On April 20, Premier Doug Ford made the official announcement of a massive condo project in York Region, along the Yonge Subway Extension.
How massive?
40,000 units.
Sounds pretty crazy.
But that aligns with the government’s plan to expand public transit and to build more housing units.
As we all know, people and businesses congregate around subway stations and properties along the subway line generally have better values.
And that’s pretty much true for all cities around the world.
Every time the subway expands, it brings along lots of new opportunities.
This time, the subway is expanding outside the City of Toronto to Markham and Richmond Hill.
So it’s important for you to understand the whole story.
Let’s start at Yonge and Sheppard.
The Sheppard station is just 1 block south of the existing terminal station Finch.
You see, this is the most condo-heavy area in North York and there’s no more land.
Besides, the Finch station has been the terminal station on the Yonge subway line since 1974.
It’s really time for us to expand further north.
The first new station will be at Yonge and Cummer.
The second one, Yonge and Steeles.
See how different this intersection feels compared to Sheppard and Finch.
On our lower left-hand corner is the Centrepoint Shopping Mall.
It’s really outdated and we know how retail shopping malls are struggling because of online shopping.
The only ones that are still doing well are the signature ones like Eaton Centre and Yorkdale.
So a proposal has been put in to demolish the Centrepoint Mall and turn it into a huge mixed-use community.
Here’s a preliminary look of it.
This piece of land on our upper left is currently a car dealership complex.
Another enormous development proposal has been put in for the land.
20 years later, we won’t recognize this intersection anymore.
Continue on with our subway ride, into the City of Markham.
North of Steeles is dominated by low rise homes.
Yonge and Clark.
We have some really nice golf courses here in the heart of Thornhill.
If you remember my video about a Tridel luxury condo right on a golf course, it’s right here.
Yonge and Royal Orchard.
Then we’re going to connect to the existing Go Rail.
The Langstaff Go station will also be the future Bridge subway station.
And we have just entered Richmond Hill from Markham.
Moving north towards High Tech Road.
This will be the new terminal station for the Yonge subway line.
Today, we already have the Go station and the Viva bus terminal here.
With the addition of a subway terminal, this will become a true transit hub for Richmond Hill.
And that’s exactly why the government used the fast track zoning orders to approve transit-oriented communities to be built on this piece of land here.
TOCs, Transit Oriented Communities, you will be hearing this term a lot as Ontario’s future direction is all about transit and housing.
So for this piece of land here, it will have condo communities consisting of 40,000 units.
Something like this…
Just a rough illustration, but you get the idea.
A lot of high rise buildings with a lot of units.
You can say this is a very crazy idea.
You can question whether this is feasible at all.
But there’s one thing for sure, the government knows that we need A LOT of housing units to handle the huge influx of people coming into the Greater Toronto Area.
And the government actually relies heavily on investors to increase housing supply.
What do I mean by that?
Let’s suppose investors are not allowed.
Developers are trying to put up new buildings to increase supply.
They will have to sell the majority of the units at pre-construction in order to secure the construction loans.
How many end users are going to purchase a unit that won’t be ready 4 to 5 years down the road?
Not very many at all.
Your job, your family could change a lot in 4 to 5 years, so most people would go for a resale when it comes to self use, something that they can make use of immediately.
So if developers can only rely on end users, they are not going to do very well in sales.
If they can’t sell in advance, they can’t build, then supply actually decreases.
Why can’t the government just build more rental units themselves?
When the government does things, it needs to go through many different layers.
The result is a much longer timeline.
More time costs more money.
And with the ever increasing construction costs, plus the inflation, supply chain and labour challenges we’re facing right now, inefficiency is going to be very very costly.
So it’s actually going to be much more expensive for the government to construct a building compared to a developer who builds for profit.
And in the end, where does the government’s money come from?
The taxpayers.
People are going to have to pay more taxes.
So the government built units may help some people, but they are going to hurt some people as well.
You see, that’s why the government relies on market developers to increase housing supply and developers rely on investors to start building.
So investors actually play an important role here to increase housing supply.
With this video, I hope I gave you a bigger picture of the housing shortage problem we are facing.
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