Condo madness on Lake Shore Boulevard

The first phase of Beyond the Sea, located just west of Park Lawn Road, sold out in just two days last June; it’s likely phase two’s 279 suites will be snapped up quickly. Both towers won’t be ready for another three years. In the spirit of Toronto’s seemingly insatiable appetite for real estate, a line-up for Beyond the Sea was already growing at 9:30 a.m. yesterday. It ended shortly after noon today, when the developer started handing out numbers for a first-come, first-served process. Aside from a few words from people guarding against budders, the night went by smoothly.

Alternative routes to real estate riches

As an asset class, real estate tends to play second fiddle to stocks and bonds. Apart from their homes, average Canadians are likely underexposed to bricks and mortar.
The classic route to real estate riches is to buy a second home, perhaps a condo or triplex apartment, rent it out and get your tenants to pay the mortgage on it. But this is not a highly diversified approach. It can be a problem finding good tenants, collecting rents and keeping properties maintained.

Out of town buyers love ...Toronto

It may not look like London ... yet. But more international buyers have spotted Toronto and started to snap up our luxury real estate."As expensive as our real estate is," says Elise Kalles, whose agency is affiliated with auction house Christie's international real-estate arm, Christie's Great Estates, "you could never have a two acre lot, close to downtown, with an indoor pool, tennis courts [except in Toronto]. There's nowhere else like it."

The War of the Houses

It seems designed to boost uncertainty for potential buyers, inflate housing prices (not to mention commissions) and reduce overall transparency.A hot sellers' market is partly the cause. But there seems to be more quality control and consumer protection when buying a car or a litre of milk than when making the biggest purchase in most people's lives.The way bidding wars are conducted in Toronto is at the heart of the problem. There don't appear to be any rules. In one case we were asked to re-bid because several of the offers were "similar." Similar?