lodi casino Ever-Shrinking Condos Are the Choice of Investors in Toronto and Vancouver

There is a group of Canadians who want to see house prices continue to soar: investors. A report from Statistics Canada released this week details their outsize influence on the condominium markets in Vancouver and Toronto. And it’s an influence that may now be thwarting some new construction.

ImageSmall condos have become about a third of the market in Toronto over the last eight years.Credit...Ian Willms for The New York Times

In Toronto, the study found that investors own 39 percent of all condo apartments. In Vancouver, the figure is 34 percent.

But those numbers rise drastically when you look at condos under 600 square feet in size, a growing segment of the market that previously was seen as an affordable entry point for real estate ownership among first-time buyers. About 64 percent of those cramped apartments are investor-owned in Toronto, and the similar measure for Vancouver is just over 58 percent.

“When you think about Canadian housing, especially Vancouver and Toronto, it’s become a pretty, pretty expensive game to own,” Thomas Davidoff, the director of the University of British Columbia’s Center for Urban Economics and Real Estate, told me. “Ordinary mortals, working people, can afford to rent, but they can’t afford to buy, so you get a landlord-tenant relationship.”

That rise of condo investors, in turn, has shaped the nature of condos in the two cities, the study suggests.

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