Quote:
Originally Posted by suburbanite
A significant number of those immigrant-owned condos are occupied by native Canadians though, at least in Toronto. I bet if you surveyed under 30s renting in Downtown Toronto, well over 50% would be living in a rental condo unit, paying their rent with an e-transfer to a personal gmail account as opposed to the A/R department of a management company. One thing that can be definitively said is that there aren't large swaths of unoccupied, foreign investor-owned condos. I'm less concerned about who owns what, because as I said previously, the city has basically just replaced large institutional landlords with thousands of small independent ones.
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Which isn't a great model, either. Amateur investors tend not to make good landlords - especially when Airbnb is generally easier and more lucrative for them. And because they're looking at homes in terms of financial returns and not as a place to live, they'll buy anything regardless of how awkward or undersized or poorly finished the unit is; and so developers will keep pumping out the crap to respond to investor demand rather than the demand of what the actual end user wants (ie. family-sized units, bedrooms with actual windows, etc).
Anecdotal, but just about everyone I know who has ever rented a condo has ended up being evicted sooner or later (ostensibly so the owner can "move in" - in reality, more likely so they can sell it or jack up the rent).