Shifting Condo Conversations

A change in the discussion around housing choice: what new things come to mind when a person chooses life in a dense urban setting?  And leaves behind thoughts of car suburb and single-family home.
Turns out one thing, among a load of others, is keeping less stuff around.  Perhaps you can call it a change from conspicuous consumption to mindful minimalism. A shift from expensive and cluttered to cheaper and simpler. Not a bad thing.
And hopefully this conversation continues to broaden so that the condo rises as a well-understood choice and the SFH recedes as the default choice.
Ian Bailey writes in the Globe and Mail:

One of the consequences of dense living – the trend that has seen people living in smaller spaces – is that there is less room to store items. This is an issue in many urban areas, but especially germane in the Vancouver region, which has the lowest proportion of single detached houses in Canada, about 29 per cent . .
. . . Greg Zayadi has had a perspective on the issue as senior vice-president of Rennie Marketing Systems . . .  Despite the angst, however, he doesn’t think space is a deal breaker.
“It’s the age-old adage of location, location, location. People are buying based on location, price, and then the home itself. One of the most important things is a good floor plan. Is it a liveable home,” he said in an interview.
“As you move through those things, you are already 80 per cent of your way through the buying decision. The last thing is, maybe, amenities – maybe storage, maybe appliances. . . .
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re 20 or 80. You’re making the decision to live – call it more simply, call it more urban. People are looking for more freedom from a home, shall we say. With that, there’s an adjustment of lifestyle.”

Another voice in the conversation is at “5 Kids, 1 Condo“, a blog run by Vancouver’s Adrian Crook.   Always worth a read.

Living downtown keeps me connected to personal and professional opportunities I never imagined when I lived out in North Vancouver, about 15 kilometers and a persnickety bridge north of the city core. In the “bad old days,” when I was already tired from a commute home, and another long drive and downtown parking lay between me and a networking event, I usually chose to kick back and call it a day.