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It is not really news that condos in Canada’s downtown urban areas are often bought by young, single professionals. City councils in several cities have struggled to persuade developers to add multi-family units to their buildings. And the developers point out that families don’t want condos.

Image: Woodley Wonderworks / Flickr

The problem with marketing condos almost exclusively to young professionals is that they often don’t have enough money to buy, particularly in the priciest markets. To ensure that there are units that are affordable for these consumers, the trend has been for condos to shrink over the last few years.

“The growth is for small types of dwellings,” says Sandra Perez, of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. Although there are no direct stats for small condos, CMHC also reports that family dwellings in urban areas with more than 10,000 people have fallen to 52%. This is a drop from their 61% share in 2002. Condos, particularly the smaller types, are helping drive down the family unit’s share.

How small is small? Prior to the turn of the century, the smallest condos were generally around 600 square feet. They have since fallen to 400 square feet in Toronto and Vancouver.

Vancouver is one of the biggest testing grounds for smaller urban living in Canada. Although 400 square feet sounds unimagineably small from a North American perspective, recent immigrants from Hong Kong and other Asian markets are used to even smaller square footages. And Vancouver’s landscape and height restrictions limit the amount of land available to be developed.

As part of this trend, two Vancouver developers have unveiled “micro-lofts” which will be built in a building in the Downtown’s Eastside: the micro-lofts will be approximately 270 square feet. These units will be rentals, not condos, but they do herald a new comfort with smaller living. Twenty years ago, Vancouver’s city council refused to consider allowing 320 square foot units, calling them “coffins.”

Do these sizes sound too small? Some perspective is probably needed. Before 1950, the average size of North American homes was 900 square feet. And in the 1940s, the government’s Wartime Housing Ltd built thousands of bungalows for veterans and labourers measuring only 500 square feet. The North American obsession with bigger being better is only a very recent phenomenon, and it is one that has gone counter to demographic trends. U.S. National Association of Home Builders (no equivalent Canadian data is available) say the average home size is over 2,400 square feet – nearly three times as big as a 1950s home – despite our ever-smaller family sizes.

Smaller condos may sound unappealing, but they are actually closer to the norm of how most people in Canada have historically lived, and how people in other parts of the world do live. A small condo is not for everyone, but for the rest, it can be an affordable and enjoyable option for home ownership.

Nelson Goulart
Broker of Record with Signature Service GMAC Real Estate
www.ssgmac.ca

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