Parking spots are adding a ridiculous amount to the cost of Toronto condos

Trying to find parking in Toronto is almost always guaranteed to be an arduous and costly affair, with fewer and fewer options as old spaces or entire lots are converted to housing, parks, bike lanes and more — something that most celebrate as big wins, but which some drivers and business owners may resent.

As such, private parking spots in the city can fetch a ton of dough, and it's not rare to see them for sale for six figures, which is a mind-boggling amount for a roughly eight-by-16-foot rectangle of concrete.

But some may wonder what value a parking spot adds to a home in the city, as it certainly can't be the $175,000 it can cost for a single space on its own — or can it?

Toronto neighbourhood fighting back against plan to turn parking lot into park https://t.co/xhVDD8GEf5

— blogTO (@blogTO) March 19, 2024

Canadian real estate listing site Wahi delved into the subject, finding the difference in the average price of a condo with reserved parking and a condo without parking in various pockets of Toronto (as condos are the easiest housing type to perform this investigation with).

What staff found, of course, is that location is a prime factor in the total that parking adds, and that yes, the disparity can be more than $100k.

"Toronto condos with parking sell faster — and for as much as $100,000 more or more — than units without parking," the study, released Monday, reads.

"In each of Toronto's six former pre-amalgamation cities, units took less time to sell and commanded a higher price, although the extent to which this occurred varied considerably by location."

Based on condo sales in the first half of 2024, a parking space can increase a home's price by an average of just $12,500 (in York) to a whopping $122,000 (in East York). Across all boroughs, the gap was an average $69,833.33 between a condo that has its own parking bay and one that doesn't.

Interestingly, the price of a condo doesn't necessarily correlate with its parking costs, as somewhere like Scarborough had more expensive parking ($78,000 more, on average, for a condo with a spot) than somewhere like Etobicoke ($66,150 more, on average, for a condo with parking) where home prices are higher.

Wahi found that in some neighbourhoods, a condo with its own parking space sells for an average of $122,000 more than one without, according to H1 2024 data.

Wahi's team writes, "It isn't a secret that parking in Toronto isn't cheap, but [this] analysis gives condo buyers a better idea of just how much more they may have to spend — or how much they can save — depending on whether or not they need parking."