Want a Condo? Take a Number

Despite recent doom and gloom predictions for the Canadian real estate market, people are still lining up for condos here in Toronto. Case in point: College Park Phase 3: Aura. After watching the conversation on my last post on the development degrade into a weird debate on the validity of Chinese numerological beliefs, I thought maybe it was a good time to update the subject.

The line up for the broker's event grew slowly but steadily in the days before the event, and by the time they opened up the doors there were well over 200 agents waiting for a number. Yes, that's right, buying a condo in this town is not all that different from buying a nice cut of meat in Kensington.

Many of the 200+ agents were turned away as the developer only released a few hundred units for the broker's event and agents were permitted to sell a maximum of 2 units each. Predictably, they sold out all the units they released within a few hours. Still, it wasn't the bedlam that was witnessed at 1 Bloor, and more importantly, most thought they were treated relatively fairly by the developer and prices were more or less as advertised.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that Aura had a decidedly strong appeal overseas with many buyers hailing from Asia, Europe and the U.S..

Photo from Singtao

Andrew la Fleur is a registered real estate agent and regular contributor of blogTO.