Has the market for condominiums in Burlington changed?

News 100 redBy Pepper Parr

November 25th, 2019

BURLINGTON, ON

 

Every month the Rocca Sisters produce a report on residential real estate sales in Burlington where they break out houses and condominiums data.

In their most recent issue they report the following:

Rocca combined

The trend line for condominium sales is consistent while the number of units sold moves around a bit.  The high so far for the year is 67 units with a low of 40.

For the purposes of the point we want to make – let us use 65 units per month as what can be sold.

At this point in time there are about 1500 condominium units that will come on line.  The Berkley is selling units that you can move into; same with the Paradigm. The Bridgewater, Saxony, Gallery, and the Molinaro development on Ontario Street are under construction with perhaps something coming out of the Revenue Property development that is at LPAT waiting for a decision on their 23 story request – they are already approved for 17.

CORE rendering

Can the market absorb these two developments that are side by side in the “football”?

Football - east end cropped

 

The CORE development for 27 floors, the Old Lakeshore Road (Carriage Gate people) development also looking for 27 floors and their other development on Perl (29 floors), are at the early application stage.

Simple math –  1500 divided by 65 –  suggests that it is going to take 23 months to sell those units.

There are other projects that have been put on hold.

Has the development community realized that there are limits on what a community can absorb ?

Maybe the demand isn’t what many have convinced themselves it is.

The Gallery development opposite city appears to have decided to sleep for the next while; construction on the site has come to a halt.

 

 

 

 

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3 comments to Has the market for condominiums in Burlington changed?

  • Tom Perry

    It took me less than 5 minutes to look up the status of The Gallerie at James/Brant on the City of Burlington web site. – it describes how the site needed to be leveled for the equipment to be used. The site 2 days after this article was written heavy equipment is now there. Why wouldn’t the writer go to the trouble of getting the facts before speculating it is on hold? Should be a retraction.

    Tom Perry

  • James

    Although I’m sure it was unintentional, this article is a bit misleading. The 65 units sold per month is for condo resales, which is a very different market than original sales direct with the builder which are not included in that number. And let’s not forget that resales are generally more expensive than new builds. When a builder opens up a new sales office, it’s not uncommon to sell more than that number on just the first day, let alone the first month. Regardless, looking at the stats comparing 2018 to 2019, even the condo resales are up by nearly 8.5%, which indicates increasing demand.

  • Penny Hersh

    Perhaps the demand for condos in Burlington ,as you say in your article, is not as great as the proposed builds. I have often wondered just how the growth figures have been determined.

    However, if developers can get everything in place and approved by either the City or LPAT they can do one of two things, they can sit on the property until they feel the demand is there ( there is no timeframe on when they have to start building), or sell the property with everything in place to go ahead with construction.

    It is a win/win for developers.