YC Condos – Should You Invest in this Toronto Condo?
For all you readers…
Well Hi. Welcome to another True Condos video. My name is Andrew la Fleur and I’m a sales representative with RE/MAX Condos Plus and the founder of truecondos.com. What I do is I help people make money in the Toronto condo market. If that’s something you want to do you’ve come to the right place. Today I’m going to be talking about YC Condos, which is a new preconstruction development by Canderel at Yonge & College in downtown Toronto.
Should you invest in YC Condos?
The key question that this video will be answering is this; should you invest in YC Condos? Let’s get right to it. I do recommend also that you watch this video on a computer on full screen mode if possible. To answer the question of should you invest in YC Condos we’re going to be looking at a detailed overview of the project including the location, the developer of the building, the suites, and of course the investment potential.
YC Condos: Location
Let’s talk about location. YC Condos is centrally located in what I like to call the “sweet” spot for condo investors. The sweet spot is an area loosely bordered by Dundas on the South, University to the West, War to the North and Church Street to the East. This area is basically a can’t miss proposition for the condo investor. Demands for rentals as well as resales in this pocket of downtown are always through the roof. The reason for that, it’s pretty simple. There’s about 150,000 people, 150,000 people who either go to work or go to school within this area I call the sweet spot.
From Yonge & College in 15 minutes or less you can walk to two major universities, several major world renowned hospitals, Bay Street in the Financial District. You’ve got Yorkville, the Eaton Centre, Queens Park, Ontario Legislature, City Hall, you name it, and it’s all right there within a 15 minute walk. You’re right on top of the Yonge Street subway line of course, and the College streetcars so you’re very TTC connected. The Toronto Police Headquarters are also right there at Bay and College.
Eventually the Yonge & College area will be connected the underground PATH network, which will connect you to thousands of restaurants, businesses, hotels, jobs and so on. Oh yeah, one more thing, Yonge & College has a near perfect walk score. The website walkscore.com that measures how walk able your neighborhood is, a walk score of 98 at Yonge & College really means there’s no need for a car in this location; which is another reason why people love to live in the sweet spot.
Demand for housing here is so high that condos in this area command some of the highest average prices per square foot for sale and also for rent of anywhere downtown. Let’s talk about Canderel, the developer behind YC Condos.
Canderel is probably best known for building Canada’s tallest residential tower which is AURA, also known as College Park III. At 78 stories it’s almost complete and the building stands out on Toronto’s skyline now almost as much as the CN Tower. By the way, I should mention the penthouse of AURA is still available. It’s around eighteen and a half million. Please give me a call if you’re looking for something 11,000+ square feet.
YC Condos: The Developer
Canderel is no stranger to the Yonge & College corridor. Of course with AURA they’ve also built College Park I and College Park II buildings, which are both extremely popular, buildings located at Bay and College. Finally they are also well known in Toronto for their DNA buildings in King West. I personally bought a unit at DNA 3 back in 2010. Now it’s almost ready for occupancy so later this year I’m going to be starting to collect rental income from that unit, very excited about that. Again, in case you’re wondering it has gone up in value quite significantly since I purchased that unit there in 2010. I’m very happy about that.
YC Condos: The Building
Now let’s talk about the building itself. I really like the design of this tower. It’s different from just about anything else that we’ve seen in Toronto. Having a unique building like that that’s instantly recognizable I think is always good from an investment perspective. We don’t know who the retailers are that are going to be taking up the base of the building at YC Condos. That’s obviously too early, it hasn’t been announces.
Here are a few of the top quality AAA sort of tenants that Canderel has placed in their condo buildings recently. Look at AURA alone, we’ve got 180,000 square feet of retail space in the base of that building. Including they have two banks, they have a Marshalls and a Bed Bath and Beyond store, both of those stores. They also just announced the partnership with Madonna, whose going to be opening up one of her famous Hard Candy Fitness Centers inside of AURA itself.
The residents of AURA actually got a really nice surprise when they recently found out that included in their maintenance fee at no extra charge is a membership to Hard Candy Fitness. It’s actually transferable, that membership, to the next owner of the condo whenever they do sell. I was really surprised. I’ve never heard of a developer doing anything like that in Toronto. That tells you about Canderel and what they’re all about. When it comes to having top quality retailers in the condo building nobody does it better than Canderel in Toronto.
