Record year for condos in the GTA

This past September, 2014 officially entered the record books as the year with the most new condominium completions.

In fact, completions in the first nine months of 2014 surpassed the previous year’s record of 16,668 units.

By the end of October this year, there were 20,684 new condominiums completed across the GTA in 91 developments. And an additional 18 projects are scheduled to be completed in the next weeks before the end of 2014, bringing the estimated completions total for the year to about 25,000 units.

It’s a record-setting year that has been nearly a decade in the making.

The extraordinary condo growth is largely the result of intensification policies introduced by the province back in 2005. Places to Grow, the official growth plan that refocused building on intensification, triggered a chain of events that have been working their way through the system ever since.

Those intensification policies have created a new normal for the GTA housing market: more highrise housing and less lowrise. And condominiums are playing an increasingly important role in the overall GTA housing market, offering a steady supply of affordable homes.

Naysayers needn’t worry about all this new supply: 86 per cent of those units are currently pre-sold.

Still, some might choose to see the record-high level of completions as a harbinger of the “beginning of the end” for the GTA’s thriving housing market.

It might be more realistic to see 2014 as merely the “end of the beginning.”

Indeed, intensification policies introduced a decade ago weren’t just short-term plans. Those policies created a new normal in the housing market that affects the daily lives of the six million people who currently live, work and play in the GTA.

This region has a new reality that we’re all going to have to get used to, and that is it’s growing up — not out. George Carras is president of RealNet Canada Inc. His column appears in New in Homes and Condos the last Saturday of every month. For more information, visit realnet.ca or follow RealNet on Twitter @realnet_canada.