If Toronto’s spring condo market has been somewhat sluggish compared with previous years, it hasn’t impacted things at Baker Real Estate Inc.
“We’re selling up a storm,” president Barbara Lawlor tells Epoch Times in an interview at the brokerage’s Bloor Street East offices. “We’re ahead of last year, in fact—and the year before that.”
Much of the momentum has been in the 905, says Lawlor, a region that is “taking its place in the GTA’s new-condo construction industry,” Vaughan and Markham in particular. “A few years ago they were bedroom communities. Not anymore.”
The 905 has become a “magic number” for a host of reasons, she points out. Most of all, real estate in the region is more affordable than downtown (up to 30 percent cheaper). And transit service in the ‘burbs’ has been improving by leaps and bounds, notably the Toronto-York-Spadina subway extension to York University (opening 2017), with stops along the way at Vaughan Metropolitan Centre (VMC).
The VMC, a new downtown for Vaughan where none existed before, will be anchored by a 100-acre mega-project developed by SmartREIT that'll include 16 million square feet of residential, office and commercial space.