Now let’s look at the suites themselves. These are really, they’re the most efficient floor plans really that I’ve seen in a long time. Every tower unit has a bedroom with a window, so no more buried bedrooms that you see in a lot of buildings. Every unit except studios is equipped with an island that doubles as a dining table for two. Very few developers you’re seeing offering this as a standard feature. All units will have 9 foot smoothed finished ceilings, so none of this 8 foot or 8 ½ foot popcorn type ceilings; so very high quality that they’re putting out into this building.
YC Condos: The Suites
All the units have custom designed kitchens by [Birdie Felic 00:07:11] design that also includes a pantry. And the balconies, the balconies are going to be a great feature of the suites. They’re all a minimum of 5 feet deep and some of them are actually 6 foot, 6 deep. It’s basically like having a private terrace off your unit. Actually, even the Juliette balconies, what they’re done is they have double sliding glass doors that are going to open up to almost 5 feet across, which is something that you don’t see in Toronto. Usually a Juliette balcony the window or door just opens up a few inches, so a very nice touch there.
Here are a couple of renderings from inside the suite so you can see very clean, modern lines, a very classy sort of a look to the suites themselves. Here comes the most important part, the investment potential. This is my favorite part. Let’s talk about some numbers.
YC Condos: Investment Potential
This chart shows the average price per square foot of College Park I and College Park II. Two buildings also built by Canderel, so here you see a few things. First of all these buildings are not cheap. They achieve some of the highest price per square foot of any buildings downtown. Secondly, they’ve appreciated in value as you can see very consistently and very well year over year ever since they were built. College Park II is the newer building. It’s always achieved a higher price per square foot. This is true in every condo. Newer is better, new is more expensive and newer appreciates faster.
That’s something that you should always keep in mind especially if you’re a new condo investor. You might not realize that but that is the case. It stands that if that’s where College Park I and College Park II are today, then when AURA completes this year we can expect that prices at AURA will be a little bit higher than College Park II. Right, makes sense. What’s amazing to me about YC Condos is that the average price per square foot in the building is actually way down here at around $680 per square foot, roughly average.
You can buy a condo today 2014, that’s priced at basically 2010 pricing, but it’s not going to be built, it’s not going to be completed until 2018. I mean, for me this is the clearest and the easiest way to show why I strongly feel that YC Condos is going to be a fantastic investment. Here’s another chart that shows some of the resales that have taken place in College Park buildings over the last six months. One unit you can see there actually went for almost $850 per square foot. Again, this is a building that’s six, seven, eight years old at this point.
Also, here’s some numbers for recent resales the Murano and Burano buildings, also on Bay Street near College. Again, many of these units are selling well into the $700 per square foot. Now in every building I like to look for what I call the “X” factor. In a city like Toronto where we’ve got so many condos now, is there something that will set the building apart and insure that it’s going to be a highly desirable building for years to come; therefore, a great investment for years to come.
YC Condos: The “X” Factor
In YC Condos the “X” factor is very clear, at least to me. The 66th floor infinity pool overlooking the city and the lake is going to be unlike anything we’ve ever seen in Toronto. It’s truly going to be breathtaking. There’s really no other way to describe it. Apparently it’s actually going to be one of the highest rooftop infinity pools in the entire Western hemisphere. The developer has branded the pool area as AQUA-66.
It allows for… what’s really cool is it allows for everyone in the building, whether you’ve got a 250,000 square foot studio or a three bedroom, whatever it is. Everyone gets to enjoy the views that really in any other building; even that AURA down the street you’re paying a million dollars plus to enjoy the views that you’re going to be able to enjoy at AQUA-66.
The design inspiration for AQUA-66 I was told came from some of the crazy rooftop infinity pools from around the world. Some of these most expensive hotels in the world like the Ritz-Carlton here in Hong Kong or the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. You might have seen these in James Bond movies and stuff. If you buy a unit at YC Condos here’s the funny thing, apparently when you go to Marina Bay Sands, if you want to just go up and see the rooftop pool. Apparently the rumor is that you have to pay $100 U.S. just to go up and look at the pool or hang out there.
YC Condos: True Condos Seal of Approval
If you buy a unit at YC Condos you can charge your friends a hundred bucks every time they come over and ask you to show them your amazing infinity pool. To sum up YC Condos has an amazing location. It’s being built by a proven developer. It’s a very unique building with some of the best suite layouts that I’ve seen in Toronto and it’s cheaper than resale. It all adds up to me as an incredible investment opportunity, which is why I’m happy to say that I’m putting my True Condos seal of approval on this building. So definitely buy with confidence here.
Thanks for watching this video and for more information on this and any other condos in Toronto or free advice on how you can make money investing in the Toronto condo market please go to my website at truecondos.com Thanks and we’ll talk to you soon.
