What's My Condo Worth?

How I read a condo's value

Two units with the same square footage in the same building can be worth noticeably different amounts. A portal estimate can't see why. A buyer standing in the unit can, and so can the agent who has walked the building. Here's the order I work in.

1. Sales in your own building first. The last few units that sold in your building are the anchor. Then the buildings beside you, adjusted for age, finish and fee bundle. City-wide averages don't come into it.
2. Floor and exposure. The gap between a low floor looking into the next tower and a high floor with an open south or west view is usually the biggest single swing in a building.
3. View and outdoor space. Lake, park, skyline or the parking garage roof. A real balcony or a terrace is priced; a Juliet balcony isn't.
4. Parking and locker. Each carries its own value and both are scarce in newer buildings. A unit with neither prices differently from an identical one with both.
5. Layout and size. Usable space beats the number on the plan. A square bedroom that fits a real bed is worth more than five extra feet of hallway. Dens that take a door count; dens that don't, less so.
6. Maintenance fees and what they include. A fee that covers heat, hydro and water is a different fee from one that covers nothing. Buyers compare the headline, lenders size the mortgage around it, and the right story turns a scary number into a selling point. What condo fees include.
7. The reserve fund and the status certificate. A healthy reserve, no special assessment on the horizon and no litigation keep a building's values intact. Trouble in the certificate shows up in the sale prices before it shows up in the fee.
8. What the last comparable actually closed at, against what it asked. This is the one that moves the number most right now. Asking prices are a wish list. The gap between asking and closing in your building tells you where the real market is, and it's the part no automated estimate reads correctly.

Under Ontario's advertising rules I can't publish sold prices on a public page without consent from both sides of each deal, so none appear here. In your valuation I go through them with you privately, unit by unit, which is what the document is for.

Why the online estimate is wrong

An algorithm reads your square footage and your postal code, borrows sales from wherever it can find them, and hands you a confident number. It doesn't know your fee includes utilities. It doesn't know your view is the park and your neighbour's is the wall. It doesn't know the status certificate just disclosed a special assessment two floors up. Those three things alone can move a Toronto condo by more than the estimate's whole margin of error.

The estimate isn't useless. It's a starting guess from someone who has never been in the building. A valuation is a range from someone who has, with the sales written down so you can argue with it.

Value vs. rent

The same unit has two numbers: what it would sell for and what it would rent for. Which one matters depends on how long you plan to hold it. If you're keeping it for years, the rent and the carrying costs decide whether holding makes sense. If you're moving on, the sale price does. Owners who are torn get both from me side by side. The free rent estimate covers the rent side, and the rent vs buy calculator shows the break-even year from the buyer's seat, which is useful to know when you set an asking price.

What you get

I'm a real estate agent with Big City Realty Inc., Brokerage. The Sellers page covers the whole process from pricing to closing, and the closing cost calculator covers what comes off the top when you buy the next place.