Costas Kiveloso: So good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for inviting me into your homes, your cars or whether you’re going for a walk and you’re listening to me on Bluetooth. My name is Costas Kiveloso, and I work for Right at Home Realty. We are the largest per transaction brokerage in the GTA for the past six years. We have about 5,200 agents. And at the brokerage, I handle the vast majority of the pre-construction. And I have been essentially mentoring other fellow agents over the past few years, teaching them about pre con, answering their questions, basically telling them the ins and outs of the industry, and how it is different from resale.
So before we start, I’d like to tell everybody that the thoughts and comments that are expressed during this presentation are mine and First Access Condos’, and they are not those of my brokerage. So that being said, we’re going to start off with a brief introduction onto what we’re talking about today. I would like to start off with why everyone talks about real estate in Toronto. Why our market has increased. Why our property values have gone up the past few years. Why we have become a major player in the global real estate industry. And if it wasn’t for that, we wouldn’t need to talk about the effects of the pandemic on us because it wouldn’t be on everybody’s mind.
So basically, the past few years, I think there’s about five or six, even seven, what we’ve seen as we’ve seen a major population increase in Toronto, immigration to the city has exploded. We are the number one destination point in North America. I think it was 2018, we had 96,000 people move to Toronto, the city proper, and 137,000 moved to the GTA. We were number one for city. We were number two shy by 1,000, I think, compared to Dallas, Fort Worth. A thousand people is just safe to say we’re the number one destination point in North America.
So why is that important? We used to hear a lot from people and people would say that our housing market is a bubble, that it is blown up. It is inflated. It is based on speculation. That it was ready to burst at any time. I remember people reading a blog, I think by his name, his last name was Turner called the greater fool. And every month, they were saying in the next six months, the bottom was going to fall out, the sky was falling. It was the end of the world as we know it, and our real estate market would lose 50% of its value. Well, that hasn’t happened and it’s not going to happen. Because the truth of the matter is we do not have a bubble. We never have. We are supply and demand. When you have that many people moving to a city every year, a huge shortage is created. So essentially, the demand has far outgrown the supply, and that is why prices have gone up. It is fundamental economics. And because of that we are one of the safest places to invest your money on the planet. That’s why we saw a lot of international investment not even close to the amounts that we saw in Vancouver. And that’s why the foreign buyers tax had little to no effect on our market. I said it. That’s the truth. Okay.
You’ve also heard people tell storeys that they know someone whose neighbour never lived in their house or there’s towers and they’re all dark at night because they’re owned by international buyers. And that’s why we have such a rental shortage. That is also nonsense. The percentage of foreign buyers here in Toronto is relatively small compared to the units sold, and that is not the case.
So, our market is fuelled by supply and demand. We cannot build them fast enough. I think it was last year, RBC said we’re short 24,000 units every year, CMHC said we were short 32. And again, if my numbers are off by 1,000 or 2 , you don’t need to tell me, you don’t need to correct me. I’ll take your word for it. I’m not Googling right now. You can. But we’re here to basically get an understanding of stuff. And you can basically see if one is saying 24,000 or one sayings 32, if you take the average, we’re at 28,000. That’s 28,000 units short. We can only as a city bring to market 15 to 20,000 new units a year. That means we’re short an additional 24,000, 28,000, 32,000 units compared to what you say. So even if migration has halted and we do not have new people coming to the city for the next six months, then it’s still not going to dent the shortage that we have of units. And that’s the truth of the matter. So real estate is still a very sound investment.
Pre-construction, especially, has outperformed every aspect of real estate for the past five years. Later on in the seminar, we’re going to show you actual returns experience by people that we know, where their down payment of 20% has brought them a 306% return over the course of four to five years. That is unbeatable, no matter where you’re investing.
So let’s talk about the elephant in every room currently. COVID-19 pandemic. But before we get into that, let’s talk about what started off the year for the global economy and its effect, and then how it led into the pandemic. So last year, there was a lot of rumours and a lot of talk from a lot of educated people that 2020 was going to be the year that the world went into another global recession. There was questions as, will it be a depression as 2008 was or will it be a recession? The fundamental difference is a recession is two quarters of negative or zero economic growth, and a depression is prolonged. 2008 was actually a depression. It didn’t feel like a depression, when in fact, it was actually comparable to the Depression of the ’20s. The reason it didn’t feel like a depression is because of where we were living. Toronto was very well insulated from the storm.
Now, first they said we’re going to get into a recession. We started off falling into a recession. And then out of the blue, we had an oil war between Saudi Arabia, the world’s number one producer, and Russia, who is still a very big player on that block. So I’m not going to go into details what they were arguing about. But the fact of the matter was that Saudi Arabia decided to flood the market with oil because they can. And what that did, it tanked the price of oil. So first, we had extreme volatility in our markets from the recession on the global economy, followed by a second punch from the oil war, which tanked the price of oil, and in one way or another, everything has some relation to do with oil. So that tanked the markets again. A lot of people were losing a lot of money. A lot of uncertainty was created. And then out of the blue, but not really out of the blue, because the World Health Organization declared that there was a virus in China on New Year’s Eve 2019 and that the world should prepare for. But when this finally spread its tentacles across the globe, it was actually closer to end of February, March. That’s when we started cancelling our vacations. That’s when people started second guessing things. And then it was a domino effect. And next thing you know, there’s no toilet paper, which I don’t understand why everybody’s hoarding on toilet paper when it’s not a stomach bug. It’s a respiratory illness.
Anyways, so now we have COVID-19, the pandemic. And what is it really? And I’m not going to go into scientific details. I’ve spoken to a lot of doctors about this. I’ve spoken to medical professionals. I’ve spoken to police officers. I’ve spoken to a few paramedics, so I’m really, really well-versed on this. And what it is, it’s a respiratory illness. We have them all the time. The difference is that with COVID-19, people can be contagious when they’re asymptomatic as we all know, because it’s all over the media. So that means I could have it, you could have it, our neighbour can have it, that person walking on the other side of the street could have it. But the difference is, those people and us might not be showing any systems but yet we are still spreading the virus. And that’s what has the world really scared. Now, the vast majority of the population probably has this because there’s no way to test everybody. The only reason our numbers are going up is because they’re testing more people. So a lot of us already have it. But over 90% of the people I’ve heard that have it will show no symptoms. So that’s where it becomes a very tricky issue. And to wrap our head around it, and that’s why we’re self-isolating. That’s why we’re staying home. That’s why we should all wear masks when we leave our house and come in contact with others. They’re starting to preach that all over the globe.
So what is happening is you’re finally hearing that what they’ve been doing in Asia, and everybody has been wearing masks, is finally the way to go. Now that’s illogical. If I may have something and not know that I have it, to stop me from spreading it, I should cover up the potential way to spread it, which is through spit, coughing, sneezing. It is very hard to get it in through your eyes. One of the smartest people I’ve ever met, a doctor that I’m very good friends with, he explained to me you basically have to vomit in somebody’s eyes to get it. So you don’t have to walk around with ski goggles but you do need to cover your face up. Now masks are ridiculously priced and our friends to the south, who are not really our friends, and I’ve been saying that for years, and people should get it through their thick heads. The Americans are Americans, and we are Canadian. And we’re neighbours but we’re not best friends. And that was proven when Donald Trump just told 3M not to send us any more and N95 masks. And 3M stood up to him because it is a humanitarian issue. So I’m happy that we’re not childish like they are, and that our government has forbid nurses from going into Detroit from Windsor, because then their hospital system would crash. So at least we’re more mature than there. But we should all be wearing masks. And if you take anything about COVID-19 and how to protect yourself and your neighbours from my presentation is that cover your mouth up and your nose when you exit and go into public places with other people. I don’t think you really need to wear it when you’re walking through a park as long as you’re practicing social distancing. But I do believe if you’re in an elevator, if you live in a condo, if you’re going into a store, anywhere like that, cover up.
Now, how long is this quarantine going to last for? Now looking at other places of the world, what you can really do in life, and I’m a firm believer in this, is that to really know your future, you need to look at your history. And we don’t need to really go too far back. We will talk about SARS shortly. But we don’t need to go too far back. But if we go a couple months and see what China did, and see what North Korea — sorry, South Korea. South Korea is really the mandate of where we should try to aim for on how they dealt with this. Well, what they did was they quickly locked it down. They quickly realized who was infected, almost it’s something similar to an Amber Alert and told everybody who was infected so that anybody who’d come into contact would go get tested. They would throw privacy laws out the window, which really don’t have any play at times like this, and find out where people went from their credit card bills, and also from the GPS on their phone. And they would shut places down and sanitize them immediately. So because of that, they not only flatten the curb, but they were on a bullet train to disaster and they tackle that head on.
So how long is our quarantine going to last? If our quarantine was done properly, we could have been done a lot sooner. But because it’s gone out in series of stages, and it was really delayed, and we were letting people fly into our country without even checking their temperature up until recently, we’re probably going to be on lockdown until the end of June, if not September. So everybody brace yourselves, this is going to be a long haul, but I think it does need to be done. And we can’t really cry over spilt milk and complain that we didn’t do it properly because it is it is what it is. And we’re living in the world, we have to deal with it.
Now, because our economy has slowed down, it hasn’t halted, a lot of people are working from home. And we really need to realize how the economy of Toronto has transitioned and changed over the last few years. So the vast majority of people are working from home, nowhere did anyone think that so many people could work for home. We are going to see some catastrophe in the service industry, in mom and pop shops that don’t have online aspects to their business, in restaurants, in bars. And I think it’s time for landlords and tenants to actually sit down and try to find a happy medium. Landlords shouldn’t lose their property because they can’t afford their mortgage. And tenants shouldn’t lose their business because they can’t afford the rent. So what the government really needs to find is a way to alleviate that problem. They’ve already deferred property tax payments, which is a great step.
Now, what’s going to happen to our economy? There was a lot of talk about the recession, and going back to that, what I do is I bounce around a lot in these presentations. I give seminars quarterly to the majority of my brokerage and branches. So because of this current situation that we’re in, I had to do this online, then I can speak to the vast majority of you, who I might have got a chance to present to or not. The economists were saying is the recession this year going to be a crash or pause? And now with the pandemic that’s happening, a lot of people are worried that it’s going to be a crash. My research, and my beliefs, and the way I view things is that we have pressed the all-powerful pause button. I do not see a crash coming. I do not think balance sheets are going to get torn up as they did in 2008. And there’s various reasons for this. And let me start with a brief history about two events that were similar. Not the same, because this is a unique situation, but similar.
Back in the early 2000s, we had the SARS epidemic, and it didn’t hit the vast majority of the world on a scale anywhere near as much as Corona. But it did affect Toronto because we were actually people who warned not to come here. There was a travel advisory against us. And what we saw is when SARS actually came into full effect and we were bearing the brunt of it, there was a drop in our residential real estate prices of about 10%. And this lasted for about three to four months. And then what we saw after that was prices not only bounced back but they surpassed the original levels. So what that is causing the economy, it’s called the V effector. V for victory, right? So you start somewhere, and then there’s a sudden drop, and then just as fast as it dropped, it picked up again.
Now, the longer you are in the downward turn or downward duration is the longer it takes to pick up. That’s why it’s a balance. So if we go to about the end of June, then we’re going to see our market realistically pick up by September. Now, you’re going to see later in this presentation, because we are filled with stats, my partner, she’s done a lot of research on this, and we were filled with stats on what was going to happen to her real estate market this year if it wasn’t for this pandemic pressing pause. So we have the SARS epidemic, which showed us that our real estate market and our city could actually weather the storm and bounce back fairly quickly.
Now, another thing we need to look at is the depression of 2008. And I have made it a point that it was a depression and not a recession. And this is globally. But Toronto and Canada, specially, our banking system was very sound to begin with. What the conservatives — and whether you like them, and I’m not going to get political and bipartisan, partisan story on this — but you have to give credit where credit is due, and for the economy, they were the people that needed to be in power at that point. What they did is they not only weathered the storm, but they didn’t just be complacent after that, they put safeguards and modified our banking system and policy so that we would be able to weather a more severe storm. And that is why we were ready for this recession without even knowing the vast majority of us what was going to happen.
Now, is any country really ready for the effects of a global pandemic when the global market has essentially shut down and travel? No, that’s a simple answer. But are there places that are better prepared than others? Yes. And we are one such place. We are the jewel in Canada’s crown here in Toronto. But Toronto in general, out of the G7 Nations, has the lowest debt levels in comparison to GDP. So essentially, we have carte blanche to borrow as much money as we need to weather the storm and help everybody out. And there’s nobody better than the liberals than borrowing money and giving it out. So actually, it’s good that they’re in power right now because they are helping people with grants, and they’re going to give new ones every few weeks, I’m assuming. So our government is supporting us, our banking system is ready to handle this, the country can handle the new debt load. So we actually are guaranteed that this will be a recession and only a depression if we are stuck in this for more than two quarters. And hopefully we’re not, because even the long term forecast is to be out and about and back out to play by September. So it sounds like we’re going to be good.
