It's called Condo Fever. The chief symptom is an irrational desire to dump your pleasant house with a back yard on a quiet street and buy a shoebox in the sky for twice the price.
I don't understand why a shoebox with glass walls is worth more than our entire house and our back yard
In my neighbourhood, a house goes for twice as much as a small condo. I seem to remember that Ms. Wente lives in the Beaches, which isn't exactly known for its low property values. In general, there's no such thing as a house for under $300,000 in Toronto, but you can get a condo for $200,000ish. If she's going to make these kinds of statements, she really should back them up with numbers or namedrop some neighbourhoods or something. Because from where I'm sitting, that's the complete opposite of reality.
It happens that a friend of ours is a condo lawyer. We call her the Condo Queen because she knows everything about them. One day I asked her for advice about buying a condo. "Don't do it!" she said. She herself doesn't live in a condo. She lives in a nice house with a big back yard.
Don't do it why? So you can have a backyard? What if you don't want a backyard? Or is there some other reason why a condo lawyer thinks people shouldn't buy condos? I'd like to know as I'm considering buying one myself. You can't just make a statement like this in a newspaper without elaborating!
1 comment:
Margaret Wente has a nice job. Write anything you want, never have to back it up with facts, and move on to the next topic.
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