CONDO COMBOS
Buyers with a budget who can’t find the space they want turn to combining units to get what they need
Like many downsizing empty nesters, when Lyle Makosky and Joy Baxter went searching for a condo in 2006 they couldn’t find one that was large enough and met their budget. Solution: buy two penthouse units in Claridge’s La Tiffani Phase One just off the Vanier Parkway and combine them. Result: spectacular.
Not only is the 20th-floor view breathtaking — it sweeps 180 degrees from Parliament Hill south to the Rideau River and then east over Vanier and all the way to the Gatineau Hills — but the 2,000-square-foot unit includes a sprawling living/dining area big enough that Makosky hived off a cosy home theatre area.
The adjoining kitchen has an island almost long enough to bowl on, there are three generous bedrooms and a home office, and the foyer, with its dropped ceiling and indirect lighting (the latter two items are upgrades), is spacious and gracious. The suite includes two good-sized balconies.
“We were going from a 2,700-square-foot single home in New Edinburgh and wanted something smaller but still large enough to have guests and a home office,” says Makosky, who is semi-retired.
“Everywhere we looked, the biggest was maybe 1,500 square feet unless you were willing to go to a 3,000-square-foot penthouse at $1.5 million.”
The couple pitched the combination idea to Claridge before construction started, the company readily agreed and Makosky drew up a detailed floor plan that, with a few minor modifications by Claridge, wound up being the home that “we love,” says Baxter.
They moved into the suite in 2010. There was no extra charge for combining the two units, for which the couple paid an early signing price of $700,000 plus upgrades.
“You’re deleting one of the kitchens and maybe plumbing for a bathroom, so by the time it’s all done, it’s a wash,” says Claridge vice-president Shawn Malhotra.
He says there are only one or two requests per building for combined suites because so far the lower price of smaller condos has been driving the market.
However, as more boomers make the shift from spacious suburban homes to condos, he foresees a growing market for units over 1,400 square feet.
At Domicile, senior vicepresident David Chick says, “We’ve experienced demand for bigger units. People are looking around town and not seeing the sizes they want. But does that mean there’s a whole new demand at that price point? I don’t know.”
Domicile’s The Kavanaugh, planned for Beechwood Avenue, offers selected units that can be combined.
The company anticipated demand for bigger units because the project is drawing buyers from large homes in Rockcliffe Park and surrounding areas, says company president John Doran.
Designing units for potential combination requires a bit of extra planning so that, for example, a blended suite doesn’t have a structural post in the middle of the living room, he says. However, that’s preferable to building bigger units in anticipation of market demand because “If you’re wrong, then you have (larger) products just sitting on the shelf.”
Sue and Shaun Hopkins combined two units in another Domicile project, Norfolk at Merrion Square on the edge of Little Italy. They’ve lived there since 2010.
“We were coming from a singlefamily home,” says Sue, “and we had two kids away at university. We’d heard stories about people buying a small unit and then having no room when the kids came home for holidays.
“We looked at penthouses, but we still would have had to reconfigure them to get what we needed.”
The couple combined a 1,220- and a 782-square-foot unit to give them just over 2,000 square feet, including three bathrooms, three bedrooms and an office for their homebased business.
However, they kept the two units as semi-discrete apartments joined by double french doors. “We call them the east wing and the west wing,” says Sue.
The smaller apartment is the children’s/guest area with Murphy beds and includes a mini-kitchen (the cupboards provide storage for office supplies).
By joining the units this way, the couple can easily convert the suite back into two smaller condos should they ever decide to sell one or both.
“It’s worked out really well,” says Sue. “Both the units face the Gatineau (Hills), and we got two parking spots and three storage lockers.”
Hélène Charlebois has yet to see her combined unit at Cathedral Hill, a Windmill Development Group project now being built on Sparks Street overlooking LeBreton Flats. She and her husband, who are downsizing from a 3,600-square-foot home, expect to move into their 10th-floor, 1,800-square-foot condo in 2014.
“Planning it was a lot of fun,” says Charlebois, a nutrition and wellness consultant. “You’ve got these two kitchens and all these bathrooms that you’ve got to figure out.
“We have two balconies, and the suite is all windows so we’ll see the sunrise and the sunset. The big thing in condos is getting enough light, so we went with all sliding, frosted glass doors inside.”
Windmill’s managing partner, Jonathan Westeinde, says the company is also seeing some demand for combined units at The Eddy, its project in Hintonburg.
However, in Toronto, where Windmill is also building, “It’s the reverse, with bigger units getting smaller,” he says.
“We always design for a market mix of one and two bedrooms plus a den, but there will always be three or four per cent of the market that wants something bigger. They feel they’re controlling their destiny a bit more than just buying something off the shelf.”
Other builders including Urbandale (99 Parkdale) and Tega Homes (Rhombus Tower) offer combination units in their newly launched projects. Both report healthy uptake, with Urbandale — which offers double and triple combinations — getting almost as much interest in combination as in single units.
“(That’s) not too surprising since this is a higher end condo, with generally more affluent customers,” Urbandale general manager Matthew Sachs says in an email.
Not all builders report such demand for them, however. Ashcroft Homes and Richcraft, for instance, report little interest from buyers although both have done a scattering of combination suites over the years. Minto, on the other hand, earlier this year responded to buyer demand for larger units by adding nine combined units to its already-launched UpperWest condo tower in Westboro as well as adding other combination options in the building.
Because of similar buyer demand at its Minto@lansdowne project, the company has also increased combination possibilities at its Beechwood Avenue condo site, according to senior vice-president Brent Strachan.
Ross Baylin and his wife have taken advantage of the combination option at UpperWest. The couple, downsizing from a 4,200-squarefoot home, originally bought a 1,300-square-foot unit.
However, they subsequently decided they wanted something bigger. They had passed the “cooling off” period during which they could back out of the original purchase, but Minto accommodated their wishes by selling them instead a combination 1,650-square-foot suite with almost 1,000 square feet of outdoor terrace.
Deciding on the right sized condo, especially when you’re downsizing, is tricky, says Baylin.
He suggests measuring every room in your existing home to help you visualize how the new space will compare.
Makes sense. After all, “You’re buying off a drawing.”