Are you having an affair with the idea of living in a condo townhouse? I have recently noticed that many of my clients are determined to live in a townhouse. The allure, of course, is to live in a house that’s newer and doesn’t require any work. It’s the house that acts like a condo. No snow shoveling required. No backyard lawn to mow. Just a great patio or rooftop terrace. Your car will even have covered parking. What more could you ask for? No wonder it seems to be the number one request from my clients, lately. The townhouse allows residents to have a house in the city close to transit.

The price range for townhouses can be anywhere from $300K+ to well over $1.5mill. The challenge is that townhouses on the cheaper end of the scale are so popular because they simply don’t come up for sale very often. According to TREB, the average days on market for a condo apartment in Toronto is 28 days whereas a condo townhouse is generally only 18 days.  The number of listings for condo apartments is over 16,000 while there are only 3,500 condo townhouses on the market since January.  Recently I’ve observed that many of the condo townhouses in prime locations are having offer dates and the sale prices are coming in 14%-21% of the asking price whereas condo apartments tend to come in under the asking price at 98% to list. 

As people get used to living and raising their families in smaller spaces, the townhouse becomes a great option as it offers the qualities they like about houses, large, spacious, access to outdoors and offers the qualities they like about condos like having the snow removal and lawn care provided for them. I can definitely see the values of condo townhouses increasing as those who currently live in condos want to move up but don’t love the idea of moving into 100 year old house which happens to be most of the housing stock of most homes in Toronto these days. Of course the challenge with creating more condo townhouses is that the land costs are high, so it’s difficult for developers to justify building more of them.

Clearly the people who live in the condo townhouses seem to enjoy them so much, they rarely come on the market so for my clients it means many bidding wars and patiently waiting for just the right one to come on the market. For those who own them, it means they have a very valuable commodity right now in the market.