Toronto – High-Rise Capital of the World

A German research company, Emporis, which is the world's largest source of information on multi-storey buildings, provided a report in September 2011, which is summarized in Brendan Kennedy's Toronto Star article (http://bit.ly/n7iE4b) that Toronto is No. 1 in the world with 132 high-rises under construction and No. 2 in the world of competed high-rises in North America with 1,875.  New York, of course, is the runaway leader with 4,000 high-rises/skyscrapers.

Although this should come as no surprise to anyone, it is interesting that Mexico City has 88 under construction and New York City with 86.  Clearly, although much of the U.S. is virtually dead in new home construction, New York is still fairly active.

The Emporis Report does not distinguish between office and residential.  The realty, however, in Toronto is that there is very little office being constructed so that the numbers reflect substantially residential high-rise. 

Coupled with the article on October 5, 2011 in the Toronto Star by Susan Pigg (http://bit.ly/r45yqH) confirming that the new condo rental market is heating up just like the resale market, Toronto appears to have a long way to go before the high-rise construction sale boom comes to an end.

In Susan's article, she describes bidding wars on rental units with prospective tenants offering to pay rent above asking and to prepay anywhere from 6 months to 12 months, even though such prepayment is illegal.  She quotes Brad Lamb who advised that 2 years ago there was an average of 1,300 condos for rent on MLS, whereas that number has now slipped to less than 500.

Even with the new condos coming on the market, the demand for downtown living is growing day-by-day.  The trend of moving back downtown, away from the suburbs for young professionals continues unabated. 

This is all good news for the condominium development industry.