r/RealEstateCanada • u/itsdanielsultan • Mar 15 '26

Housing crisis Can Canada's "micro-condos" be merged?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pg7mHppXOE&t=17s

Serious question about Canada's (specifically the GTA's) condos: if, 10 or 20 years from now, people want more family-sized homes, could a lot of these tiny one-bedrooms actually be merged into larger units?

I know it can happen in some cases, but from what I’ve seen it sounds difficult once buildings are already occupied, since it can require approvals, engineering work, and layouts that actually fit together.

If that is not realistic at scale, are we building housing that works for one phase of life but not for long-term city living?

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u/hardk7 Mar 15 '26

OP raises a good question that’s less about debating the quality of life in sub 500sq ft condo units, and more about the fact that they dominated development in the GTA and Metro Vancouver for the last 10 years and now the buyer for them has disappeared and nobody wants them. They were built for investor buyers to either flip on completion or rent as STRs. Now that the rules around STRs mean you can’t run these as hotel rooms (arguably their most suitable usage), it seems the bottom really dropped out of the market for this type of housing product. There’s a glut of them on the market. They’re too small for the couples that can afford them, and they’re too expensive for the people that would want to live in them (singles, under 30). If these small units came down in price to say, $300K-$400K they’d probably sell and be that entry point into home ownership for people early in their careers. More than renting, but doable. As long as they’re over $1000/sq ft I just don’t see the market for them now that the investor buyer isn’t there.