Now, how was our economy prepared for 2008? The Financial Post had a great article. And what they were basically saying was how the government prepared for. So we do have these articles that we can send out later if you guys ask, but basically, that’s where I started. My research found it, about how we prepared and dealt with it. And then we even increased our safeguards for the future. So we have that as one aspect as to why we are going to bounce back. Second is the Toronto Star came out with a great article and talked about how our economy over the past, which I just mentioned, bounces back in a V effect. Now, what everybody needs to remember, the duration that we are on lockdown, the amount of time that takes, it’ll take a very similar amount of time to bounce back.
Now, there is a lot of research and stats from 2019 into the start of 2020, showing that our real estate market was ready to hit record levels this year, resale was going to bounce back, pre-construction has never really slowed down. 2018 was a significant slowdown from 2017 in pre-con, but 2017 was the greatest year on record. And 2018, I still think was number three or four all time. So even though it was lower than 2017, it was still a fantastic year. So the real estate market was ready to bounce back and that’s why I say it’s a pause because these people that were ready to buy houses or ready to invest, they still have most of the money to invest and are still ready. Because remember, the vast majority of us are still working from home.
Number three, immigration will surpass record levels. Now, I’m a firm believer that while the rest of the world has entered a serious depression because of this, we will bounce back as one of the first. We will bounce back sooner faster than the vast majority of the world. That being said, we will have demand for jobs just like we did before the depression. People come here in droves for work. 96,000 people come from other countries, 18,000 a year interprovincially. These people come here for one reason, because there is work here. Now, when our economy bounces back and the demand for workers is there again, the migration that was at 96,000, I see a jumping up, if allowed, and the government’s increasing our immigration numbers, I don’t see anybody being surprised if we hit 150,000 new people here at Toronto. When you add the shadow part of this market and real estate, which are the people that are moving out from their parents’ houses in their 20s, older people that are deciding to smart size and realize they don’t need all that square footage, and other aspects of the market, then you’re going to see that our housing shortage is actually going to be a lot more severe than it was in the past — supply and demand, people. Remember what I said, our supply cannot match demand prices go up.
Now, what we also need to think about is this. If we’re bringing 15 to 18 or 20,000 new units a year, majority of this construction has also slowed down during this crisis. So we were scheduled to bring to market this year a record 25,000 units, if I’m not mistaken. This was going to be the first year we ever delivered so many. Even if 20% of those get delayed until next year, we have 20,000 units. We have a huge shortage again. If we get 150,000 people coming here next year as opposed to 100, because it’s just pent up, and then it’s going to run rampant, the amount of people trying to come here, then what we’re going to see is the shortage increases. The price will increase.
People like to say that now’s not a good time to buy real estate. The only good time to buy real estate is today. Real estate will always be more expensive later on than it is at present. And that’s the truth because of our supply and demand issue.
Now, what do I believe is going to happen to our real estate market? I believe, as I’ve said, and I’ll repeat it throughout this presentation, that we have pressed pause. I’m a firm believer in this. I think that if you can afford to buy now when you have job security than you should, I think that if you are going to sell your house, it’s also not a bad time to list. It’s just going to be a modified version. There’s still buyers out there. But if you can wait, why don’t you wait a little bit. It’s not a bad time, but there would be better times. And I think that what we need to do is we need to — and I’m going to go a little bit of history here in 2017 — we need to remember what actually slowed our resale market. It cooled it. It didn’t crash it, but it cooled our market in 2017. I believe, and this is again, myself, not my brokerage — and I will argue this point with anybody but not at this time, if we ever cross paths — but I believe in 2017, the media had, for years, told the population that our market was inflated and it was a bubble, and I talked about it at the start, and that it was only a matter of time till it burst.
Now, you have to remember when it comes to the media, the media’s number one goal isn’t really to educate the public. It’s supposed to be but it’s not. It’s more to find storeys that will attract people’s attention and make them watch, and sensationalization of news does that. So anytime they find something that they think will attract viewers or an audience, they jump all over it, and stats can be twisted in can be construed. So the media started saying now is the time, now is the markets going to crash. And what happened was people that were on the fence about selling all decided to start calling their real estate agents at the same time.
Now, during the bidding wars, there was a misconception amongst the general population that realtors were making a lot of money. That is the farthest thing from the truth. When you hear 20 offers on the house, that means 19 realtors work their butts off and only one got paid. So the reality of the matter was while it appeared that realtors were making money, the majority of them were starving. So when they finally got the phone call from their client to list a house, what they did was, instead of seeing how many other houses have been listed in the area and saying, “Maybe we should let these sell first,” too many realtors said yes because they needed the money and put houses on the market. And I apologize to the realtors out there but that is the truth. The market was flooded with supply. And when you flood a market with supply, prices drop. And then when people start seeing prices dropping, a panic starts happening, and then more people start listing their houses. And all of a sudden we’re sliding down the slippery slope.
So when we all come back to play and we’re all out, please be conscious of how and when you’re listing your property. Okay? Just because your neighbour is listing it doesn’t mean it’s the best time to list your house. You might want to let that go. Be strategic about this. The vast majority of Torontonians, their home is their number one investment of their life. Treat it as such. And your investment properties, they’re number two, number three, or together if you have a portfolio, this is basically your nest egg of money. Our city is blessed to have the real estate market created by the people than the amount of people wanting to come here. Take advantage of it.
So what we’re going to do now is we’re going to get into our presentation. I see a lot of people asking questions. We cannot answer all of them, because we have hundreds of people signed up for this. But what we’re going to do and my partner Hannah is, if she feels that a question would benefit the vast majority of you, she’ll point it out to me. She’s also answering some questions as we go along. And if I look over and I see something, I will love to talk about it, too.
Oh, there’s one question there from Elizabeth. I’m going to answer this quickly because this is a misconception. It says, “Moving on, can you talk about pre-construction condos and 5% down?” I would love to. Everybody needs 20% down to qualify for a mortgage on a pre-construction property. When a developer is offering 5% down, they’re not really offering 5% down. They’re offering 5% down until registration. At that time, if it’s not your principal residence, you will have to put an additional 15% down because CMHC does not insure investment properties. So if it’s not a principal residence, there is never 5% down from you. It is always 20. And when a developer offers 5% down, it means that they have raised the price already multiple times, more often than not, by the time you get that offer. So there is nothing free in this world, and there’s nothing free in pre-construction. So if you think you’re getting a deal, you probably are not. And you won’t know this until you go to list your property and somebody that has bought through myself or someone like myself lists the same unit for $40,000 less if not more, and your client or you are wondering how the heck can they do that. And then you’ll find out the hard way. So if you think you’re getting something for 5% down, you’re really not. And if you think you’re getting extra incentives, you’re really not. If you’re not buying in the first round, you’re not getting a deal. So that is why we’re called First Access Condos. The only time you should buy a condo, the vast majority of the times is first round — prices are the lowest, and the inventory is the greatest, and that’s when you have real incentives.
So now we’re going to slide into our slides. And we’re going to get into the introduction about pre-construction. So like I said, I am basically the mentor at my brokerage. And on my seminars, they’re quarterly. And the reason they’re quarterly is because we talk about new projects that are about to come out. And then I also start off with an introduction into pre-construction. This industry is something that eludes most realtors that have not really immersed themselves in it. It is not the same as resale. There’s different ways to do things, substantially different, but it does offer clients the ability to make a lot of money.
So why purchase pre-construction? People purchase pre-construction for different reasons. But in my opinion, the number one reason, it’s the best way to purchase an investment property with the least amount of effort. Pre-construction has different ways of doing things than resale. Resale, when you take possession of a property. When you close a deal, you have to put your whole down payment down. You also have to get your mortgage. And if it’s an investment, you also have to take on being a landlord. Well, pre-construction doesn’t work that way. Pre-construction, you sign a contract, usually put $5,000 or $10,000 down at signing. And then 30 days later, you do a balance to 5%, and then 180 days, 365 days, 540 days, you put additional 5% down. So what you have is you have your deposit spread out over time. It makes it a lot easier for people to absorb those payments than to pay them all at once. And the vast majority of the money that you see — people are saying there’s no sound.
Sorry, people, there was a couple messages that there was no sound. The people that do not have sound, it’s because they have not enabled their audio. I was trying to be techie. And those of you that know me, know I’m the farthest thing from. So there was a little bit of confusion. We’re trying to have multiple people work on this.
So what we were talking about was the down payment structure. It’s very easy for people to absorb spread out payments than 20% down, because with the average price of a condo now in Toronto, the price per square foot is around 1,300, or almost at 1,000 in the suburbs. If you’re going to a 500 sq. ft. unit, that’s 650,000 purchase price. You’re looking at about $130,000 down. So if you divide that over four payments, it’s a lot easier to absorb.
So also, you don’t need a mortgage for the course of five years. So you pre-qualify now. You don’t need a mortgage for five years. Pre-approval doesn’t go anywhere. So if you’re buying other properties, it doesn’t affect your service ratios, your debt ratios, and you can still qualify. You also don’t need to be a landlord. And being a landlord is not glamorous. And being a landlord will not make you rich. Being a landlord actually will probably make you no money if you invest in pre-construction from now on, unless you buy a 3 bedroom. And we can talk about that later. But it’s really a no-brainer, no effort type of investment, which will make you the most money. And we’ll get into that.
How does an investor make money from their purchase? An investor makes money from capital appreciation. So what happens is when we buy a unit in a pre-construction phase, we are paying a little bit more money than the resale in the area. But basically, there is some speculation involved that we believe that the price per square foot will increase by the time it’s built, and then by the time it’s registered. And given our population and the way that is increasing based on supply and demand, that is almost a guarantee. So again, nobody has a crystal ball. I could not predict there was a pandemic. I could not predict how the world would react to it. But what I can predict is when this is done, our economy will bounce back, and our real estate market will bounce back. And that is I bet against it, sorry, bet for it.
So why purchase pre-con over resale? I purchase pre-con over resale for the reasons I just told you — that you can spread out your down payments, you don’t have to be a landlord. And the thing with being a landlord is there are horror storeys about these 10 nightmare tenants. The vast majority of tenants are not like that. But if you do get a difficult tenant, then it can set you back. So never really look to be making a lot of money from the landlord and the rental aspect of your unit. If you cover your costs, then you’re in a good position. And a lot of us, a lot of people that actually invest in this, if they have a bit of a loss, it might actually help them come tax time. All right.
How do you use your original purchase to buy new units leveraging? So what we’ve seen, and these are real life examples from the past few years, is we’ve seen a significant increase in equity of these pre-construction units by the time they register. So what happens is, you buy something today, four years down the road, you get your keys. Around six months after that, you get registered, which means you need a mortgage. So there are mortgage brokers out there — and I’m not a mortgage broker, so I’m not going to give advice. I’m giving basics based on my opinion and my experiences — and what they do is they can refinance you and pull out some of that equity. Now, the increase in the rental amounts that you’ll be receiving will offset some of that cost. But at the same time, the money you withdraw can be enough to put a down payment on a new condo. So with one down payment today, five years from now, you can have condo number two, and another five years, condo number three, if everything keeps going the same way. So I say it’s a way to build a real estate portfolio for the average individual. And I think that is fantastic. And I think that it’s the only way to really do it. And resale has not increased by the same amount, and it does involve some speculation but the numbers back it up. And a lot of people have made a lot of money doing this.
And what I say is, toward my clients and my friends, how many children do you have? And people are like, one, now I don’t know, it’s like 0.7. But if they have one, two, or three, buy a condo for every child, and let that condo build up an equity. And that’s basically the gift to your children. So one condo in five years will become two. So my kids or my twin boys, they’re turning six. So if we bought one for them now and then five years down the road, we could refinance and get another one. And then for my partner’s daughter as well, we do the same thing. Then with three down payments, then by the time children are older, they will have multiple units. And that could be their nest egg. And that could be their help from us, because life is getting very expensive. Toronto is going to be one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in a few years. So your retirement is really to take care of you. And for your children, this is a great way with a minimal investment to make them some money, to help them up. So we talked about leveraging.
Have they built and pre-sold too many condos in Toronto? This ties into the bubble nonsense, that our market’s inflated and it’s too much speculation, that we’re in a bubble and it’s all going to burst. Now listen, the numbers don’t lie. If we’re averaging 28,000 unit short a year, and we have that many people coming to the city, and then we’re going to have even more migrants coming, immigrants coming to the city in the next couple years once we get out of this, and our construction market is going to basically be on pause for the next little while, which means we’re going to bring even less units, we are going to have a huge, huge shortage of units available for prospective buyers. This means that we have not built and pre-sold too many units. We actually have not built or pre-sold near enough units. And that’s the truth of the matter.
