There are two types of condominiums I really HATE in Toronto:
1) Stacked Townhouses
2) Anything at Cityplace

I’ll tackle both of these this week, starting with the stacked townhouses, which look great on paper, and ALWAYS disappoint when seen in person…

Don’t get me wrong, I love stairs.

There’s nothing quite like running down the stairs on Christmas morning to see the bounty of gifts that your parents have felt morally obligated to purchase for you after years and years of the commercialization of an otherwise religious occasion…

And there’s also nothing quite like taking a toboggan out of the garage while your parents away (at aged 17…) and sliding down the stairs….and into the wall.

But stairs in a stacked townhouse is another story altogether.

Townhouse condominiums bridge the gap between houses and condos for many buyers, and often provide that “community” feel since often they have gated courtyards with walk-ups like this one below:

But these complexes consist of many different types of condos, which come in many different shapes and sizes; pardon the cliche.

There are 1-bedrooms and 2-bedrooms, “lower level” units with small patios, large 1-bedroom units on one level, and 2-bedroom multi-level units.

And it is these multi-level units that I despise.

There are four main stacked-townhouse clusters in the City of Toronto that are identical:
1) Yonge/Eglinton - Redpath Ave & Lillian Street
2) Jarvis/Carlton - East side of Jarvis
3) Queen/Bathurst - Carr Street
4) Liberty Village - East Liberty Street, Western Battery Road, Douro Street

While these complexes may be different in geographic areas and perhaps constructed by different builders, they are derived from the exact same blueprint.

And they all have the three-storey stacked townhouse units.

On paper, this sounds great: “three storey townhouses!”  Sure, that sounds good - it’s two-storey’s more than your traditional flat condo!

But in practice, they’re terrible.

Try and picture what I’m about to describe: You open the front door, and the first thing you see is…..a set of stairs.  There is barely enough room to take your shoes off, and you ascend to the upper level.  There is a small kitchen with a breakfast bar, and a very small living space known as the “living/dining” room where you can only fit one couch and chair practically without crowding the room.

Then, you climb yet another set of stairs, only this one has two flights separated by a landing.  At the top of this set of stairs, there is a 4-piece bathroom, and two small bedrooms that are separated by a thin sheet of drywall.

Then, you climb another set of stairs where you find a cupboard with your washer/dryer, and a door that opens to a rooftop “terrace.”  Sure, it’s outdoor space, but the tar-and-gravel roof with the noisy A/C units isn’t exactly paradise.

In summary, you have three flights of stairs, which comprise probably 25% of your actual square footage.

And this is where my first critique comes into play.

A friend of mine was jet-set on purchasing a townhouse on Carr Street since he loved the west-end, and kept telling me about the “value in the square footage.”  The 3-storey units were about 900 square feet, and that was great value for $329K!  But once we arrived and climbed the three narrow staircases, it became apparent that the unit didn’t feel like 900 square feet, and that probably 200 square feet of that was in stair-form.

See this:

That is the first thing you see when you come in the front door.  Does that feel warm?  Does that feel like “home?”

The living room in most of these stacked townhouses is just too small to do anything with.  There is a 2-piece washroom across from the staircase, so you can’t put a couch against the back wall since it would sit in between the stairs and the washroom.  This essentially cuts your living room down even further, and God forbid if you don’t have a flat-screen TV and need space for an old-school TV.

And from the couch in your tiny “living room,” look to your right and you see this:

Maybe the landing at the top is larger in some stacked townhouses, but this “l-shaped” or curved staircase is what leads you to your second level.

The other major issue I have with these units is that the two bedrooms (which are insanely small) are not of the “split bedroom plan” design that you’d look for in most condos.  The bedrooms adjoin, and thus a paper-thin wall separates you from your roommate or child.  I’ve rented some of these units to young people, and let’s just say that they complain about the “noise factor” due to the thin walls and a lack of privacy results.  Oh, and if you own fifty pairs of shoes, you can forget these stacked townhouses; the closets in both bedrooms are tiny.

I’ve always been a fan of outdoor space and patios, so I will say that it’s nice to have the rooftop terrace, even if it is a little confined and dirty.  But if you plan on BBQ’ing, you’d also better plan on carrying your steaks from the kitchen, up the first set of stairs, past the bedrooms, up the second set of stairs, and onto the roof.  Imagine having to check your steak 2-3 times?  You could get the Benz from going up and down so many times!

There are exceptions to the rule, and not all these stacked townhouses are created equal.  But for the most part, they’re all the same, and they’re all overpriced crap in my mind.

But you know what?  These units still sell with regularity.  I think, however, that the “resale” value is the result of a circle-game, since people buy them for the perceived value and then sell them to somebody else for the exact same reason.  It’s like how all new home builders include both a standing shower AND a large jacuzzi tub in the master bathroom.  Most people don’t use the large jacuzzi’s since they’re so impractical, but people want them because it increases resale value!  I have a friend who has built three houses and included jacuzzi’s in all of them; would you believe he and his wife have NEVER used the jacuzzi?

In the resale world, the stacked townhouses hold their value just like the jacuzzi’s in newly-constructed houses.

But I find them to be impractical, boring, narrow, and a complete waste of space.

They’re hard to furnish, and they’re too small to entertain in.

And if there are two people living in the two separate bedrooms, you might as well knock down the wall since it’s only there for posterity and nothing else.

But nothing chafes me quite like the three sets of staircases, each more narrow than the next.

Hmmm….maybe I’m just raging about anything to do with stairs after taking part in the CN Tower Stair-Climb on Sunday morning.  Can anybody beat 14 minutes and 28 seconds?

Nah, it’s got nothing to do with my 1776-stair orgy-of-joy in Toronto’s landmark, and everything to do with the townhouses themselves.

Townhouse-buyers: be warned!

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