It’s largely about the pre-sales in construction lending these days—and one of Canada’s headliner projects (the $500 million Ritz Carlton Vancouver) just didn’t have enough.
"To get financing, you need a certain amount of presales – and because we didn’t have enough units sold, financing didn’t turn out the way we wanted," said project spokesman Joo Kim Tiah to the Globe.
62 of the 123 Ritz condos were sold, or just over 50%. A few years ago that might have been enough to get the project financed and completed. But not in this market. In the Ritz’s case, its banks wanted over 60% pre-sales. (Lenders are now looking for upwards of 75% in other big condo projects around the country.)
it is a bad idea to begin with, pre-sale is very bad for buyers as they have no say in it. I feel sorry for them who already registered in it.
It’s unfortunate for the buyers but that doesn’t make presales bad.
You can’t put up a building without presales Ash.
they used to do that before, now what happened?
Not surprising given the financing market.
Question is, what’ll happen with the Trump Tower in Toronto? The Ritz here has enough pre-sales to go, but I heard Schnaider is/was building Trump with ca$h.
The Trump Tower Toronto is well financed and well under construction already.
Here is another thing I found out today and thought was interesting: Trump’s new Toronto tower has the largest height-to-land-area ratio of any building in North America. The parcel it sits on is just 15,000 sq ft!
http://www.trumptoronto.ca/main_nav.html