The current state of the market. Right now the market is on pause. Not a bad thing. It’s not a good thing. It’s the reality of the matter. The matter is we are on pause. It doesn’t mean prices are dropping. Prices actually increased significantly in the first quarter of this year. And during the onset of this pandemic, you are going to see that prices are still increasing, because the resale sales that happened, happened 30 to 60 to 90 days ago. So the actual numbers are going to come in now. So prices are going to continue to go up probably up until about May, end of April, May. And then you’re going to see them actually slow down, taper or maybe even drop a little bit, because there’s not going to be much movement in the market. And the people that are selling, we don’t know why people are selling, but if they’re selling, there might be a greater proportion of people that are fire selling because they have to. And that’ll artificially bring the price down. But once this starts up again, we are going to see a huge jump in prices.
Will presale/pre-construction condo prices come down? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. There is no chance of that happening if our economy bounces back the way it should. If our economy bounces back, more people than before will come here because we have work opportunities. What I want to talk about is the tech boom. What a lot of people still don’t understand is we are a tech powerhouse globally, not just North America. I think it was Bloomberg that said in the past five years, we have created more high tech jobs in Toronto than San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, and Washington combined. We are number three in North America for total tech jobs at the moment, and number one in the past five years for new job creation. That is why so many people can go work from home and still be fine.
Now why is this an essential part of our market, these workers? These workers tend to not have a car. And what does not have a car mean? Sorry, I’m stereotyping, but the younger majority of our population, the majority of the younger people of our population don’t have a car. When I was 16, I drove all the way to Oshawa the day after my birthday to get my license because Toronto had a three-month wait. Now, these people don’t even have a driver’s license. But when you eliminate the vehicle for monthly expenses, is it safe to say you save $1,000 a month? I think so. If you have, say, a $600 lease, and you spend like $200 in gas, and you spent $200 on insurance, there’s a grant. If you save $1,000, that’s $250,000 in mortgage per month. That means the same individual, that by eliminating the car, can buy a $250,000 more expensive property. And we really saw this coming into play in the late ’90s, sorry, in the early 2000s, when the houses along subway lines started to jump up in price significantly.
Now, this is a factor that many people don’t think of but it’s not really that complicated. When ride sharing was just starting, before that, we were having those services where you basically rented a car for the day. I can’t remember the names of them. But we had that. And then when ride sharing became good big with the Ubers and the Lyfts, and everybody else that does it, there was really no need for a vehicle. So now you see people spending a lot more of their focus when it comes to real estate on location. Now these people will give up square footage for location. And in 2016, I was in the Toronto Star, and I actually spoke about that, that people are going to start leaving the suburbs and come back to the core if they can afford it. We saw a mass exodus in the ’90s from the core of the city out to the suburbs. But back then it used to take you 25 to 35 minutes to drive to work. These people now are spending over an hour each way in traffic. It doesn’t really seem like such a nice idea when you have a big backyard, and you only see it at night-time, right?
So these people in the tech industry want to work close to their jobs. And we were selling a project called 55 Mercer and Center Court had a fantastic slide that we forgot to put in, sorry. And it basically showed where all the tech companies are located right now. And it’s very close to the former entertainment district around Richmond in there. So you’re seeing a lot of the condo towers that are within walking distance are selling out very quickly.
So remember, prices are not coming down based on our population increase and our economy. So please eliminate that from your mind. And for those realtors watching, because there’s a lot of you that turn to me, and I appreciate I’m given the opportunity, but educate your clients on that. There’s not going to be any price drop, there’s not going to. So if anybody is sitting here waiting for the shoe to fall off, both are staying on.
What is a platinum agent? Why use one? I am what you call a platinum agent. So I’m top 1% of my brokerage. I don’t have any idea. And I’m not going to check what I am as a whole. But the reality of the matter is, you’re going to hear a lot of people when it comes to pre-construction condos tell you they’re a VVIP or platinum agent. The term is used very loosely. No one does fact checking when they go on to Google and search a project and see if this person actually has access. The reality is there’s over 52,000 registered real estate agents in Toronto, and I’m ball parking it about 200, who really are considered platinum and have first access to these projects. At any given project, there is only 10 to 30, maybe 40 if there’s like 600 units, real platinums that have first access. And what that basically means is the platinum agents have first access, why is that important? First access means you get the lowest price. And that is the most important thing when buying this. It’s price point. It means you have access to the most units. It means you get real incentives. And what are real incentives? Real incentives are incentives that you get before the price has gone up. It is very easy to offer incentives after you raise the price 30, 40, 50,000. Like I told the lady earlier that asked the question, if you think you’re getting a deal, you’re usually not. Read the fine print. But that’s not going to be listed anywhere. That’s why it’s very important you know and you’re confident that the person you’re buying when it comes to pre-construction is platinum.
And again, not everybody watching here is going to end up buying with us and that is fine with me. But I at least like to educate you on this so that five years from now you do not get the rude awakening I spoke of earlier, where you and your neighbour are listing the identical same unit, and he’s listing for 30 $40,000 less.
As a true planning agent, I’m in the 99.6 percentile of realtors, so 0.4% of all realtors who actually have first access. I don’t pay attention to numbers like that. But the name of our business is First Access Condos because we get first access to our projects. Again, we don’t sell every single project. I think we had over 60 or 80 launches over in two quarters last year. Nobody can do that many. But we pick and choose. And I think we’re talking about seven projects today that were scheduled to launch this month of April and early May. And they will be pushed back to at least September. And like I said, the V dynamic that — let’s try to get centered in the camera. I’m getting used to this. I usually don’t do webinars. I like to do this in person. But because of the fact that nobody’s allowed to see each other anymore, this was the best way. And I’d like to thank Difference Engine, our marketing team that allowed us to use their office. But because of the V curve, the longer it takes to go down, equal similar to go back up. So if we’re off until June, it’ll probably not be business as usual till September. But when that happens, you guys have ample time to research the projects that we’re talking about today. You can register after for information and we’ll gladly email it to you. You can take this time to email me, call me, text me, ask me questions about the project, and I will answer to the best of my ability.
A lot of times the developers ask us and our sales and marketing team ask us our opinion when they’re getting ready for these things, so we know a lot more than the average agent. And like I said, 0.4% of all realtors are platinum, then it’s most likely that the agent you have been working with to sell your house is not the agent that’s going to get you access to these things. And if they do, they’ll have to buy through someone like me. And the truth of the matter is, just like Donald Trump wants to keep all the N95s for himself, the platinum agents are going to keep the pick of the litter for their own clients as well.
Why invest in pre-construction? Capital appreciation. I love this project. It’s 150 Redpath. It was at Yonge and Eglinton, actually right in between Yonge and Mt. Pleasant. It’s midtown, started selling in 2016, right when the subway was just under construction. And that’s delayed because all major infrastructure projects here for some reason get delayed. It’s just the way it is. And it doesn’t make any difference. We’re going to use this as an example because it’s a great example in the areas exploded. And it’s something everyone can relate to, I think, in the city.
So 150 Redpath was a building in November 2015, 600 sq. ft. 1+ den, was approximately 372 sq. ft., was about $620 PSF. PSF is price per square foot. Initial DP down payment at 20% was $74,400, current resale in the area now was selling approximately $1,000 PSF give or take. And I like to use conservative numbers but realistic numbers. So you may see something that’s a little bit more. You may see something a little bit less, but everything’s around there.
I’m going to answer one question from a good friend of mine, Tolga, in one second after this, and Hannah is going to remind me. Current resale in the area is around $1,000. Now, at $1,000 PSF, your $600,000 unit has a current market value of $600,000. $600,000 minus $372,000 initial purchase price is a profit of $228,000. That’s a 306% return on your initial investment of $74,400. That is realistic numbers. That is the kind of returns that people have seen in pre-construction. You will not see that with other product. And the beauty of a purchase like this is you have not had to be a landlord. You have not had to pay property taxes. You have not had to pay insurance. You have not had to deal with a mortgage, which a mortgage on this investment property might have stopped you from buying that bigger house that you want it to upsize to or that cottage or whatever or refinancing to increase cash flow for your business or for whatever scenario. It doesn’t affect that. You bought this. You paid for deposits. You cut checks. You forgot about it. And five years later, you’re going to be making this kind of money. Fantastic opportunity.
Now, I’m going to jump into this before I lose this question. My friend, Tolga, says, “How about financial situation of builders and developers? Do you see any big players declare bankruptcy and create a domino effect? What is the likelihood of that?” Okay. Everybody is talking about what happened to Cresford. I want to get to this. I have three or four, maybe five people just for me shooting my eyes over when asked about this. Cresford was in trouble before the recession, before the oil war, before the pandemic even was mentioned. They were in financial trouble. Their financial house was not in order from last year, if you heard rumours. I have acquaintances that worked at the project, worked at the developer. There was some talk about it. Obviously, you can’t ask them because they work there. But there was rumours about it. Agents hadn’t gotten paid for quite a long time. There was questions about whether they were solvent or not. So yes, Cresford has filed for bankruptcy on two of their projects. But there is no domino effect. There is not a problem with financing projects that are already a go. This is its own island in an ocean. Totally separate from everything else. So you guys do not need to worry about this. That is Cresford’s issue, not an industry issue. So great. I hope I answered that. I’m keeping it simple, because that’s the truth of the matter. It’s apples and oranges, totally unrelated. Developers are fine.
Remember, if we had close to 60 to 80 launches in two quarters, we’re like 120 launches plus every year. If one or two or three go bankrupt, the percentage of that is still fantastic, still fantastic. So people need to remember that. You’re not going to get ready — if you go to the stock market, which is getting hammered, and then it bounces back and goes up and down like a yo-yo, but if you invest in there and you invest on 100 different stocks, you don’t think one, two or three are going to go belly up? Come on, right? Look at the big picture and look at percentages. We are a safe industry to invest in.
Next. Carrying cost versus rent. Now, when prices have gone up in the past few years, we’re starting to see, and I’ve been telling people for years that you are not going to be making a lot of money from your rental aspect of your unit. If you cover your costs, great. If you lose a little bit of money, that is the way of the world in markets like ours. One of the people we know — sorry, I can’t center myself. I’m trying different ways, and I’ve just had enough of it. One of the things that other people have told me that have invested in Hong Kong, Manhattan and places like that is you actually lose money every month from your rental. You’re actually in the negative. So you’re in the red. But that is a far cry that doesn’t really upset anybody, when they look at the capital appreciation they’re making. So if you’re making a 300% return, and then when you finally get it, you’re actually losing $100 a month, really, pull up the Kleenex in the violins, I don’t think so.
So carrying cost versus rent. Let’s use some good example here. Your purchase price of $650,000 with a deposit of $130,000. Your mortgage would be $520,000, costing about $2,080 a month. At $0.65 per interior sq. ft., your maintenance fee is about $325, property tax 0.75, that’s still way too high, is about $487.50, insurance $50, water $30, expenses just under $3,000 a month. With current market rent of approximately $2,500 a month for that unit, in four years’ time at a 5% increase. You’re cash flow positive. At a 10% increase, you’re cash flow positive to the tune of $8,000 a year. And this is for a 1 bedroom unit.
Now, people are saying it’s always better to be conservative, but I like to be conservative but realistic at the same time. We’ve been seeing rental increases for the past three to four years, if I’m not mistaken, between 8% and 12%, given the area. Now, if our market success is based on a lack of supply, it’s only logical that if it continues down that path, based on my immigration, that rents are going to increase because the supply will be even less.
Someone just asked me, “I thought there are restrictions, how you can raise rent?” Leo, yes, there are. Actually, I’m not really that well-versed; part of my team handles the rental. From what I’m understanding, in newer condos, there is no rent control. But it actually has nothing to apply to this, because I’m comparing what rents will be on your unit once you get possession four years from now. So you buy today, what will it rent out for in four years? I’m projecting that number. I’m not talking about while you’re playing landlord, what’s it going to increase every year? I hope I made that clear for everybody.
I like to use the number of about 8% on the lower end of the realistic increases. But even if you go 8%, you’re still above $5,000 a year cash flow positive. That’s not bad at all. So we’re not there yet where you’re losing money, but we’re going to be there. But don’t be scared by it. It’s the cost of doing business. Welcome that because that means that the cost of your unit when you sell it, it’s actually a negative result of it being so expensive. So it’ll benefit you, short term loss for long term gain. Think of it as a war, not a battle strategy.
