Station Park | 18, 28, 36, 40, 50 fl | U/C

[dtkvictim]

To be blunt, I resent the position that renters cannot form part of a "real community" and condo owner-occupants are "crazy".

The "local need" is for more housing stock, and many of these developments provide dense new housing near transit, which is aligned with many policy goals. Do I wish homes were marketed more as places to live and less as speculative vehicles? Absolutely. That doesn't diminish the value they have in providing real homes for real people.

That certainly was not something I intended to imply. Renters are very much part of our community in our building, too, and some of them do stay for the long term (and, conversely, some owners move out rather quickly).

What I'm questioning is ac3r's assertion that very few people would buy a new condo to live in. The condo boards have information of wat percentage of residents are owners what percentage are renters; I would be interested in knowing how many people are buying condos to live in.

I very much agree that rental condo units provide places for people to live in, although some of that has been driven by the lack of purpose-built rental housing -- something that is changing now.

According to Statcan, 55.9% of Ontario's condominium apartments are owner occupied. As this number is trending downwards, new builds would be even below that. Better Dwelling, which I don't trust as a source, uses Statcan's Canadian Housing Statistics Program to claim that non-occupying owners owned 81% of the 3,210 condo units recently built in Waterloo Region. Or in other words, about 610 people purchased condo apartments to live in during the measurement period (since 2016).

I don't know how to navigate Statcan's data to verify this claim.