The extent of change in Canada's largest metropolis has been so sweeping during the past three decades that it can be hard to make a connection between then and now.
Consider that when the Toronto Maple Leafs last reigned as Stanley Cup champions, this city had never seen a condominium. Today, the Leafs are again contenders after one of the longest hibernations in professional sport.
And in Toronto's booming real estate market, one-third of all new homes are condo units.
Bert Winberg is a bridge between the two eras. The 79-year-old founder of the Rockport Group built Toronto's first condominium project and sold it in a skeptical market in 1968-1969. More than a generation later, his company is still turning out low- and mid-rise condo developments and helping further advance a concept that unleashed a burst of construction and home ownership that continues to this day.
When Ontario introduced the Condominium Act in 1968, Mr. Winberg was well aware of the success condo developers were already enjoying in California and Florida. The residential construction boom in Southern California at the time struck him as "mind-boggling."
This awareness, as well as his partnership in a small savings and loan company, spurred him into the condo business. When the act was introduced, he converted a project of 59 rental townhouses already under way into what would become Toronto's first registered condominium.
There were no elaborate market studies done in advance to see which neighbourhood offered the greatest potential to which demographic. "You went where you had land and where you had zoning," he says. And so the city's first condo showed up behind a shopping mall that Mr. Winberg owned on Albion Road in Rexdale.
"The problem was that no one knew what a condo was," Mr. Winberg recalls.
Banks weren't interested in lending money for what they considered a risky new form of development and consumers were skeptical, to say the least. The builder had to convince prospective purchasers that they really were buying a house, even though they would only own the property up to the underside of the ceilings and the inside of the windows, he says.
"In those days, it really was a tough sell," he says. "But people began to realize that a condo meant they could buy a home for a reasonable carrying cost."
Rockport drew its funding for the first condominium ($1.3-million) from Commonwealth Savings and Loan, which later became Ontario Trust Co., which eventually sold out to Canada Trust. The idea that a developer would provide his own funding was novel enough at the time that Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. had to approve the arrangement, Mr. Winberg says.
The townhouses on Albion measured about 1,300 square feet each and sold for about $20,000.
The new business model revolutionized the home-building industry in the city. The Condominium Act enabled developers to get their money out of their projects more quickly. Instead of leaving money tied up in owning a rental complex that produced income, a developer could sell the entire project as a condominium, freeing up principal and profit to reinvest in more houses. As the builders' costs came down, so did the cost of owning a home.
A number of factors helped popularize the condo concept. Baby boomers were ready to buy their first home, and during the inflationary years of the 1970s, high mortgage rates put detached houses out of reach of many first-time buyers.
Later, investors entered the condo market looking for quick returns or a steady stream of income, creating a secondary market of purchasers.
Rockport ramped up its condo development quickly. It registered four more condominiums in the Rexdale area, and by 1971 was producing 400 townhouses a year.
Today, the company's focus is on Pickering, Scarborough and Newmarket, where it has built more than 10,000 houses. With one of its latest projects, the Serenade townhouses in the City of Pickering, Rockport has adopted a new form of condominium development known as common-element condos. In this model, only the roads and landscaping are common elements to the registered condominium, while the homes themselves are freeholds.
Common-element condominium projects allow builders to get their money out of a project even faster, because they can start the process of handing ownership over to buyers as soon as the infrastructure is complete. This arrangement also reduces monthly common expenses for homeowners.
Jack Winberg, chief executive of Rockport and Bert Winberg's son, says the company was able to register Serenade as a condominium between 50 and 60 per cent faster than other projects.
"The faster I'm able to get my money out, the less my money costs, and I can pass that saving on to a buyer," he says.
As Bert Winberg looks back on 35 years of condo development in the city, he applauds law makers for consistently updating and improving the Condominium Act. He discards any concerns about an impending crash in the condo market and advises consumers to "buy what they want -- whatever they can afford. There are so many builders competing with one another in Toronto that this remains an affordable market on an international scale."
His biggest concern for the market is a lack of skilled trades people, which could threaten to hurt supply or quality, he says.