Now, we’re getting into the meat and potatoes of this whole seminar. We’re getting into our actual spring 2020 pre-construction seminar. Now, spring 2020 is really going to be fall 2020. But I’m calling it spring 2020, so we don’t have any definite dates. But I’m going to be speaking to a couple developers. We’re going to sit six feet across from each other, and we’re going to try to find a wide angle lens. We actually are doing this for my webcam on my computer, because we’d ordered a proper webcam, and we wanted to basically upgrade our equipment that we had. And Amazon doesn’t deliver as quickly because they’re flooded, and it’s totally understandable. So we’re actually going to get this in about, I don’t know, it was supposed to be here weeks ago, and it’s going to come in a couple weeks, which is no problem. I’m also waiting on a workout bench. So until then I have a few dumbbells and I’ll be doing presses off the floor. So everybody’s got their own problems to deal with, right.
But spring 2020 is really going to be fall 2020. And that’s the reality, and we’re all living in it. But it’s giving you, the consumer and the agent, ample, ample time to prepare yourselves. Because once a pre-construction project launches, you do not have much time. You need to make a decision essentially the same day on what you’re getting. And that’s the way this industry works. You need to say yes, I am spending $750,000 on either A, B or C, three choices. And you can get back to people because there’s a limited amount of units that go to the agents, and they need to fill their order so they can get more. So this is an industry based on speed. And if you take time, you lose. And if you miss it on this project, the only guarantees in life, debt taxes and the next project will be more expensive. All right.
So let’s start. Real Estate Market Outlook in 2010 for Toronto and the GTA. GTA high rise new homes by the numbers. As of November 2018, high rise, 20,353 units were sold. As of November 2019, 25,057 units were sold. That is an increase of 23.1%. Now, the number for low rises wrong. I think it’s about 2 — anyways, it’s a different number. I don’t even have my phone. I want to correct that. One second. It’s 252%. All right. So that was the increase in low rise. So remember what we said that low rise was going to pick up this year and come back to 2017 levels. It was actually going to surpass it.
And we’re going to search the crazy bidding wars again. So the largest jump was in low rise aspect of our market. That’s because condos have never really slowed down. They’ve been chugging along. The train is going in the same directions, all right. Completions, as of 2019, almost 19,000. As of 2018, 15,000, almost a 25% year over year change. So we were bringing more units to market but still nowhere near enough to satisfy the demand, hence, everything keeps increasing in price. The benchmark price, year over year for high rise, 10.2% up. For low rise, it actually lost. There was a price gap. But that doesn’t necessarily — it’s not necessarily a reflection of what’s the trend. The reality was houses were still a little inflated from 2017 and then they came down but now they’re going to bounce back. And another thing is what you don’t understand is a lot of homes are bought. And this just tells us the selling price. It doesn’t tell us the condition of the home.
Now, there was obviously a large — when the market was slow for resale in 2018, a lot of builders, small builders that do rental flips, tear downs, they stopped buying. So a lot of finished homes were being bought that year. If the price of homes might have dropped, it could be indicative that the builders are getting back into the market, and a year later the price will increase.
This, we don’t really need to look at it. This is apartment sales. This is a combination of condos and apartments. This is something that is a really good read for everybody if they want to do on their own, but I’m not going to go through it because we don’t want to be here for all afternoon. It basically just basically, sorry, it basically explains condo sales in 2019. It was a record year for condo sales. And our price per square foot, we’re averaging around $1,300. The average price in the downtown core of all units sold pre-construction was $990,000, if I’m not mistaken, or $930,000 for 2019. That is huge. That is a lot of money. But that was the average. So we need to remember, prices are higher but there is a market for it. So when people who have not gone into the market come and tell me what can I buy for $700 a square foot, I do not know, because it doesn’t exist. We have prices starting from what we projected in our projects, starting from around $900 going away all the way up to like $13- 1,400 today, and we’re going to talk about. So there really is something for everybody.
The most important thing is getting into the market. It’s not where you’re buying. Because unfortunately, that shiny high end car for your first car is not usually the car you can afford. But you can afford something else, and then eventually get it and it’s the same thing. Your first investment property, if chosen wisely, can get you more investment properties. So don’t really look at location and this and that. And don’t really be “I need to be in that area”. You need to be where you can afford to buy so that you can buy more later on.
Now, we’re going to see average home sales. We’re going to see single family units, how they dropped in 2017. This is a great graph in showing the comparisons and how they dropped even more in 2018. And then we’re going to see how they picked up again in 2019. And now look at what’s happening to condos, condos are at the bottom. And we’re going to see how the graph goes. So condos have been increasing steadily from 2013, where detached and single family homes increased 2015 peak and then started dropping, 2017 was the largest. That’s when the crash happened, for the lack of a better term. But condos have not. If you see 2018, it’s still the fourth highest, if I’m not mistaken, in the past 10 years. And if you look at 2019, it’s the second highest in the past 10 years. So we were scheduled for 2020, I truly believe, to have a fantastic year. 55 Mercer, where we sold a couple months ago, time is all kind of a blur now. I think they sold out 400 units in four days. And they were averaging around the 1,300’s. So when people say there’s not a market, there is a thriving market, an ample people ready to buy. And these people know something. They know that buying now is better than buying later.
Someone just asked, guests 866. I don’t know why you wouldn’t put your name. All you have to do is put your first name. But guess 866, we’re going to be putting this on YouTube so you can find it. And you can also register it, I said, at the end of the presentation and we can send out individual projects to you as well.
Rhodian. Hi, Rhodian, thanks for tuning in with us. You’re asking why is Lanterra fates phase two is selling and why no one else is? Okay. Well, Lanterra was scheduled to launch, and Lanterra does its majority of its business with a very few amount of agents. They have a very tight knit group. So that was pretty much already in motion and they didn’t pull the brakes on it. These launches, March, essentially for pre-construction in the city, Toronto was a dead month. We only had a few launches that were scheduled. Everything was scheduled for April. Now, Lanterra had launched and I think it launched right before we really went into lockdown. These projects that are scheduled to launch now this first week and so on, they’re in the midst of a proper lockdown and social distancing. And basically, everybody’s been instructed to stay home. So they’ve made, I think, a wise decision because you only have one time to make a first impression. And that’s the reason they’ve delayed.
So now we’re looking at a graph between condo and non-condo affordability index. And you see that condo affordability is still a lot lower than non-condo. And this is basically how much of your income it takes to carry your mortgage payment. So condos were at about 36%, non-condo where it’s almost 60%. It’s a significant difference. And we’re going to start seeing another phenomenon in the city of Toronto, and this happens all over the world. And this is why I’ve always been a big proponent of 2 bedrooms and 3 bedroom units. Three bedroom units are the goldmine if you want to make positive cash flow month over month. And whoever wants to talk about that in depth can contact me, I love talking about that. And I’m going to get into it briefly right now.
If you have a 3 bedroom unit, because of the way rents are going to go in the city, very few people will be able to afford $3,000 a month for a 1 bedroom. But they can afford $2,000 a month for a 1 bedroom in a 3 bedroom unit. If you get 3 bedrooms and you have $2,000 and $2,000 for the smaller bedrooms, and charge like $2,200 to $2,400 for the one that has an en suite, or even $2,400, you’re bringing in $6,500 a month. That is a lot of money. If you do the math based on a million dollar purchase price, I’ve done the math before in other presentations I’ve done privately for people that want to syndicate money. If people are syndicating money and buying as a group, I always push them towards 3 bedrooms. You will generate between $25,000 and $30,000 positive cash flow a year. That’s covering your mortgage and all your expenses. All right. And that is if you rent it out individually.
Now, 2 bedrooms, if it’s going to be $3,500 a month for a 2 bedroom or more, and $2,500 for a 1 bedroom, people can easily pay $1,750 a month for 1 bedroom, and then the other person could be $2,250 for the one that has the en suite. Does everybody follow?
Michael Anthalie, sorry, it’s the Italian last name. I can’t see all of it, my friend. Festival towers in Vaughan was supposed to come out early May. I do not see them also coming out until fall. If anything changes, we’ll let you know. And we also have something about festival today.
What else? Let’s see here. This just shows new listings, residential transactions, how they’d been increasing average price per sale. Strong rental markets. It’s showing how many units were leased in average rent per unit, and how the increase has gone year over year.
This is new condo rental prices for the third quarter of 2019 based on region. We show year over year growth. And we also show average rent per square foot. So we’re seeing in South Midtown, the average rent per square foot is at about $3.75. In comparison, Richmond Hill is just under $3.50. That’s why sometimes it makes sense to deviate from the preconceived notion that you have to buy downtown. But always follow some fundamentals. And I’m going to talk about that for each project.
This is a great statistic. And the government just released some information yesterday, and they were talking about, sorry, yesterday or a couple days ago. Again, everything is blurry ever since we haven’t been a chance to actually go out and do something to work. It’s different working from home. And the vast majority of the time I spent answering clients’ questions about the market and the state of the market. And that’s why we basically called it the State of the Union. And I wanted to start off when you guys were waiting, the video that we started actually had Hail the Chief is what the President, what they play for the President when he addresses the nation in the United States. And I’d already done it and the N95 stuff came up, but I didn’t want to throw it off.
But really, we’re going to talk about condo nation and not we’re doing. So the government announced they’re going to increase its immigration numbers. We’re going to have 550,000 more people in the GTA. They’re saying in the next few years, 550,000 more people. That’s half a million more people to our population. If I’m not mistaken, the next slide is our population is going to double by 2046, if I can remember. I can’t find this slide now, but we’ll get to it. But I think we’re going to double this by 2046. We are going to have — there it is. Sorry, it’s at the bottom of this one — 10.2 million people in the GTA. That is a lot of people for an infrastructure that can handle it. And I haven’t got a chance to tell you guys yet what I think about Toronto, and it’s a great time. And remember, I just like remember things. I have a loose script, but really as information pops up, and that’s when I try to answer.
Guest 295. I’m not sending you a link to our webinar. I am sending you individual projects. We will be on YouTube if you want to see the video in its entirety in the next few days.
But what happened with Toronto? I think Toronto was like, early adolescent in comparison to cities like New York and Hong Kong. And now that we’ve seen the migration numbers pick up, and we’ve seen our real estate prices increase, we’re a teenager. We’re nowhere near adulthood, where we will see our prices actually flatten and reach its peak. So it’s still a great time to buy.
Government of Canada, over a million immigrants in the next four years. 2019, we accepted 313,000. 140,000 came to Toronto, so 44% of all immigrants that come to Canada come to Toronto. Don’t forget 18,000 a year come interprovincially as well. So that’s almost 160,000 people coming to our city. Hence, we’re going to have over 550,000 in the next few years.
International Students. 700,000 international students were in Canada in 2018. At the bottom, sorry, 2019. At the bottom, we see the countries they come from. A little jeopardy here. We have India, Korea, South Korea, France, and Vietnam. A lot of these people that come here will want to stay here after because we’ve made a lot of investments for international students, and the vast majority, if they can, want to stay on. But even if they don’t, they could fall in love with it. If they’re coming to go to school here, chances are they have a lot of money, and then they tend to invest because they fall in love with their city anyways. And they’re not scared to pay 35% down. Because even with a foreign buyer tax of 15%, our real estate market is very affordable in comparison to the rest of the planet. We need to have that sink in and we need to not be scared of the prices. We need to be conscious of them and not overstretch ourselves. We need to know that prices will and continue to increase. So the best time to buy is now. Doesn’t have to be right now, wait till everything bounces back for your own peace of mind. I’m not pushing anybody.
We got a lot of slack on our Facebook page from people saying how can you even talk about real estate now. And I politely tell people to watch the webinar. And the reality of the matter is there is a pandemic happening. But you know what, your bills are still due. You still need to go grocery shopping. Most of us still need to work. The world has not stopped turning. So we need to still focus and think about the future as well as today. And that’s why I want to educate everybody.
Demand for tech talent. Here’s the stats. These are total jobs, jobs added. In 2018, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, and Washington. Those are the people for most tech jobs. In 2019, we had a 54% increase of 228,500 total tech Toronto workers. Between 2013 and 2018, these three cities created 80,100 jobs. We created 228,500, almost three times the amount of jobs. That being said, they had more jobs to begin with. But we are the ones that are growing and we’re expanding. And we will bring on new talent from other places, and they will need places to live and make our housing situation even worse or better. Depends on what side of the fence you’re on.
Who just beat the Bay Area in tech jobs? This is from Bloomberg. We did. And this is another great article. GTA office vacancy rate. This is something that we forget when we talk about condos. And the reason we need to focus on the office vacancy rate is if the vacancy rate is low for office space in the city, then condo vacancy rates around there within walking distance, there’ll be a correlation between them and they will be low as well. So if we look at the third quarter of 2019 downtown at a 2.1% record low vacancy, and it’s the tightest office in North America. So it’s logical to make the comparison and the correlation and say condos in the area, condo buildings, the rentals will be full. And that’s why we have a vacancy rating of just above 0% in the downtown core. It’s anywhere from 0.7 to 0.4, depending on who you ask. And then it’s actually for the whole core, going around office buildings, I guarantee you, there might be one unit vacant in all of them.
