The Bespoke Condo…

This blog may seem a little troubling to some.. but please stick with me as I unpack the concept of 1,000 – 1,199.

Its no secret that real estate agents can have a bad reputation within the City of Toronto.. and, this blog will provide some transparency on a troubling issue of complacency within the industry.

When buying or selling real estate in the City of Toronto, its generally done on a price per square foot basis. Many components of a property are measured on a per square foot basis.. such as maintenance fee’s and value.

The maintenance fee’s are priced according to your proportionate share of a building.. say there are 20,000 sq/ft of residential space in your condominium as a total… and you own 1,000. You would own 1/20 of the building. Thus, your maintenance fee’s would be 1/20th of the buildings total budget (not exactly.. but in a sense)

So if you’re paying .74 cents per square foot for your maintenance fees, you’d imagine it would be important to know the exact square footage, right?!

Well, what if you were paying $1,000 per square foot to purchase your to-be home. Take a look at your feet.. imagine one foot squared, that’s $1,000 in our current market.

Now, imagine you were paying $1,000 for every square foot… and didn’t know how big the unit you were purchasing was.

Troubling, right?!

Listing are placed on MLS in square foot ranges.. For example, 500-599, 600-699, 700-799 and so on…

What this does is it creates an approximate size for a unit, which shifts liability to the buyer and buyers agent in the transaction.

This can be used to manipulate sales in the interests of the sellers..

If a unit is 797 sq/ft you can damn sure bet the listing agent is going to indicate that on the listing…

If a unit is 702 square feet, there is NO way they are going to put that on the listing… they will leave mystery up to the buyers. Who could think the unit is 750 sq/ft. At $1,000 per square foot, that’s an extra $48,000 in your pocket as the seller.

Is this right? I don’t think so… but until enough people make an issue about it, it’s the way it is.

As an agent you do have the resources to find the exact square footage from the MPAC (Municipal Property Assessment Corporation).

Whenever a building is registered with the city, they must register each individual unit and its legal description. This includes…. square footage!

It’s a $5 document which you can purchase through Geo Warehouse.. the document is called (Floor Area Report) and it blows my mind how many realtors don’t know this exists..

It seems like once a week I am showing someone that this exists…

Troubling , isn’t it?

Question: Have you purchased a condominium apartment in the last few years? If so, do you know the EXACT square footage of your apartment?