Kings Club started life as condo project but was converted to purpose-built rental units after attempts to presell units didn’t come close to sales projections.The Globe and Mail
Close to 4,000 people have signed up to receive updates about a Liberty Village rental complex that won't begin accepting tenants until 2018, in just the latest example of the effects of the 16-year-low vacancy rate for rentals in the City of Toronto.
Kings Club is a three-tower project with 506 apartments that started life as a Urbancorp condominium project in 2012, and then in 2015 converted to purpose-built rental units after its attempt to presell units didn't come close to sales projections.
It is now a co-production of First Capital Realty (which owns and will operate the three-story retail podium that will host a Longos, Canadian Tire and other anchor stores) and Canadian Apartment Properties Real Estate Investment Trust (CAPREIT), one of the largest landlords in the country with almost 50,000 apartments under management and 16,000 in the Toronto area.
It's also the first condo conversion CAPREIT has bought, but Trish MacPherson, executive vice president with the trust, says the desperate lack of new rental inventory in the city has the company kicking the tires on other projects.
"It used to be home ownership was the golden ticket," she says. "Now people are looking at rentals as a long-term housing solution."
The city may be well past due to invest in new rental properties: The vacancy rate for rentals in the Toronto area hit 1 per cent in 2017, just as the cost of rent grew 4 .2 per cent, more than double the annual growth rate at the beginning of the decade.
Shane Dingman