We stayed just about 3 months in Toronto after leaving Bermuda as there were several things we wanted to do in our apartment as well as enjoy some time there before our adventure in the Far East began. The two things that made the most impact on my psyche this time around were the extreme cold and the fact that I could see 23 construction cranes building all new tower blocks in the downtown area from our living room window. I know. I counted them. Further when I went outside to look north up Yonge Street, I could see a dozen more. All in varying stages of completion. All of massive size.
Our condo has a south east aspect towards the Beaches of Toronto with the downtown area to the south... Except that what was once an unobstructed view has become one where we will soon have a 50 stores monster block 100 yards away directly to our south which WILL block this downtown view. AND if that's not bad enough there's an 80 storey behemoth planned right next to the 72 storey Aura already in our face and a 65 storey tiddler a further couple of hundred yards away.
Enough already!
I asked our building managers how many apartments there were in our building (441) which means probably 1,000 people as residents. If our building is 46 storeys on average this means 20 people per floor. So with 23 plus 12 at least more condo monsters on the blocks of on average 60 storeys (the average is getting ever higher), that means 35 times 1,200 people in new condos in the next 2-3 years that I can see with on average a further 35 times 600 new cars in the city .... I do hope the planners are taking note and are doing something about public transport, parking, traffic control, facilities...
More to the point is I wonder who are buying all these new places and moving to Toronto and why. For sure Justin Trudeau the current PM is supposedly making it easier for immigrants to come into the country and the recently introduced 15% tax on non-residents buying property may have crimped speculative local investment, but this sounds to me that all this new build really isn't being impacted that much by the new tax (prices aren't falling). Again I asked in our building who the main current buyers are and found that they are mainland Chinese and Saudis. This is a common theme in many places and is a function of the new wealthy wanting to invest money outside their home countries.
The city is really buzzing too so I expect that this new spurt of building is warranted but for goodness sake could they please do it somewhere else. Somewhere that doesn't block our view!
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