Here’s how parking costs can vary at new Toronto condo developments
BuzzBuzzNews
Josh Sherman
27 June 2017

A company that provides in-depth analysis of the GTA’s condo market is seeing a greater increase in the price of parking at condo projects.

Urbanation suggests that as land values continue to rise in the Greater Toronto Area, so does the cost of parking spaces at new condo projects — but like with homes, prices are varying greatly depending on location.

“Over the past year or so we are seeing more of a shift in parking costs,” Pauline Lierman, director of market research at Urbanation, tells BuzzBuzzNews.

Urbanation doesn’t track average prices for parking, but it does have project-specific data, which it provided upon request.

Nobu Residences—$80,000

At a top-end downtown Toronto project like Nobu Residences by the Madison Group, asking prices for a space have reached $80,000, she notes.

Meantime, the asking price for a spot at The Plant, a West Queen West-area development by Curated Properties and Windmill Development, is currently $50,000.

Lofthouse—$45,000

In the east end, it was $45,000 at Grid Development’s Lofthouse project, which features space-saving parking stackers.

As with home prices, the cost of parking generally declines the further away you go from the major urban centre.

“Parking fees do still tend to decline radially from the downtown core,” Lierman notes.

M City, Mississauga—$20,000

The asking price at M City in downtown Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto, ranged from $20,000 to $30,000 earlier this year when the second phase was launched.

Lierman says parking costs, while increasing, are doing so at a more-muted rate than condo prices, which were nearly up 30 per cent annually as of May.

Generally, there are far fewer parking spots than there are units at many condo projects.

In fact, it’s not uncommon for the ratio of parking spots to units to clock in at 0.3 per cent.

Recently, one developer in Toronto even proposed an 80-storey condo tower with a single parking spot — for cars, at least.

But within luxury developments downtown, a parking space for every unit is still the norm, Lierman observes. “If [buyers are] spending millions of dollars… they expect that,” she says.

For multi-million-dollar units, a second parking spot could be an extra $100,000, she estimates.

That’s almost the average price of a home in northern New Brunswick, according to the province’s real estate association.

Increasing land values partly explains the appreciation in parking spots. There’s also the fact that “excavation is incredibly expensive,” says Lierman.

Demand appears to be less of a factor in pricing downtown.

Some projects built there in the past couple of years have even had “residual,” or leftover, parking spaces at the time of completion, Lierman says.

Typically, you’d need to own a unit at a condo to buy one or more parking spaces at it, and there are sometimes limits on who can buy parking based on what size unit they own.

There’s also a sign that homebuyer attitudes towards parking may be changing in the suburbs.

“The latest Paradigm phase by Molinaro out at the Burlington GO Station is testing the waters by excluding parking for some of its smaller one-bedroom, mostly podium, units,” Lierman explains.

top  contents   chapter   previous   next