Immigration: Gut Instinct

Rsquo Dept: The property is still for sale, but it no longer comes with an actual condo. Before a single brick was in place, the developer gave up and decided to try a different approach. For $599,000, a prospective buyer now gets blueprints, a stack of planning approvals and a list of local builders who can finish the project on the cheap, according to Globe And Mail. Following a spring marked by record sales and prices, growing evidence suggests that the air is finally beginning to go out of Toronto’s remarkably resilient condo market. The debate in real estate circles is now this: is it a temporary lull or the harbinger of a more serious decline and for $1.8-million, the new owner could walk into a brand new, 1,800-square-foot condo designed to her specifications. That was the idea, anyway. But the listing in prime Rosedale hit the market in February, just as sales were beginning to slow for real estate of all kinds, and no one was interested in the unit its agent has dubbed “Project Perch.” “My gut instinct tells me the condo market is skewered right now,” said Paul Johnston of Right At Home Realty Brokerage, the listing agent on the project. “It’s been a hell of a year. At the beginning, we finally had buyers after a year of banging our heads on the wall looking for them. But I think this year’s deals have already been done.” As reported in the news.
@t condo market, paul johnston