An 8.6 million sq. ft. of downtown Toronto office construction is pre-leased, 75% of it is pre-leased. Employment growth in 2018, 1.8%. Unemployment rate in 2019, 5.5%. This is basically talking about the total number of office jobs. So the vast majority of our city, 48% work in offices, 17% in institutions, 12% in services, 10% in retail, 9% in manufacturing, 4% in community and entertainment. Now, a lot of the industries that are going to get heavily affected — and it’s really sad what’s happening, but I hope the government finds a way to help them — will be the retail, the manufacturing was still happening. There’s still a lot of manufacturing, but it’s mostly the retail and the service industries. But this service is actually compiled, not with the service sector as restaurants, but 10% of our population is going to be affected. And the employment rate is currently climbing.
There is a question from Susan. I think I know who this Susan is. And the employment rate is currently climbing and it’s expected to climb because, people, there’s going to be temporary layoffs. If you look at the airline industry, almost nobody is working right now. But when these jobs come back, people are going to get their jobs back as well. And that’s truth of the matter. And the fact of the matter is that there’s going to be a lot of temporary layoffs right now. And that’s the truth. But if 48% of office workers, a lot of them can sit there and work from home. And that’s what the vast majority of people have been doing. So the vast majority of the workforce is still working. And that’s what people need to know. This is not doomsday. This is not the end of the world. And my heart goes out for people.
I grew up in the restaurant industry. My parents owned a restaurant. I’m Greek, okay, the stereotype is true. We owned restaurants. So I grew up as a kid in the restaurant industry, and this would have financially devastated my parents. So my heart bleeds for people that are going through this. But the reality of matter that I said, the landlords and the tenants need to sit down and find a happy medium. And that’s the truth of the matter. And the government needs to borrow money like they’ve never borrowed before. Listen, the federal government borrows money every day to give to everywhere. They need to borrow money now and give it to the people here. We donate all over the world. We give it 16 tons of medical supplies, the WHO told us to hold onto to China. We should and now we’re going to complain that we don’t have N95s because of Donald Trump. No, we need to spend money, fine. Help the world, we’re rich country. But now’s the time to spend, borrow money and spend it here. So that’s a government and a policy thing.
But the reality of the matter, and this is a real stat, one out of every two people works in an office. Institutions are still operating as well. And a lot of people, at least we have the benefits of being able to go on unemployment here. Credit card payments are lowering their interest rates. Mortgage companies are deferring mortgages, payments. You are going to pay more interest in the end, but at least you don’t have a foreclosure. So it’s the reality of the matter.
Millennials. This is the shadow demand I touched on at the start of the presentation. 500,000 millennials living in Toronto as of Feb 2019, estimated 700,000 are looking to move out this decade. That’s 700,000 people looking to move out. Baby boomers outnumber any generation in Canada, and have traditionally downsized. But baby boomers are starting to hold on to their homes due to rising home ownership rates. Hold on to them longer, maybe even hold on to it and move into a smaller and smart sized condo and still keep their home. This is the truth.
So less inventory because traditionally where people were selling, now they’re holding on because they’re saying this is my goldmine. This is my savings. This is my retirement. This is in case of a rainy day I can always refinance it and pull money out on it. That’s the truth.
Now, we have international policies. The uncertain political climate in China and Hong Kong, and there’s a surge in foreign investors purchasing in Toronto despite efforts to regulate the non-resident sales tax. So this 15% the government put on. No, I’m not going to get political and partisan here, but everything the liberals did to try to slow down our market didn’t really help. They created a foreign buyer tax, which should have been just solely for Vancouver, the city could have done it on its own. But then what they did is they created this mortgage stress test, which just made it more difficult for people to get into the market. It didn’t really affect the people going from a $2 million to a $2.5 million home. It affected people trying to buy a $500,000 unit. So they need to fix that to make it easier for Canadians to buy their first home, whether it is no limit on the amount of RSPs you can withdraw, whether it’s something like that. Do something. But what they’re doing now, they’re not doing anything positive. But again, I’m not knocking the government. I’m just telling it like it is from a realtor’s perspective and a person who’s immersed in the real estate industry.
I’m just going to fly through. We have a lot of slides and we have a lot to move on. And like I said, we’re nearing the hour and a half mark. So we see a 60% drop in unsold industry and unsold units under construction, rental deficit. It takes 9,100 new rental units to balance our current rental market, and a balanced market as a 6% vacancy. We are at a 0.7% vacancy. And that’s the truth of the matter. And here we are in comparison. Well, this is a 3% equilibrium, right? Some people say 6, some people [inaudible 01:20:33].
Now, you would think the government would recognize that. And let’s look at it from the government’s perspective. Their number one revenue stream is LTT Land Transfer Tax and development charges from new construction. It’s probably almost the same. I’ve never done a comparison. But you’d probably be shocked, and I would too, at how close it is to property tax and the amount of wealth it generates for them. So do you think they would make it easier? Because if you think about it like this, if one commercial property is paying, I don’t know, half a million dollars a year in property tax, and then you have 500 units times $4,000 a year, that’s $20 million in property tax from one condo building. So they’ve taken their half a million dollars in property tax, and now bounced it up, super balled it — for everybody, that’s my generation. Remember those super bouncy balls — to the heavens at $20 million. They would be satisfied with that and say, “Let’s build as many condos as we can.” But no, there’s more taxes. There’s development service. There’s a section 37. There is park levies. There’s education levies. There’s so many taxes and levies that we tell clients to budget anywhere from 5% to 6%, just for city and government charges on their purchase price.
So on $600,000 a unit, you’re going to budget anywhere from $30,000 to $36,000 just for that, then you have your land transfer tax, which again goes to the government. But no, there is 19 months average to process and develop an application. And all those applications are on hold now, too. So it’s going to take even longer. There’s over 200 conditions developers must satisfy to get approved, and there’s constant twice a year increase in application and development charge fees. So in reality, since this is a huge if not the largest revenue stream this municipal government has, they should make the process easier and streamline, and basically understand that we have a huge housing shortage and start building, allowing people to build. And I’m a firm believer in this. And I’m not going to get into how much subsidized housing we have because I’m not an expert on the matter. Somebody at City Hall is, but I’m not.
But what I’m going to talk about is condos, because people consider me an expert. And that’s what I say we need to build as many as we can. And because we can only build so many, we need to approve as many as we can, and streamline the process. Taking two years to approve a project means it takes about a year to get ready to apply, another two years, that’s three years? Then it takes four to five years to build and sell. It takes you eight years from the concept to actually giving a key to somebody.
So how is our housing shortage ever going to get balanced or eliminated, and people are not going to be seeing crazy increases in pricing? According to the way the government’s doing things, it’s not going to happen anytime soon, which every problem poses an opportunity. And that’s what I truly believe. And just how I thought having everybody in isolation would be a great opportunity for me to streamline my seminars and get out and speak to the hundreds of people that are watching today. A similar thing that the investors need to see is that because the government’s not cooperating and eliminating the problem — another question about infrastructure. Infrastructure has to be figured out, too. But I’m not an urban planner. I can’t figure that out. What I can tell you is how to sell condos. And what I can tell you is that we have a shortage, and we will have a shortage until everybody works together. And the city needs to do their part, and they need to fix infrastructure. And they need to find out why it takes so many years to build an LRT or to build a subway, and other parts of the world do it a lot faster. And they’re going to say that it’s safer. Yeah, well, you know what, really? Is it really that much safer, that’s why everything gets extended by twice as long? Come on now.
Our real estate market is only going up. And here are some reasons — the effect of the mortgage stress test eroding affordability and achieving homeownership will have a short term dampening effect. I talked about that. It’s only going to make it more difficult to buy. And then when people save up more money, everyone’s going to go after the lower priced items. Demand for housing continue to grow resulting from strong immigration and our employment growth. The two are tied at the hip. Shortage of new homes and rental supply will put further pressure on price points — supply and demand, the basis of our real estate economy. Affected government policies can help mitigate and relieve some of the inventory pressures, but will not eliminate it as demand is poised to grow rapidly. If our government and our legislators don’t get ahead of this and start being proactive when it comes to development, then prices will keep increasing, the housing will become more affordable. And that’s the reality. And people will start sharing units and it will be common practice.
Now, we’re going to start into our presentations. We have seven of them. I’d like to thank Hannah, she’s been answering questions. Excuse me. I try to get as many questions in. Another question again, thank you, Susan, “The entire city is going to become one big condo?” Correct. Every major metropolis in the world is all condos. It is not houses. The future of our city is density. It is a vertical. That’s why our catchphrase is vertical living at its best. If you live in the city, you will live in a condo in the sky. That is the reality of the matter. If you want to live in the suburbs, that is fantastic. And you can live in the suburbs, but Toronto is becoming a series of islands. Neighbourhoods in regions are becoming like islands, not because of rivers, lakes and oceans, but because of traffic congestion. And the reason Manhattan originally went upward to the sky was because it wasn’t an island. And when the population started increasing, you started seeing bottlenecking through bridges, tunnels. It’s difficult to move people in and out of an island. And then people are like, “Well, you know what, screw it. I don’t want to take so long to commute. I’ll just walk to work and walk to shop and so forth.” And that’s what’s happened in Toronto. Our infrastructure and our roads and our systems and our transit were not designed to increase within a population increase of 130-140,000 people a year. And now we are seeing it and people will start paying more for location as opposed to square footage.
Now, let’s start off in Port Credit. We’re going to start in the west, go through the core, a little east, and go up to Festival. Westport, a great area. I wasn’t too familiar with Port Credit, except that it’s a nice spot to go on the weekend, to go with your partner or go on a date for those of you that are single or go for a walk with the kids. It is a gem, a hidden gem in Mississauga, small little area, similar to Oakville but in Mississauga. And it’s down by Hurontario and Lakeshore. There’s going to be a lot of development happening in a very large project, which is a massive master plan community, which is technically, in my opinion, not in Port Credit, because it’s on the west side of the Port Credit river, that little snug harbour restaurant. Great place to go in the summertime, go for a walk.
This is actually our project. Westport is on 28 Ann Street. It is right across the street from the GO station and a block away from the Hurontario LRT. It is going to be, like I said, it’s been built by Edenshaw. They’re very reputable developer, been around for years. It’s 22 storeys with a staggered design of smaller towers, connected by podiums, and it’s going to be 359 units. Edenshaw has built other projects that are under construction in the area. In the tradition, they were doing larger units, which are more of a staple of the suburbs, but now what you’re doing in this building, they’re designing the unit size to be similar to the actual core. So we’re going to have smaller units, which means it’s more affordable, easier for people to get in. Port Credit is a little bit more expensive than Mississauga, but is substantially less than Toronto.
Now, what we need to remember is if you have a 453 unit here, and you buy your 453 unit — hold on, I got to plug in my computer, because I forgot it wasn’t plugged in, I almost lost everybody. This would be a great time to get up and stretch my legs. You can hop on the GO train, which is across the street from your door and be downtown within 30 minutes in rush hour. So technically, you can get to Union Station faster than actually living in the city. That is fantastic. And on weekends and evenings when you’re not working, you can enjoy the lake front at Port Credit with all the little shops, bars and restaurants, again, when we’re allowed out.
So there’s going to be ground floor retail and commercial on this building, which I always liked, and these boutique structures. And pricing is going to start around in the 400’s. So we estimated pricing to be somewhere in the 900’s. Now when we talk about average price per square foot, everybody, remember, average price per square foot is an average for the building. This holds true for all projects. Smaller units are always higher than the average PSF. Larger units are always smaller. So if we see an average is 900, their 1 beds are going to be around 1,000, and your 3’s might be 50 or 80. This is a nice rendering of the amenity space facing southeast, where you can see the city skyline and you can see the lake.
Why Westport? In all the things we email to you after all the project summaries that we have created here at First Access Condos, we like to include a walking and driving timeline to certain things in the area of the condo. I’ve always believed that people enter condo living because of convenience. And walking distance or driving distance to necessities and things that you may use, you should know about this, you should not have to research them for yourself. And we are actually very accurate when it comes to this. Hannah does a lot of fact-checking. And these are real walking distances, real driving distances. So I’m not going to go into everything that is around. But when you request Westport, this is what you’re going to see.
