Small condos won’t sell, the new land-grab era and the Home of the Week: Canadian real estate news for the week of Sept. 11

This week: No one wants to live in the smallest condos on the market, and when is it justified for the government to take your home? Plus, a house-hunt in Nova Scotia with $150,000 cash, and one property worth a look.

Market squeeze

The smallest condos are being hit hardest by the downturn

Would you live in less than 500 square feet for the right price? It’s one thing to see photos of a tiny condo and imagine your life there, but it’s another thing to actually live in one. I found that out first hand when I stayed at my friend’s 350-square-foot downtown studio during my trip to Toronto last month: The bed was also the couch, there was no room for a desk and I bumped into the drying rack every time I headed to the kitchen.

I could see why the space worked for my friend, a busy professional who works in-office nearby and visits her family in the suburbs often, but I’m not alone in my hesitation to own at any cost or size. As Shane Dingman reports, condo prices have fallen the furthest and the fastest among the smallest units – and there are few signs it’ll bottom out any time soon. Declining rents have driven renters and investors away from studio units, all but freezing the market because the potential buyers left don’t want to live in teeny quarters themselves.

But will buyers embrace small-space life if the price is right? A new Barrie development is banking on it with studios starting at $250,000. “They don’t want to live in a crappy basement apartment any more. I’m looking at it from ‘What can they afford?,’” Sean Mason, founder of home builder Sean.ca Inc., told Shane. Read more about the data and whether the days of “if you build it, they will come” are over.

Opinion

Welcome to the age of the land grab

When is it justified for the government to take your home or land against your will? Two high-profile proposed infrastructure projects – Ottawa’s Ontario-Quebec high-speed rail and Doug Ford’s attempt to expand Billy Bishop Airport – are shining the spotlight on expropriation and where we draw the line between necessity and injustice. And as Alex Bozikovic argues, with great power comes great responsibility – and great opportunity.

Expropriation is an immense state power, and has historically been used in ways we couldn’t possibly imagine happening today. In 1961, the Kaross family was kicked out of their home so the Toronto Board of Education could build a new parking lot for the high school one of the children attended. In the decades since, Alex writes, property owners’ rights have been strengthened and planners have reached a consensus that massive interventions require enormous justification.

But now the Alto high-speed rail between Quebec City and Windsor is forcing us as a society to decide whether it is a worthy project, and Alex argues, we should. “The value of cities is not merely that they concentrate people and transactions. It is that they create a shared world: places where strangers encounter one another, where ideas circulate, and where commerce emerges from proximity and exchange,” he writes. “If done right – with well-located downtown terminal stations – Alto would remake the cultural and economic geography of Canada.” Read his full feature column exploring the ethics of expropriation and what it takes to build a city.

This week’s lowest fixed and variable mortgage rates in Canada

Rates shown are the lowest available for each term/type and category (insured vs. uninsured) as of market close on Thursday, Sept. 10.

Home Run

What did $150,000 cash get a yoga teacher in Nova Scotia?

After more than a decade going to university and living in Ottawa, Samantha Kennedy’s house hunt led her back to her hometown of Berwick, N.S. The 29-year-old had saved up $150,000 working as a tantric yoga teacher and pleasure coach, and was determined to buy something on the shore of Bay of Fundy without a mortgage. “The water was the biggest thing to me,” she told Andrea Yu. “I find it very cleansing and grounding.”

But the real estate market in Berwick and nearby Canada Creek had changed in the 12 years since Kennedy moved away, and out-of-province buyers and other returning locals had driven prices up since the pandemic. She was willing to take out a mortgage to go up to $300,000 for a turnkey property, but also up for renovating a cheaper home.

So between a three-bedroom home in her hometown, a one-bedroom waterfront home or a dated two-bedroom in Canada Creek, what did she choose? See her three top options and the one that won her heart.

Design corner

12 chic and practical back-to-school essentials

Has your home already descended into chaos before the bell has rung on the first week of school? Your kids’ overflowing backpacks and dirty lunch bags may be permanent features once again, but they don’t need to be an eyesore.

From cute and easy-to-wash water bottles and containers to durable backpacks teens will actually want to wear, these back-to-school essentials will help your space feel more like a home and less like a classroom.

Home of the Week

The oldest wooden home in Nova Scotia

477 St. George St., Annapolis Royal, N.S. – Full gallery here

The owners knew this Acadian home in Annapolis Royal was special, but they didn’t realize how special until many years after they bought it. Built in 1708 for French nobleman Louis de Gannes de Falaise when the area was still under French rule, the clapboard home is a rare surviving example of Acadian architecture before the British expelled them (and the town’s lieutenant-governor Alexander Cosby took over the home in 1727). Centuries later in 2018, carbon dating the ceiling beams confirmed it is the oldest documented wooden structure in what is now Nova Scotia.

The heritage bones of the de Gannes-Cosby home, now an official National Historic Site of Canada, have been unearthed from beneath centuries of renovations, though the three-bedroom has made concessions for modern life. Late owners Pauline and Jim How spent many years restoring the home, and Jim and his son Alyn once painstakingly removed seven layers of plaster, drywall and tile to reveal the massive wooden floorboards and post-and-beam construction underneath.

Despite its enduring charm and grounds backing onto the Annapolis Royal Historic Gardens and the tidal waterway, Alyn, now a real estate agent, says it was hard to set an asking price. Finding a buyer who will preserve their father’s legacy at the “fragile” property is priceless to the siblings – and to the town as a whole. “It’s our raison-d’être down here,” said Alyn. “Without history, we wouldn’t exist.”