Debbie Cosic and her team just can’t stop selling real estate.
“We’re in a large growth mode,” the CEO and founder of In2ition Realty tells Epoch Times during an interview at the firm’s Mississauga office.
In the last two years the company has doubled its staff and expanded its operations into Western Canada, opening a brokerage in Saskatoon, and to Texas, where it’s selling homes to international buyers in Fort Worth and Dallas. “Forbes magazine rated them the number one and two places to invest in the US,” Cosic notes.
Not that In2ition needs to expand. The brokerage continues to maintain a furious pace here in the GTA, with a long list of projects on its slate this spring. “We believe 2015 will be our best year yet,” says Cosic.
It starts on the site In2ition’s office is located, Parkside Village, where builder Amacon is releasing two more buildings in the 23-building mega-project, the largest development in Mississauga and among the biggest in the entire GTA. The last launch at Parkside, PSV, competed “neck and neck” with projects in downtown Toronto, says Cosic. “That’s very rare for a suburban site.”
In2ition is releasing new product at Block 9 at Parkside this spring. Suites range from 546 square feet to 1,263 square feet, with prices starting in the mid-$200,000s. The project has proven attractive to both end users and investors; Sheridan College is just down the street, with 5,000 students “but no residences,” Cosic says.
“For us it’s been a great investors market, that’s one of the key strongholds. It’s also a great end-user market because of affordability—95 percent of our building at Block 9 is under $400,000.”
At Bayview and Sheppard, In2ition is selling Lotus Condos, an 11-storey building by Chestnut Hill Developments that’s proving “very attractive” to the Chinese community due to its prestigious address, Cosic notes. “It’s right across from the Bayview subway station and Bayview Village mall, a very upscale shopping centre.”
Lotus, with Mike Niven-designed suites ranging from 473 square feet to 1,085 square feet, and starting at $303,990, is garnering lots of end-user interest, with some buyers joining two or three suites together to create larger living spaces. “It’s for people who truly want to live there—city living at a premier level of luxury, but still affordable, not Yorkville prices.”
Across town in Etobicoke, In2ition is launching the second phase of Remington Group’s IQ, with smaller suites on offer than in the first. Units range from 456 square feet to 910 square feet, and prices start at $177,000, ideally suited for young folks looking to get a “leg up on affordability” with a starter home, or an investor who can rent the unit out and have several hundred bucks left over every month in residual income.
“That’s impossible to find in the city,” says Cosic. “You’re lucky if you break even, usually.”
Just north of Sheppard, penthouses have been released at Beacon Condos, a 35-storey tower by Sorbara Development Group at 5200 Yonge Street, with direct access via an underground walkway to North York Centre subway station. (Regular suites start at $297,000.)
In Pickering, In2ition is selling the second phase of Chestunt Hill’s San Francisco By the Bay project, with suites starting from $205,900 (another positive-cash-flow opportunity for investors, Cosic notes). Back on its home turf in Mississauga, In2ition is launching The Anchors at Lakeview, a stacked townhome community by Dunsire Developments and Fortress Real Developments on Lakeshore Road East. The development, located minutes from the Mimico GO transit station in a gentrifying area, is well-suited for anyone wanting to work in western Toronto, Cosic points out.
Loads of Low-Rise
In2ition moves condo product like no other, but it’s also selling a variety of low-rise housing developments across the GTA and beyond, including:
- Barca Verde (Mississauga): Semi-detached luxury homes backing onto a golf course
- White Cedar Estates (Guelph): Loft bungalows overlooking conservation lands
- Estates of Black Creek (Georgetown): Estate homes on two- to five-acre lots
- The Gardens at Coronation (Oakville): Detached homes on 40- to 90-foot lots; from $1.7 million
- Estates of River Oaks (Oakville): Detached homes on 50-foot lots; from $1.1 million
- Loganberry Court (Meadowvale): Large homes from $1.5 million
- The Crown (Meadowvale): 10 luxury homes next to Meadowvale Conservation Area on 60- to 70-foot lots; from $1.75 million
Expanding Footprint
That long list of projects helps to explain why In2ition brokerage has doubled in size in the past few years. And the company’s geographic footprint seems to be growing larger every day, too.
The firm is currently in Texas working with one of the Lone Star State’s largest landowners, Toronto-based A2A Capital Management, on the launch of four projects, 6,000 units total, many of them master-planned communities aimed at international investors.
And in Western Canada, In2ition’s helping Dream’s homebuilding division sell South Kensington, its first condo development in Saskatoon, with 900-square-foot units priced from $300,000.
“There’s an incredible rental market that caters to the mining community,” Cosic says, noting there are five major mines within an hour and half drive of Saskatoon but an absence of rental properties. (In that market, investors who purchase a $300,000 unit and rent it out can find themselves with as much as $600 in cash flow left over each month, according to Cosic).
Dream plans similar projects in other Western Canada urban centres like Regina, Edmonton, and Calgary. And In2ition will be there with them, having just opened a brokerage in Saskatoon, with ones in Regina and Calgary to follow.
“Western Canada is a great play for a Toronto investor looking or anyone looking to relocate,” Cosic says. “Despite oil having dipped there is still so much work and jobs available because the rest of mining—uranium, potash, gold—remains a large, robust industry.
“There’s definitely a huge market out there.”
Ryan Starr is a Toronto-based freelance journalist.
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