Festival Tower Update: Units Starting to Move

My last blog post I wrote about the Absorption Rates of various downtown condos got a lot of attention and even inspired my friend John Pasalis from MoveSmartly.com to write a great post about the condo market. The issue I wrote about was the fact that some condos, like Festival Tower for example, are loaded with listings for sale but units are not actually selling. It’s been nearly 2 months since then and I thought it was time for an update.

The good news is that after nearly 3 months of no sales, there have been a couple sales at Festival Tower in the last week. A 1 bedroom + den with no parking sold for $435K (approximately $693 per square foot), but the sale that really got my attention was a studio that just went for $365K. To my knowledge, this represents the highest selling price for a studio apartment in the city over the past year, and possibly EVER (for resales, not pre-construction). At this price the buyer paid approximately $750 per square foot. Very impressive and shows that studio apartments can sometimes be fantastic investments as these units were originally selling in the mid $500s per square foot.

In addition, there are currently 3 units that are all sold conditionally (meaning they will likely be sold firm soon). All 3 are in the $414K-$452K range and all are 1 bed/1 bath units. Once these sales start to go through, values will pretty much be set in the building and the dominoes should start to fall. I will continue to watch with intrigue to see where values go in this building over the 6 months.

The big question is still this: will Festival Tower command a premium over other newly completed (or about to be completed) buildings in the area? The few sales we have seen so far seem to indicate that there will be a premium, but how much will that premium be exactly is still unknown.

Questions or comments? Please contact me any time.