Now this is a map of transit for everyone to notice. And we are right at the Port Credit GO station, we’re actually right across the street. So if north is the top of the page, we are just located a little southwest of that circle. And that is the green line, traveling north is the Hurontario LRT that will be up and running in a few years. So by the time this con was ready, the LRT should be ready. So that’ll take you from Port Credit GO all the way to the Brampton Gateway Terminal. It’ll also take you to the Cooksville GO station. And it’ll also take you to the 403. So it’s very, very convenient. And you are just south of the Queen Elizabeth way. So you have access to highways, to transit, and to GO trains. It’s extremely convenient.
One of our people that are watching, one of our attendees asked how to get started selling units in this building. The best thing to do is educate your clients in the meantime. And by doing that, at the end, when we send you a registration page, please register for all the projects that you want information for and we will send this and you can send it off to your clients. And if you have any questions, you can filter those questions and contact me directly, and I will assist you to the best of my ability. We do have more information than a vast majority of all realtors, and definitely the general public. Again, when we show floor plans and stuff like that, that can change up until the date. Pricing, we don’t have an exact number yet but we do have a ballpark. And like I said, I do not see prices going down.
This is showing some pictures of what’s around Port Credit. It’s a very scenic community, very rural, very nice. It’s small town living in a big city. And it’s similar to a beaches neighbourhood in Toronto. Oakville has a similar stretch. And this is a really nice area, snug harbour I talked about. They have lighthouse there. There’s a lot of parks, waters, and it’s a great place to raise a family. Some great schools located as well for families that expect to move there. Has a lot of festival events, farmers market. And it’s basically Mississauga’s village on the lake.
Now, we’re going to go north in Mississauga to Dundas and Hurontario. So we just shot right north about Dundas. And it’s called Artform by Emblem Developments. And here’s a rendering of the building, they haven’t released final ones. And it’s in Cooksville. So the new Cooksville is coming. Mississauga’s Dundas Connects initiative Dundas Street will be transformed into an urban corridor, that will be amazingly accessible, and affordable.
The area is changing. And you see this a lot in Mississauga. Mississauga has come a long way in the past 20 years, and it’s changing and evolving continuously. And this is reflective of the price per square foot. Mississauga price per square foot now is going to be around close to $1,000 — sorry. I started rotating. I’m not used to doing this sitting down, people. I’m used to walking around. And those of you who’ve seen my seminars, I’m very animated. And I feel like I’m strapped to the chair. So I apologize for that, just bear with me and I keep going off center.
The whole area has been transforming and their price per square foot now is in the 900’s. And if you get closer to Square One, it’s $1,000 a sq. ft. Artform is going to be a great little building. Now, here’s some renderings and you can see it’s not a tall building. I think we’re at 16 storeys but it’s very wide. So we’re going to have a lot of units. And there’s something different about the way they’re doing this than other traditional condo buildings. There’s usually a mix up of units that starts in studios, which are bachelors, they don’t have a bedroom. And then they go 1 bedroom, 1 + den, 2 bedroom, 2 + den, 3 bedrooms, pretty much the standard template for everything.
Emblem’s decided and Artform, that they’re going to start at 1 + dens and then go up to 3. We just found this out a couple days ago. So you’re going to see a lot of people advertising, and I know how this works. When clients go on, they Google a project. We don’t ever advertise every single project on the internet, right, but we advertise some specifically that we’re going to focus on when we sell all the ones that we’re showing. And you can go on our sites or other people’s sites and they say there’s going to be studios to 3 bedrooms. I’m telling you this now, there’s no studios. There’s no 1 bedrooms here. It starts at 1 + den. So keep that in mind. So when you call us up and say, “I’d like to get a 500 sq. ft. unit here”, it doesn’t exist. It’ll probably be starting around 600 sq. ft., and there’ll be 1 + dens.
Now, here’s a map of transit. And again, transit is really big for Mississauga, because one of the reasons people did not want to live out in the suburbs was because they didn’t have great access to transit. That is continuously changing now. Now, the good thing about the ride sharing and everything, it really pushed the government and policy to be changed and start promoting the infrastructure projects, and this is really caused by people are no longer driving, population is increasing, and then we have to build our infrastructure to be able to support the population increase. So here you see this green little map which shows everything. It shows in blue now, it shows the Hurontario LRT. In green, we have the GO Cooksville and Port Credit GO station. And Artform is a short LRT right to both. And we see transit along Dundas. So it’s very connected. This is, again, showing the Hurontario LRT and all the stops that we’re going to have.
And now we’re to talk about the building — 16 storeys over 400 units. That’s over 20 units per floor. Like I said, it’s short and it’s wide, similar to me. Types of units starting at 1 + dens to 3 bedrooms. Amenities, 11,000 sq. ft. of outdoor and over 65,000 sq. ft. of indoor amenities. That is really good. That’s a lot of square footage for amenities. And for a building this size, that’s heavy on amenities. Usually we see an amenity space equal to this in multiple towers sharing a space. That is not the case here.
Now, like I said, we always like to include some timelines for walking, driving, cycling distances. I don’t like to include cycling distances because not many people cycle for the winter, and we have a winter every year, so that’s why I don’t talk about it. But you are going to walk or you are going to drive. So here’s some more times. This is location, location, location. You are close to Canadian Tire, Sherway Gardens, Superstore, Square One, Home Depot, Shoppers, LCBO, Metro, and FreshCo. Some of these are still open. So if you live there, you’d still be okay. This is Sherway Gardens, if I’m not mistaken. Okay, great. Hannah says yes. And that’s Square One.
There we go. Vertical living at its best! If you guys have any specific questions about the projects, ask me and I can send it to you.
Now we’re going to talk about The Tailor. Tailor is in Etobicoke, and it’ll be located at the corner of Queensway and Zorra Avenue, which is in between Kipling and Islington on the south side. We sold another project here in the fall last year, I think it was October, and it sold out as if the units were free. I was not very familiar with the area. I was traditionally downtown focused. But now I’m starting to notice that these projects that we’re picking and choosing which ones to sell, we tend to do some research on the area before we start saying this is a project we want to work. We get presented a project, we’d like you to work this, and then we don’t just say yes to everything. We like to be very selective for our clients. And we would only put our money, your money or our money would go. So we will only be picking what we think are winners. And this area, I was a little questionable about because I wasn’t familiar with it. And then when I did my research on it, and I saw the sales of the other project, I was really taken aback and say, “Now this is fantastic”.
So this project, The Tailor, I told you where it’s located. And it’s going to be a nice boutique building. Traditionally, boutique buildings based on stats has slightly outperformed taller towers. It’s nothing to break the bank about, nothing to write home about, you’re not going to get rich over it. But the numbers are in favor of the boutique buildings. And I think in my opinion, it’s that in boutique buildings, there’s less investors and more end users. And basically, it has something to do with the maintenance of the building, and the maintaining of the building. And so it’s a slight increase, but don’t stop yourself from buying something in a 40 storey building because of this, because you might only make like $1,000 more a year.
That is a rendering of the building, one of the latest ones we had. One second, before I start coughing, and then I have to put my mask on. Well, a joke. It might be too early for jokes. I apologize. But I think sense of humour helps in the times that we’re in.
Tailor Condos, address, 1197 Queensway. It used to be called 1197 Queensway for the longest time, and then they actually delayed coming to market. So they changed the name to The Tailor. Marlin Springs as the developer. They have been building boutique buildings for the past little while now, boutique condo buildings. Number of storeys, 10. Number of units, 142 with townhouses. Number of studios, eight. We have the breakdown because we’ve actually had access to that. So when we give the numbers on the breakdown of units, they will be accurate unlike other people that just estimate. They have 65 1 bedrooms and 1 + dens, 2 beds, 3 beds, 3,400 sq. ft. plus rooftop amenities. They have ground floor retail, and 141 parking spaces, which is fantastic. They also have 97 bicycle spaces, which I can’t understand why you need so many, 97 bicycle spaces out in Etobicoke, but I guess you do. 21, I know I always catch a lot of slack for saying this. But I understand bicycle spaces in the core of the city. But I don’t really understand bicycle spaces. I know it’s by the lake and people want it, it’s by the lake. But it’s quite a far cycle to the lake. And I don’t know, unless you’re an avid cycler, but that’s it. I’m not going to complain about it. The new mandate is there has to be a lot of bicycle spaces. The greener the world, the better for everybody. And hopefully people, when it’s -20 outside, they’ll bundle up and they’ll ride their bikes with snow tires. So anyways, there’s 21 visitor parking spaces, a pet wash and five townhouses proposed. Don’t hold us to the townhouses. We do not know about those yet.
Now, let’s do a little comparison and talk about the Etobicoke neighbourhood. We have a lot of info for this project. 43% of residents live in condos, 5+ storeys, population is 130,000. There was an 11.8% population growth in 5 years. And the average age is between 25 and 44. So it’s a younger neighbourhood. Current pre-construction in the area is 89% sold. The project that we sold down the street started construction 6 months in advance.
I don’t know what buildings LEED ratings are. I’ve never been asked for it. I’ve never asked about it. And I never had a client ask about it. And I know it’s nice to know and what I’m going to do, Christina, is I’m going to have you remind me in August, and I’m going to get LEED rating for us. Thank you very much. And it’s nice to hear from you. Again, we haven’t spoken in a while.
Average household income in the area is between $102,000 and $130,000. 57% of people own, and 43% rent. Now let’s do a comparison to downtown. Rent to own versus downtown. Etobicoke 57% own, 51% rent, the respective numbers. Total yearly return on rent. Etobicoke, you’re going to make an 11% return from your rent, in downtown, you’re making a 3% return on your rent. I was just informed that bicycle spots give a project a better LEED rating. Thank you very much.
Oh, and Michael, it’s been a long time since we talked. You just checked in. What you need to do is wait for us to upload this on YouTube, and then you and your clients can watch it in its entirety. And you can fast forward me when I get boring or I go off on a tangent.
Majeed is asking which ones have a building permit. Majeed, projects get a building permit right before they start breaking ground. And because these were just about to start selling, none of them will technically have a building permit yet, because they don’t apply for their building permit until about a month or two before they’re going to break ground. And technically, no one is allowed to apply for anything brand new right now. So I wouldn’t be worried about any of these projects not being built. They’re all going to be built, but nothing will have a building permit as of yet. So usually, no one starts selling before they have a building permit. They start selling when they’re almost fully approved, and all that’s left is their building permit. We are pretty much there for most of these projects. There is some fine tuning that I’m assuming is going to be done in the meantime, hopefully, they’ll improve floor plans and stuff like that, right. But it’s too early to ask about building permits. We ask if a project is fully approved or about to be fully approved, that we can ask for, and these are there. But as for a building permit, building permit, they get right before they break down ground and actually start.
Let’s see here. Where were we? Rent. Etobicoke 650 sq. ft. unit, purchase price is $620,000. Rent is about $2,800 a month with a $2,000 mortgage. City of Toronto, 650 sq. ft. unit $3,100 in rent, mortgage of $2,800, negative cash flow, price per square foot, PSF for pre-construction condos is 35 to 40% less than the downtown core. Downtown pricing is at $1,350 PSF. Etobicoke waterfront is $1,065. But in the Etobicoke are we’re talking about, we’re around $950. That’s a significant difference. For those of you wanting to get into the market, there may be a better upside more potential to make more money here, but you are not in the traditional core. But don’t be worried, you will do well here. Probably better than you would be downtown. But everyone needs to remember that portfolios should be diversified. I’m a firm believer in that, people talk about it when they’re investing in the stock market. Also, they talk about it in real estate.
Queensway is Etobicoke’s next big area. This is just going to tell you everything that is around there. In walking distance, we have a great mall that’s Bier Markt, The Keg, places like that, there’s Cineplex. Costco is close by, Walmart is close by, Home Depot’s close by. It is very convenient. It’s five minutes to both Kipling and Mimico GO stations. It’s a quick drive to Toronto in about 15. It’s five minutes, like I said, to Kipling GO station, 7 minutes to Islingston. And it’s a 10 to 15 minute drive to Pearson and Billy Bishop. You have a connection to three major highways within three minutes. The convenience of the area is fantastic.
Here are some key plates, the final submission to the city. We’re not going to review them now but we have them. We may have key plates for other buildings as well. But I really don’t like giving these out when there’s so many months before it’s going to start selling, because they can be fine-tuned. And anytime we give you a key plate or a floor plan before launch, we cannot guarantee that it won’t change. There’s another disclaimer.
