Are Condo Units Sitting Empty in Toronto? (2019)

jacojoubert.com

1 pointjfil3 comments

> take one photo every five minutes starting at sunset and stopping at sunrise for one week straight

Seems like a shitty approach to measuring vacancy. And even with this approach, it's only ~5% vacant which is where a healthy housing market should be. I don't doubt that there's a non-zero amount of long term empty condos held onto by investors but the problem is much smaller than what NIMBYs want everyone to think.

These 5%-13% condo vacancy rates in Toronto in 2019 were happening against a backdrop of rental vacancies of 1.1% (for new rentals) and 0.8% (for all rentals in the Greater Toronto Area)[1]. That's what made that +5% of available condo stock vacant and unrented such a shocker.

[1] https://www.urbanation.ca/news/311-city-toronto-vacancy-rate...

My point is that it's terrible heuristic and likely overestimates the actual vacancy rate

e.g. legitimate units can go empty for longer than a week when transitioning between tenants

Reply on news.ycombinator.com