After a sluggish 2020 spent in the shadow of a red-hot single-family housing market, Toronto condos are now making a serious comeback. A million-dollar sale that took place in Toronto’s Entertainment District this week has made that point abundantly clear.
On Wednesday, Unit 3504 at 8 Charlotte Street sold slightly under its $1,025,000 asking price for $1,015,000. Although a condo selling in the million-dollar range isn’t uncommon, the sale of this particular one-bedroom condo suite listed by PSR Brokerage is a defining moment for the market, explains Andrew la Fleur, a sales representative with RE/MAX Condos Plus who tweeted about the sale.
“Selling a one bedroom condo for over $1 million is a significant moment in the history of the Toronto condo market,” la Fleur told Livabl. “While there’s nothing special about the price per se, it’s more about the psychological barrier of a buyer willing to pay over $1 million, or seven figures, for a condo that only has one bedroom.”
La Fleur explains that just a few years ago, it would be extremely rare for any condo in the city to sell over the $1 million price point. Traditionally, a seven-figure sold price was reserved for luxury buildings and suites bought and sold in neighbourhoods like Yorkville, he said. According to market data available on Redfin, the unit was last sold in December 2018 for $875,000, $36,000 over its asking price at the time of $839,000.
“The price per square foot of over $1,300 is pretty high, but actually nothing too crazy,” la Fleur said. “We certainly have seen units selling at a higher price per square foot, but it’s more just about that psychological barrier of $1 million being broken for a one-bedroom unit in a non-luxury building.”
In its latest market report, the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) highlighted the continued sales growth that the city’s condo segment has been recording starting in late 2020. In February, the condominium apartment segment posted a 63 percent annual increase in sales within the ‘416’ region. While condo prices in Toronto’s core were down 6.4 percent year-over-year last month, soaring sales and tighter supply could push prices up in the second half of 2021.
“[I]f we continue to see growth in condo sales outstrip growth in new condo listings in Toronto, renewed price growth in this market segment is a distinct possibility in the second half of the year,” said Jason Mercer, TRREB’s Chief Market Analyst, in the most recent market report.
With so much pent-up demand for downtown condo units at the moment, la Fleur predicts that we’ll see a lot more one-bedroom units sell over the $1 million mark within the next three to six months.
“[T]he buyer of this unit will probably be very happy with the price that they paid in just a very short period of time,” he said.
