‘DOWNSIZING BUT NOT DOWN-PRICING’
HOT MARKET FOR RESALE HOMES AND A SWELL IN LUXURY CONDO OFFERINGS ARE ENCOURAGING EMPTY-NESTERS TO MAKE A MOVE
Before launching Forest Hill Private Residences in 2020, Altree Developments conducted several years worth of market research — a routine step for condo developers. But Altree president and CEO Zev Mandelbaum spent even longer doing something he calls “parent research.”
Mandelbaum started paying close attention to the property predilections of his parents and their friends a little more than a decade ago. That’s when his father, Lanterra Developments co-founder Mark Mandelbaum, ended up designing a unit for himself in one of his own towers — the 32-storey One Bedford. He and his wife had decided to sell their detached home and couldn’t find what they wanted elsewhere.
With luxury condo projects proliferating across the GTA, there’s no longer any shortage of options for well-heeled empty-nesters who are “downsizing but not down-pricing,” Mandelbaum says. “On one hand, I discovered that they all want more or less the same thing: a boutique condo unit with two bedrooms, 10-foot ceilings, an area where they can entertain in style, generous outdoor space and plenty of luxury amenities. On the other hand, they tend to ask for a lot of customizations because they want everything to be the way it was in the home they lived in for 30 or 40 years.”
This upscale approach to downsizing is gaining momentum across the GTA, given the widening price gap between detached homes and condos, and the growing number of new condo projects catering to the preferences of older residents.
According to a December 2020 market report from the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB), GTA prices for detached homes rose by 17.7 per cent yearover-year, the biggest increase in any housing category. Condos, meanwhile, experienced a 2-per cent price dip. “While the housing market as a whole recovered strongly in 2020, there was a dichotomy between the single-family market segments and the condominium apartment segment,” says Jason Mercer, TRREB chief market analyst.
In short, the GTA remains a seller’s market for single-family homes but has become a buyer’s market for condos. Real estate agents, in turn, are framing this trend as an opportunity for empty-nesters to downsize in style.
“baby-boomers are looking for reasons to downsize, and now, with real estate prices going the way they are, they have a once-ina-lifetime reason to do it,” says Transitions realty cofounder Vincent Côté. “Our message is to leverage the equity they’ve built to downsize their home early and upsize their life.”
The message appears to be resonating. Two-thirds of the buyers at Forest Hill Private residences are over the age of 55, according to Mandelbaum. Slated for completion at the south end of its leafy namesake street in 2023, the nine-storey building will be home to about 80 units ranging in size from 1,000 to 4,000 square feet and priced from $1.8 million to more than $6 million. Luxury amenities include valet parking, concierge services, temperature-controlled wine storage, and an indoor pool with adjoining wet and dry saunas. Pre-construction unit customization, meanwhile, can accommodate anything from changes to kitchen islands and bathroom vanities to the combining of several units into one.
Then there’s the rhodes, an eight-storey project now in pre-construction near the southwest corner of bathurst and eglinton. Sandwiched between Forest Hill and Cedarvale, the rhodes is catering to “a well-established community of homeowners who want to stay in the area but don’t need five bedrooms anymore,” says blackdoor development principal Noah Geist, adding that they also want “the same sense of scale” as they had in their large detached abodes.
There’s no shortage of scale in the rhodes. Averaging 1,700 square feet and starting at $1.4 million, the 25 suites feature nine-foot ceilings on the second and third floors; 10-foot ceilings on the fourth through eighth floors; floor-to-ceiling windows; and eight-foot doors throughout. Finishes are similarly generous, with custom-designed millwork, wide-plank engineered hardwood flooring and seven-inch baseboards.
even around the million-dollar mark, retirees can find family home comforts, including spare bedrooms and services geared to buyers in their golden years.
At Gairloch developments’ 1414 bayview, just south of davisville Avenue, 80 per cent of the 44 units include two or three bedrooms, nine- and 10-foot ceilings, engineered hardwood floors, custom-designed kitchen and island cabinetry, and Miele appliances.
“We’re appealing to older families who maybe have one child left in the house or have children coming back from university, and they don’t necessarily need their single-family detached home with a backyard, and all the taxes and other burdens and expenses that go along with home ownership,” says Gairloch founder and president bill Gairdner.
“Many of the folks we have coming in are older — 60, 65, 70 — and some have never been in a condo sales centre. They say, ‘This is totally foreign to me, but it’s got everything I want and it lets me stay in my neighbourhood.’”
Perhaps the biggest benefit of downsizing into a new build is avoiding the hassle of remodelling.
“downsizers prefer not to renovate,” says Cara Hirsch, a real estate consultant with Hirsch + Associates. “by buying pre-construction, empty nesters can choose how they want to live.”
This allows them to let someone else worry about getting it right — and if that someone has already done the research, all the better.