Condo News—May 2024
What can Toronto's real estate industry do to solve the city's big problem of small condos?
As the city's condo market switches from investors to end users, smaller units fall out of favour
CBC News. (abridged)
Abby Hughes
May 20, 2025
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/making-small-condos-bigger-1.7538637
Bachelor and one bedroom units in the Toronto area made up 20% of condo sales in the last quarter of 2024, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board. Bigger units, such as one bedroom plus den, two bedrooms and two bedrooms plus den, collectively made up 72% of sales.
One bedrooms are also fetching less on the rental market — the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto has dropped 5.8% year-over-year, according to data from rental unit listing site Rentals.ca, while that decline is even steeper in some other Canadian cities.
Toronto-based real estate broker John Pasalis says one-bedroom and studio spaces are the hardest to move in the current market.
"Especially very small one-bedrooms, under 550 square feet," he said. "Demand is very slow."
What can Toronto's real estate industry do to solve the city's big problem of small condos? The short answer? Nothing.
Buying two tiny units to convert them into a single unit is not practical. An owner would need to pay a lawyer and an engineer and get the condo corporation to agree to such change. Is the condo unit going to have two front doors?
Best bet is to wait. In time budget buyers will return. In the meantime, if you are going to buy a small condo, look at some designs from Hong Kong where they are masters at building furniture that gets the most use out of small spaces.
Fan coil air filters
In most condos, technicians come in to service the fan coils twice a year; once in the spring and again in the fall. I strongly recommend that you do not have them install the extremely cheap air filters that they use. Instead install replacement Merv 8 air filters yourself.
All you need to do is measure the size of your filter and buy replacements at Canadian Tire. (From my experience, they have the best prices.) I also suggest that you replace your filters every three-months, not every six-months.
Corruption
A reader of this column recently wrote me an email asking what he could do after an ex-director at his condo told him that the condo board was receiving payments. He was not told how these payments were paid. I didn’t have an answer for him.
Corruption in condos is not unknown. It can be relatively minor such as receiving a free dinner after board meetings. It can also be far more serious. At one condo in Scarborough, the three directors would sign postdated monthly cheques to pay their maintenance fees and the cheques were cashed. However, every month, the manager would give them cash payments equal to their fees. Cute.
One contractor gave a condo president a new dishwasher while the property manager had a complementary dishwasher installed in her house. A different contractor told me that he normally pays the property manager 5% of the value of the contract he is awarded.
Some condo presidents receive updated sinks and faucets, rooms painted or other work in their units at big discounts or free. The contractors make up for the costs by overcharging for work that they bill to the condo corporation.
Some condos require the owners to hire a security guard when they rent the party room. When a board member rents the room, the security company does not bill them for the guard’s hours and the manager does not bill the directors for the use of the room.
The types of corruption I described is almost undetectable. However, some board members go too far.
At a North York condo, the condo president parked his car in the visitor’s parking while he rented out his personal parking spot to someone who works at a large office building across the street. When he rented out three visitor parking spots to other office workers, some of the owners caught on.
CondoMadness has a full section on corruption. Here is the introduction:
“A full chapter section on corruption in condo and home owner associations. There is a full chapter on Manzoor Khan and Channel Property Management; to date Canada's biggest known case of condominium fraud.
Why is condo corruption so common? The answer in a nutshell? It's so easy for directors, managers and contractors to rip off condo corporations.
How do the crooks get caught? Most often a new director is elected on the board and that person spots it or a suspicious owner starts asking questions.
It appears to be rare for the auditor to bring anything to the owners' attention although if the board's books are in bad shape, the auditor will resign.
https://condomadness.info/contents-corruption.html
