Explainer + estimator
Every Toronto condo comes with a monthly maintenance fee you can't opt out of. Here's what it buys, what's normal, when a low fee is a warning sign, and a quick way to sanity-check any listing.
Looking at a specific building? Send me the address. I'll tell you if its fee and reserve fund look healthy before you offer.
Rather text me yourself? Open Messages with these numbers
Ranges reflect Toronto resale and new-build condos I work in and published GTA averages; every building is its own budget. Checked September 6, 2026.
Property tax, your unit's contents and liability insurance, anything inside your walls, and your own hydro in a metered building. Budget for these on top.
| Building | Typical fee / sq ft / month | What's going on |
|---|---|---|
| New, under 5 years | $0.60 – $0.75 | Budgets are set by the developer and usually rise 10–20% once the corporation takes over and the first reserve study lands. |
| 5 – 15 years | $0.75 – $0.90 | The realistic range. Fees track inflation, insurance and the second reserve study. |
| 15+ years | $0.85 – $1.10+ | More utilities included, bigger units, and major components (elevators, garage membranes, windows) coming due. |
Parking typically adds $75 to $100 a month and a locker $30 to $50, either inside the fee or as separate line items. Read the MLS listing carefully: a $520 fee that includes heat, hydro and parking can be cheaper to live in than a $420 fee that includes none of them.
That last sentence is the whole game, and almost nobody plays it. Every listing quotes you a fee, and the per-square-foot number gets treated as the answer. It isn't. It's the answer to a different question — what does the corporation collect — when the question you actually care about is what does it cost me to live here every month.
Two buildings, both 850 square feet. One charges $1.20 a square foot and covers heat, hydro, water and your parking spot. The other charges $1.00 and covers water. On the listing the second one looks $170 a month cheaper. Add back the hydro, the heat and the parking the second building doesn't cover, and it is the more expensive building to live in — by about $312 a year. The fee that looked 17% higher was the cheaper one all along.
This is not a rare edge case. It is the single most common mistake I see buyers make, and it runs in both directions: plenty of high fees really are high. The only way to know is to normalise both sides before you compare them.
Typical monthly figures for a Toronto condo, which is what the comparison below uses. Hydro and heat scale with the unit because a bigger place takes more to run, but they don't scale to zero — there's a base charge on the bill whatever the size.
| Not included | Typical cost | Where it bites |
|---|---|---|
| Hydro | $45–$95 / mo | Individually metered in almost every building built after about 2005. In an all-electric unit a January bill can run double a September one. |
| Heat | $35–$70 / mo | Only separate when the building has no shared plant. Electric baseboard is the expensive version and the most common one in newer towers. |
| Water | ~$28 / mo | Nearly always included. If a listing says otherwise, read it twice — it usually means the building sub-meters, which is unusual and worth asking about. |
| Parking | $75–$100 / mo | Sometimes inside the fee, sometimes a separate line on the same bill, sometimes a licence you rent from another owner. Downtown it can be $150 and up. |
When the two all-in numbers land close together, the bundled building is usually still the better deal, for a reason no calculator will tell you: a condo corporation buys utilities at a commercial bulk rate, and it absorbs the winter swing. Your fee is the same in January as it is in June. In a metered building you personally eat the cold snap, and you eat every rate increase the moment it lands. That predictability is worth real money to anyone on a fixed budget, and it is worth a great deal to a landlord pricing a unit twelve months out.
The flip side, and I say this to every buyer: a bundled fee also means the building controls a cost you can no longer manage. You can't conserve your way to a lower bill. If you're out of town half the year, the metered building wins.
Put the two units you're deciding between side by side. Tick only what each fee actually covers — the listing tells you, and if it doesn't, ask the listing agent before you go further.
Utility estimates are typical Toronto condo figures, not a quote — a building with electric baseboard heat or an EV charger will run higher. Use it to see which side of the line you're on, then ask the listing agent for the actual inclusions in writing.
The fee comes out of your rent, not on top of it. A unit that leases for $2,600 with a $650 fee nets less than one at $2,450 with a $380 fee. When I price a rental, the fee is the first thing I look at after the floor plan. If you own a unit and want to know what it should rent for, the free rent estimate covers it.
Yes, and more often than people expect. A fee only means something once you add back what it doesn't cover. An 850 square foot unit at $1.20 per square foot that includes heat, hydro, water and parking costs $1,020 a month, all in. The same size unit at $1.00 per square foot covering only water costs about $1,046 once you add the hydro, heat and parking — so the building with the higher fee is roughly $312 a year cheaper to live in. The bundled building also buys its utilities at a commercial bulk rate and absorbs the winter spike, so your cost is the same in January as in June. The trade-off is control: in a bundled building you cannot conserve your way to a smaller bill.
Normalise both sides first. Divide each fee by the unit's square footage to get a per-square-foot rate, then add back the monthly cost of anything that fee does not include — in Toronto that is typically $45 to $95 for hydro, $35 to $70 for heat, about $28 for water and $75 to $100 for parking. The number worth comparing is the total monthly cost to live there, not the advertised fee. Then read both status certificates: the fee tells you the price, the reserve fund tells you whether that price is going to hold.
Almost always: building insurance, common-area maintenance and cleaning, property management, the reserve fund contribution, water and sewer, and the running of amenities like the gym, concierge and party room. Often: heat and central air through a shared system, and sometimes hydro in older buildings with bulk metering. Rarely: internet, cable, parking and locker, which are usually separate line items, and never your own unit's contents insurance or property tax.
Yes. Condo fees go to the condominium corporation for the building. Property tax goes to the city for your unit. They are separate bills, and both are yours as the owner. A landlord cannot pass either one to a tenant as a separate charge; they are built into the rent.
Most Toronto condos fall between $0.60 and $1.00 per square foot per month. New buildings often start around $0.65 to $0.75 and climb as the first budgets meet reality. Buildings 15 years and older usually sit at $0.85 to $1.00 or more, partly because they include more utilities and partly because things need replacing. A fee well below the range is not automatically good news; it can mean an underfunded reserve.
Because the building's costs do: insurance premiums, wages, utilities and the reserve fund study, which is updated every three years and often calls for higher contributions. Two to five percent a year is typical. A sudden double-digit jump or a special assessment usually means the reserve fund fell behind.
It is the corporation's disclosure package: the budget, reserve fund study, insurance, rules, any lawsuits and any special assessments coming. It costs about $100 and a lawyer reviews it before you firm up a resale condo purchase. It is the single best way to judge whether a fee is healthy, and I read every one before a client waives conditions.
For a unit you live in, no. For a unit you rent out, condo fees are a deductible expense against the rental income, along with property tax, insurance, mortgage interest and management costs.
Text me your numbers or call. I reply fast, usually within the hour during the day.
5.0 on Google from 54 reviews. 165+ transactions closed.