I’m very excited about this next project. I will get a drink of water because I’ve been talking for a while now. It is 199 Church aka MODE Condos by CentreCourt. CentreCourt was the number one developer in Toronto last year. They brought to market and sold more units than anybody else. They had 55 Mercer this year. They sold at, I think, 400 units we set in like a weekend or just over. It was insane. We were assigning deals from 11 in the morning till one o’clock in the morning. Number one developer in Toronto per unit last year. They were going to be the number one developer per units again this year with a very impressive pipeline that has been just been delayed, so we don’t know if there’s still going to be. We don’t know what’s going to happen. But they were set to launch 199 Church. This is a stone’s throw from Ryerson University right on Church Street. The building faces East-West is a combination of, I think, a heritage structure on the bottom. And here’s a great map. And you’re buying places like this for location. So you’re buying places like this 100% on where it’s located, and its proximity to Ryerson. The vast majority of your rental base, if you’re an investor, is going to be university students or people that work in the downtown core that will pay a premium for a smaller unit because of their ability to walk everywhere. And that’s it. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, no better mousetrap here. It is what it is.
When you buy in places like this, you really want to get from a very well-known developer. And one of the beautiful things that CentreCourt does that other people don’t is they don’t have an occupancy period. So occupancy periods are when the developer gives your keys and building is technically still under construction, but your floor is pretty much finished in the floors around it are finished. And you can move it in, you can lease it out, you can do whatever you want. But during this time, you don’t have a mortgage, so you’re not paying down a mortgage. You’re paying occupancy fees to the developer, which are not that complicated. And I can explain those at another time. But these guys don’t do that. They do everything in-house. So when you get a key, you’ve given a mortgage, you get title, it’s yours. It’s very, very streamlined. Nobody else does it.
Now this building, it’s address is 191-201 Church. It’s Church St. south of Dundas on the east side, if them not mistaken. And it’s 39 storeys, 478 units. We have studios, all the way to 3 beds. Prices are going to start in the mid $500’s. I know we’re saying low, but when we say low, it’s really $525- 30. So if you prepare yourself for $550, and we get you a studio at $530, hey, even better, right? But I don’t want to tell you $500, and then they give you a studio at $550.
So please, what I’d like to say is I take this time and tell you about what I really love to invest in and how my clients invested is 3 bedroom units near universities. And the reason is they produce serious cash flow. It’s the only thing that really produces cash flow. It’s key when you’re in a university because you have students that aren’t quite prepared to rent a room. But why not rent a room in a brand new condo building or a newer condo building as opposed to the dorm, then they can also use all your amenities and so forth. So remember what I said earlier, you can get upwards close to $6,500 a month. That’s close to $75,000 a year in rent if you rent it out room by room, and this is where it can be done. And if you guys want more explanation on this, you can contact me independently privately, and I will get into that. But like I said, we have 35 more slides to go so we’re going to keep chugging along.
Now, this is very important for this project, these minutes’ walk to everything listed here. People that are here, pretty much nobody buys condos anymore in Toronto unless they’re going to live there in a 3 bedroom or larger, has an opportunity to purchase a parking spot. Parking spots are available off out of the gate to 3 bedroom units. Then it goes to larger units on a sliding scale with a preference to end users. So the car is a non-issue downtown, which means people will take transit but more importantly they’re going to walk. So this we can focus on right here. This project has 100 transit score, a 99 walk score, and a 97 bike score. It’s walking distance to Ted Rogers MBA, Ryerson University, Best Buy, Canadian Tire, Metro, Cineplex, TTC, and the PATH system. And we all know what the PATH system is. It’s 31 kilometers, if I’m not mistaken, on the amount of an underground network with shops connecting different parts of our downtown core. I have taken my twins in the middle of winter, taken off their jackets and let them run all the way from where the Hockey Hall of Fame is at Front and Yonge Street all the way up to the Eaton Centre. It’s a great network. Takes a little bit of getting used to, but it is fundamental downtown. It allows people to walk around downtown and not be exposed to the elements.
You’re one minute from the 505 Dundas Streetcar. One minute to Ryerson. Three minutes to the 501 Queen Streetcar. Four minutes to 24-hr METRO. Five minutes to Dundas Subway. Five minutes to Best Buy. Five minutes to Eaton Centre & Dundas Square. Five minutes, etc., etc., etc. Location is key here. And now we have some Dundas Square and the Eaton Centre, which is basically one of the reasons.
Now, here’s some more highlights. This is a little bit larger of a walking distance, but look what is all within a 15-minute walk — George Brown Sally Horsefall Campus, the Toronto Coach Terminal, which is Greyhound buses,. George Brown St. James Campus, a hospital corridor is only 12 minutes away, 5 minutes to UFT, 5 minutes to OCAD. So you are very, very centrally located. You don’t just have to be a Ryerson student.
And this is more explanation of everything that’s easily accessible to. And again, some of these are driving times, some of these are walking times. But if they’re walking times, it will be distinguished.
And this is talking about the developer. And basically everything that I said, we’re reviewing it and adding a little bit more. But CentreCourt is one of Toronto’s top tier developers. And like I said, number one developer last year, guaranteed we’re going to be the number one developer this year. That might be delayed and it might get spread over two years. But if they knock off another project or two, which they can, they can sell buildings within five to six weeks. If not weekends, ironically, they could probably do it in two weeks, right? But the truth of the matter is, they are top tier. You have nothing to worry about.
Manderley Condominiums. We are going a little east now outside the traditional condo core to Kingston Road and Warden, in a community called Birch Cliff, which is near the Scarborough blocks. We sold another project there last year. And although we had sold a project, the closest we had come to the area was Queen and Cooksville in our Marlin Spring project a couple years ago, a fantastic boutique building called West Beach. That was not the same area as this. That was west of the beaches, in between beaches in Leslieville. This is off into Scarborough. And we sold a project down the street from this. So we did a lot of research on the project, and we found that there was over, I think, 27 applications along the stretch of Kingston Road from Victoria Park to Morningside. And I know they’re going to say that’s many kilometres. But if you really look at it, there’s a lot of parkland there. So the areas that can actually you can build a condo, it’s pretty dense. So it’s going to become a new condo corridor for the city. And the reason is we have a GO train station there, two of them actually are easily accessible and they can shuttle people into the city very fast and efficiently. And you also have, from Manderley, it’s a short drive to Victoria Park subway station, and then you’re on line 2, and you can shoot the Danforth line and get you anywhere.
So this is going to be another beautiful boutique building. This is really going to be high end for the area, but not on price point when they finish it. So it’s going to be in a great neighbourhood. It’s very family-oriented. It’s up and coming. The area is significantly gentrifying. And when you have 27 condos, even 20 get built, you are going to see a significant difference in the type of shops that are opening, and there are going to be restaurants and bars and shops. And basically everything’s going to cater to the new clients that are going to be in the area. This is a rendering from the rooftop facing the lake. It’s a great view of the waterfront over tree lined streets, very tranquil.
Right outside your door, you have a TT bus stop for different routes. It’s 10 minutes to both Danforth and Scarborough GO stations, 14 minutes to Victoria Park subway station. You can be downtown in 20 minutes. From Victoria Park subway, Scarborough Town is only 6 stops away featuring 250 stores and services. You can also drive up to Warden station, the same thing. Three-minute drive to prestigious Hunt Club so you can golf. Purchasing a unit where an area is gentrifying is a great investment opportunity. Average PSF for Manderley, we were estimating this. And again, I don’t have a crystal ball and don’t take this and etch it in stone and don’t carve it on a tablet, and 1,000 years from now they’ll say I was lying, right? The commandments according to Costas were wrong. But I would like to see this priced at just under $900 a sq. ft. in the mid to high $800’s for an average, around there. And that’s what I believe will do well. And I think this will provide a very unique opportunity that we no longer see for people who thought they couldn’t afford to get into the condo market to get their foot in the door. And earlier I had said that if you can get in, and it’s not the area you wanted, buy.
When you ask yourself the question, “Should I buy?” You should follow that up with one question. “Can I afford it?” And if you say yes, then you just buy. Buy as many condos as you can without tanking yourself. Car condo market is going to boom, our real estate market is going to boom, and the best time to buy is now not later. That’s 100% true.
Following back, Senya, nice to hear from you. 199 Church is going to average around $1,300 to $1,350 a sq. ft.
And as we commented here, traditionally, boutique buildings will perform better than other towers, than taller towers in appreciation. We’re going to have great amenities here. We’re going to have a very nice gym, a yoga room, and there’s also mentions of putting outdoor garden, community garden for everybody, which is really nice. There’s also going to be a pet grooming spa. And I think that’s just adorable. Look at the dog with the towel. I don’t know what it’s called. When they wrap their head and it’s like I had dress, right, but it’s really cute. It’s what girls do when they come in the shower, people with long hair.
The developer is Nova Ridge. They’re are commercial developer. I do want to call it a turban, but it looks like a turban. But anyways, Nova Ridge Development Partners Inc., they’re a commercial development company that bought this project, and they’re going to get into — there’s not a spa. Someone asked me this question. But there is a pet grooming station or that could be a pet spa. So that’s what it’s called. I’m not a pet owner. I was when I was younger, my dad had a dog. So I’m not up-to-date on all the terms. But pets love me, so regardless.
Nova Ridge Developments. A commercial developer, it’s their first turn into a residential construction. And I wouldn’t be any worried. I usually tell people that we need to know our developer. They have a very good reputation in the commercial industry. Now, they’re building a boutique building of 11 storeys. They’re not building a 99 storey tower, so I wouldn’t be concerned. And I found that a lot of developers, when they do the shift from commercial to residential, projects tend to be more effective and the timelines are met a little bit better. And they want to really showcase what they can do. So this will be a really good deal when it comes to value for investors.
Warden and Kingston, prices are going to start from the f$400’s. This could be low $400’s, which is unheard of. And that’s why I’m telling you it’s a great opportunity. And we’re going to go from 1 bedroom to 3 bedroom units, only 200 suites. These boutique buildings, people, it’s even more important for you to be ready. And what I tell my clients and our clients, and what I tell people is, when you’re listening to First Access Condos, you have information ahead of time. That is the time to ask questions. When projects actually launch, you’ll get a phone call saying, “This is what we have available. You need to make a decision. We need to know now”. And what I mean “now”, we need to know like really now, because we only have a small timeline to fill the spaces of units that we have and to get more units to help everybody. So it’s very difficult. I’m always uncomfortable telling first time investors that I need to know now and you’re spending so much money. And a lot of them are taken back. But I think us as realtors, having done our job properly, if we haven’t mentally prepared people so that they understand that by the time it’s game time, all your questions should have been asked and answered. So when it’s game time, there’s only one thing to do, pull the trigger. That’s it, right.
So these smaller buildings, if there’s only 200 units or 160 units, right, they’re going to sell within the first round, probably about 60 to 80 of them. If you have 20 platinums, that means we’re going to get four each but usually the smaller buildings, they might only have 10 or 12. So we’re only going to get about 8 units each. We have 8 opportunities to place people. So if your number comes up, take advantage of it, carpe diem, seize the day, people, and do it. Don’t balk and don’t think. Thinking will cost you money. Like I said, and I always say this, if you take time to think and miss out on a project, the only guarantee is you’ll be paying more for the next one.
Festival Condos in Vaughan. This is the VMC Vaughan Metropolitan Centre. It’s South VMC. That’s what they’re calling it because it’s south of Highway 7. Vaughan has exploded in the last few years, ever since the subway went up there. It’s become a new condo center, the VMC. CentreCourt did all the TC buildings. They sold out 1,000 units, I think, in a month last year. It was crazy, the demand. There was lineups for this out the door.
And to all you realtors out there, please know this, just because you’re allowed to come to a launch, that’s not the real launch. That’s a secondary launch done to just increase the amount of people that are there. So it’s a disservice to your clients if you sit there and think that just because you got an email, you and 5,000 other people, that you’re allowed to come to something that’s not really a party. It’s just for the media and to show that there’s interest in a project, your clients still don’t really have a chance and that’s why you want to use the platinum agent so that you can service your clients, and your clients don’t miss out on a great opportunity.
All these smaller buildings that I’ve spoke of, except for Manderley, if I’m not mistaken — because Vlad asked a question — have commercial units. I want to address this before I get into Festival. There’s a lot of people ask me, a lot of clients ask me, a lot of agents ask me, this is a big misconception. Commercial spots in condo building sell last. They either sell last or they lease out last. And every developer is different if they keep them and they lease them out with their own management company, or if they rent it out as commercial condo units, or are they freehold units in a condo building with some common expenses. Now, they don’t sell till after occupancy or close to it. And the first dibs usually go to — and I see ‘usually’ because there’s always an exception — usually go to people that have bought a residential unit. So if your client wants a commercial space, buy a unit in the building, and then they’ll have first dibs at it.
