plonk down the cash for a six and seven figure condo, anyway?
Perhaps someone will research a "who's who" list of condo dwellers and that an exposé might eventually hit the headlines?