Canada

Hire me into Canada... promise I'll be a good citizen.... I've never been military before but if you made me sign up to help deal with my fellow yanks I'll do it... Canada, if you're listening...

Everything has a price, no one wants a 500 sqft apartment because it’s probably priced higher per square foot than a 2 bedroom.

If they are glorified hotel rooms then they need to be priced as such. One person in a 500 sqft unit would always feel more cramped than two people in 1000 sqft unit, so idk what these investors were thinking.

They're not overbuilt, they're overpriced. I know plenty of people in Canada who would do perfectly well in a 500sqft condo, and I can't imagine there's a shortage of them. I had a time when it was perfectly fine for me. It's also true that such people can't usually afford the asking price and those who can (e.g. >100k/yr) usually expect a lifestyle involving more than a 500sqft home. This is just the free market forcing the prices to meet demand 🤷

The size is not the problem. It's small and expensive. It would be fine if these units were cheap and small.

500-600 square feet is plenty for one person if the layout is good.

Investors and speculators should have to eat the loss, they took the risk now take the hit.

Price them appropriately—like, less than a dollar per month per square foot rent, or maybe the cost of a used RV to own—and you might see some uptake. As things stand, I expect these are unaffordable for the people who might be able to use them.

If the idiot owners won't budge on charging too much for too little, they deserve to go bankrupt over it.

so prices are cheap with the large supply yeah?

People will rent them for the right price.

You say unsold condo, I say future student housing.

Jokes aside, this is why "build baby build" on its own is not going to solve the housing crisis.

Cool. Let the owners go into bankruptcy, then have Druggie buy the units and rent them out as affordable housing ... which is a hell of a lot better than him begging Carney for money for a fucking tunnel.

While it is a bunch of bullshit that so many were built, we should find a way to use it. People without a home don't care how small it is so these unsold condos sound like they would make great transitional housing, student housing, etc.

Recall, these units are around the $4,000 a month range, condo fees included.

It's not an 'unsold condo market', it is an 'unsold overpriced aiirbnb' hotel room' market. These units are the size of a hotel room, and only useful for short-term accommodation.

noting that many of the condos for sale in Toronto currently are 500-square-feet or less.

Holy crap, that's basically studio for single. I wonder how much they're actually selling

$5 dollas

Knock a wall down between them for a door and remove one of the kitchens, and now you have a 2 bedroom 2 bath condo with dual exits for an emergency.

If you can't move between units without going through a bedroom, make that a den or something and put a wall up in one of the 2 living rooms for the 2nd bedroom.

It might be a wonky unit, but it'd still be better than a shoebox

Same thing in Montréal, there is 3000-4000 empty condo, too small and too expensive.

If corporations don't list housing at affordable rates the government needs to repossess those properties and price them affordably.

Has it gotten to early pandemic numbers yet?

When the crisis is so extreme, legalised squatting laws help drive down prices.