Apartments are now the dominant residential asset class in the GTA, survey finds
Oxford Properties Group has announced its plans to add apartment buildings to Yorkdale Shopping Centre and two other major commercial complexes in Toronto, in the hopes of tapping into the robust mixed-use market.
“We’re starting to go vertical,” Oxford Properties president Michael Turner told Bloomberg Quint. “I can assure you that what you see today is not what they’re going to look like over the coming decade or two.”
However, these plans for apartments adjoined to malls are still in their earliest stages. At present, construction is in progress at Mississauga’s Square One Mall, and a proposal for Toronto’s Scarborough Town Centre is under evaluation by the municipal government, Turner said.
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Condo apartments have emerged as the dominant residential asset class in the Greater Toronto Area, reaching a record high of 3,162 sales in August alone, according to a survey by the Building Industry and Land Development Association.
This level represented “the highest number of condominium apartments sold in August on record – up 35% from [August 2020’s] robust condominium apartment sales and 129% above the 10-year average,” BILD said.
Edward Jegg, analytics team leader at Altus Group, attributed this market rush to a recent boost in inventory, “as builders pumped in unprecedented levels of new supply” during that month.
