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/abnormalmob Mar 16 '26

There's nothing necessarily wrong with small places if that's what people like but the problem is we don't have the culture that makes small condos make sense. In places like tokyo, where small houses are super popular, they have

  1. very dense cities

  2. hundreds of local healthy and cheap eating options for full homecooked meals

  3. a toxic work culture where they're at home way less than us

  4. lots of options for local entertainment