Festival Condos. It’s Menke’s new master-planned community. Menke’s owns over 100 acres east of the 427, west of Jane, and south of Seven. I’m not familiar with Vaughan. But I think those are the geographic boundaries. They had started off selling townhouses, which was the Mobilia Projects with a couple small towers. Now what they’re doing is they are going in and building their towers. From my understanding, this is going to be five proper condo towers, and they will be starting to launch them. They were supposed to be first week of May, I brought this up earlier, and they will be launching them in now like everybody else, my bet is minimal September, that’s the earliest and we might even go a little bit longer, as long as everybody stays home and practices their social distancing. And the government hopefully starts giving out free masks to everybody and everybody masks up, this will be over sooner, we’ll get back to work.
These are some beautiful renderings. Menke’s builds a quality product in comparison. In similarity between Menke’s and CentreCourt, they are very, very both well-respected developers and they do really well. So let’s see here. This is a rendering of the tower. It’s 59 storeys, 656 units, very downtown. It’s similar. It’s going to be a proper condo if we see it. It could be anywhere downtown. It’s a mega tower. This is a proper skyscraper. These are not the boutique buildings we’re talking about the last few times. This is a traditional condo, with units that will be traditionally sized. It says completion in 2024. Remember, people, now everything got a little delayed. So if we start selling this, I like to tell my clients buildings that are over 20 storey, 30 storeys, sorry, buildings over 20 storeys take about three years to three and a half years after sales start. Buildings that are greater than 20 storeys take about four. And greater than 40 take about five. And that’s usually just a rule of thumb that I have.
Indoor amenities, 24-hour concierge, seating lounge, hotel-inspired guest suites, fitness centre and weight room, yoga studio, theatre, TV, games room, kids play room, and outdoor play area, party room, kitchen bar, formal dining area, all amenity spaces will include free Wifi.
Susan has been asking me some fantastic questions. And I like to get into these. Thank you once again, Susan. “What is your take on the fact that total EI claims have surmounted 2.13 million people as of March 30?” I am not surprised by this number. That will continue to increase. Like I said, a lot of these are temporary layoffs. And as soon as people can go back out and work, they will be back off of EI and back and employed. Of course, some people won’t, but the majority of the people will. And it is the government’s responsibility to borrow because we can, and spend on the people to alleviate the burden that the pandemic has caused. We in this country are in a golden opportunity because of our GDP to debt ratios to be able to borrow. Again, we have the lowest debt ratio of the G7. And the government should borrow and finally spend money on us. And it’s not the time to give out money to the rest of the world, but put some money in the pockets of Canadians who have been paying taxes their whole life and need it.
So again, the amenities, kids play room, outdoor area, etc., etc. A great little project.
One second, guys. Raj, nice to hear from you as well. Before this — sorry, Hannah just pointed out this question. And again, when questions come up, because as they keep coming up, I’m going to lose it. So I apologize for bouncing back and forth. But again, everything we have here that we’re talking about the projects can be emailed to you. All you have to do is register on the forum. And then we will email them to you. What is Raj asking? Raj asked this, “Before this crisis, we were above $1,300 per sq. ft. Where would the price be in four years from now? This will help estimate the value of new presale offers.” Now, this is where I do not have a crystal ball, but I do have loads of experience in the matter, as an investor and as this being my industry. Now what I believe is we are on pause. Somebody has pressed the button, the universe is pressed its omnipotent pause button on our economy and our world and our lives and on prices as well. So if we were at $1,300 a sq. ft. in February, March, we will be $1,300 a square foot in September. I do not think developers will lower prices, and I don’t think they need to. That being said, four years from now, I will not be surprised if prices, and again, this is an estimate. This is a guess. It’s an educated guess but it’s still a guest. So don’t come back if prices are lower, because I couldn’t have predicted a pandemic, neither can you. But I am very confident to say that we will still be increasing at greater than $100 a sq. ft. every year, greater than, greater than. And if I had liquid capital right now and free money that was available to me, I would still buy condos. I think it’s the best investment. And I think $100 a sq. ft. is actually a very conservative and a low end estimate. So four years from now, I see more.
Remember what I said at the start of this presentation, if we were getting 100,000 and just under 140,000 people to the GTA per year before this, once the borders open up again and our economy kicks into gear and is going full force, if we were getting 140,000, we will be getting 180,000 people a year. I wouldn’t be surprised if 200,000 people a year comes. The longer it takes the rest of the world’s economy to get back, the more we will be an oasis in a desert and people will come here for salvation. Economic and employment salvation, and that’s the truth of the matter, in my opinion.
Now, Festival outdoor amenities — beautiful community courtyards will surround all towers, green rooftops on podiums, different seating areas, water features and enhanced lighting, gathering spaces, open air promenades. It sounds really, really nice. Here is another beautiful rendering. And the beautiful thing about renderings is that these are realistic expectations of what people plan to build. So it’s not like you’re drawing something and saying, “Okay. Let’s sell them this, and this is not what we’re planning to do”. There’s been thought in this. What you see is what actually can be done. Again, common areas like restaurants, shops, bars, maybe ice cream shops that looks really nice here, cafes, don’t forget. We’ve turned into a coffee culture the last two years which is kind of funny because we were never really known. We’re just like a Tim Hortons, and that’s it and there were Starbucks. But now people are really going into their coffee and focusing on it, and there’s a lot of coffee shops opening up and they’re great little places for people to meet and congregate, something that is not allowed to happen right now. But once the once the emergency orders are lifted, they’ll always be business back to usual.
Festival, it’s an expansive community 10 years in the making, which will feature 18 striking condo buildings, over 300,000 sq. ft. of retail and office space, 30 townhome buildings, 5 acres of playgrounds, parks and a large community centre with 2 hockey rinks, basketball court and gym. This is the whole 100 acres that Menke’s own. They’ve renamed it Festival. So that’s going to have 18 condo buildings, 5 are going to be towers like ones we said, 50, 60, 40 storeys, the rest will be lower mid-rise buildings 10 to 12. And then there’ll be townhouses. This is basically a mini city that they’re building. And this will take about 10 years.
More renderings of the towers. This is showing transit and the subways. That’s where the subway starts just north. North is at the top of the slide. The subway is just a little northeast. You hop on the subway and you go all the way downtown. And then you can also take the GO train. Highway 7 takes you to Yonge Street, where you can hop on a bus and go down to the line 1 subway. Again, transit, transit, transit. There’s another slide, close proximity. We talked about York University, it’s only two stops away, 8-minute walk to the subway station.
Now, for our final project today, we are going to talk about a very unique condo development. And a couple times a year, there’s a few projects that come out, only a handful that really elevate the bar for luxury and condo living. These tend not to be investor-driven projects. They have larger units. They focus on the best of the best. And Forest Hill private residence is one of those projects. It is built by a company called Altree. I consider I’m friends of Mandelbaum. He started off with Marlin Springs and then they went their separate ways, they had separate visions. He is the person that actually sold the project down the street on Zorra that did phenomenally well. He is from probably the royal family of real estate in Toronto, the Mandelbaum family. It started in the ’50s, it was HNR Development with his grandfather. Now, his father Mark is one of the owners of Lanterra Developments that we all know about. And now Zev has gone off into his own and he’s going to give us his fourth or fifth project, and he’s doing phenomenally well. And he’s decided to bring something to the upper echelon of the city.
This is located right on Forest Hill Road, and it is going to be a smaller boutique project whose focus is going to be on high end finishes, large outdoor spaces. They’re not going to be condos. They’re going to be proper homes. And it’s going to be only 9 storeys with 92 units. And if you look at the size of the building from the slide, you’re going to see that they’re going to be larger, and it’s very classy and contemporary. And it’s going to have everything from a wine storage facility to an en suite sommelier, to a concierge and valet. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a porter. It’s going to be something like that.
And what we see for projects like this, usually we talk a lot about smart-sizing. And it’s when people actually realize when the nest has emptied and the children have left, and people are going into their retirement years, which is the times they can really focus on themselves. They realize that they don’t need that big house. And I joke that the only thing big houses are for is for keeping you away from your spouse. But the reality of the matter is, everything is teach their own. But if you are older and you decide to travel more or you decide that you don’t need that larger space, and you don’t want to your lifestyle, you just want to decrease the actual square footage, these are their projects to look into. And with the current price or the cost of resale homes in the city, when you look at prices starting from 1.6 to 6 mil, I’m not going to say they’re affordable by any means but it is manageable by a lot of people that will be selling their home. And a lot of these people have no mortgage on them because it was the family for years. Architects are Graziani and Corazza. It’s Altree who’s the developer. It’s 9 storeys, 92 units. There’s a possibility of townhomes. And when we talk about townhomes, they are going to be 2 storey condos. I don’t think there’s going to be a rack or a series of townhomes in the back and they’re separate. No, that’s not the case. These are condo townhomes, and condos in the sense that there is maintenance fees, and condos in the sense that it’s in the condo structure.
They’re going to have 10 foot smooth ceilings, expansive balconies and terrace, floors to ceiling windows. And we’re going to start from larger 1 bedroom up to large, very large 3 bedroom units. Some of the five star services are going to be 24 hour valet, concierge, on staff sommelier, going to help you with your wine selections and pairings. For their wine program, there’s also going to be a wine storage where you can keep it. It’s like your own personal cellar, and it’s going to be humidity-controlled, temperature-controlled, etc. And I’m sure they’ll have a locking system and a passcode, and you can go in and basically store your wines. And for those of you that like wine like myself, I’m sure there’ll be more expensive bottles than I own in this building. But at the same time, it is a nice thing to have. Because the one thing in condos is we don’t usually have enough space and you don’t really want to leave it in storage locker, and your storage locker is already full. So this is a great alternative and it’s really a fantastic idea.
So located on the ground floor, we’re going to have a pool, dry and steam sauna. Someone asked me about a spa. It’s going to have gym with personal training rooms, party room with caterer’s kitchen, a lounging area, dual fireplaces, and a dining table that seats up to 20 guests that can be reserved for your dinner parties. Outdoors and garden with lounging, water features, green walls and dining table. Like I said, it’s going to be really upper echelon, high end, and it’s going to be very, very nice. And for those of you smart-sizing, you’re not going to be losing any of the luxuries that you had in your home. It’s definitely not the cookie cutter same thing that we see and is an investor focused building where the final say is all about cost and price point. This is going to be luxurious and it’s going to be actually living and people focusing on being end users and enjoying what they purchased.
Here are the views. Basically all of us look over tree line, neighbourhoods, and streets, which is very nice. It’s 7 minutes away from St. Clair via the St. Clair streetcar, the St. Clair station. It is or centrally located around Rosedale, Summerhill Annex and Yorkville. They’re within a 10-minute drive. Casa Loma, The Spadina Museum, tarragon Theatre, Balfour park and gateway park that leads to the extensive Don River park system are also very close. And here is a map showing where it’s located. It’s on the northwest corner of St. Clair and Forest Hill Road.
Now, what I’m going to talk about is, I think what realtor should do. And I’m going to give us some advice what realtors and buyers should do. And we talked about it a little bit earlier, before we finish up. And I think we should learn from 2017 and what I talked about. And what realtor should really remember to do and their clients remember to do is once everything gets back into business back as usual, remember that it’s going to take a little bit of time to bounce back. There isn’t an easiest, there’s a in the air, you can feel it, the people are concerned, and that trickles into every aspect of our life and our market.
In closing, I want to tell everybody that although we’ve gone through some difficult times now, reality, what is so difficult about it? We’re being asked to stay home. It’s really not, no one’s asking you to go run 30 miles or climb up a mountain or walk through a desert, and/or walking through 5 feet of snow. It’s stay home, relax, spend some time with your family. Take this opportunity to reconnect with the people inside your own home. And for those of you by yourselves, take some time to get to know yourself. It’s a great time to meditate. Look in the mirror, see how you can improve and let’s all come out of this better. Every problem poses an opportunity. Let’s take advantage of the time we have to focus on ourselves and our immediate family that lives with us. And let’s come out stronger, better, wiser.
And I would like to wish everybody the best of luck through these tough times. Remember, staying safe just means being smart. They’re not asking us to do a lot of things, wear a mask, wash your hands, don’t congregate. They are very simple things. The sooner this is over, the sooner we’ll get back to work. The sooner we can all go to the gym. The sooner we can take our kids to a playground. The sooner our kids can go back to school for a lot of people, too. And I’m going to give you a newsflash. School is pretty much finished. But at least if this finishes quickly for the year, at least until the September, that at least if it finishes quickly, the kids camps will go back on and I know a lot of kids, including my own, really love camp. It’s a great opportunity. So what I wish is God bless everybody, best of luck during these tough times. And what I would like to do now — oh, one more question. One more question.
No, we don’t have one more question. Ravi, if you want me to answer that question, you can text message me directly. It’d be my pleasure. It’s just not the forum for it. Hold on a sec. So what I sent out to everybody right now is basically a registration form. What you can do is click “fill it out” and click on the project you want, and then we can answer everything for you. So thank you, everybody. Best of luck. And if you have any questions, I am always available.