543 Richmond Condos – Top Reasons to Invest
543 Richmond Condos is the first major condo launch in Downtown Toronto this fall. The Pemberton built development is one that we think investors should take a serious look at and we talk about some of the key reasons why:
- Excellent location with a 98/100 WalkScore and 100/100 TransitScore just steps to the heart of the King West neighbourhood
- Huge growth potential in the King West neighbourhood as it continues to become a hub for the tech companies to set up their head quarters and the neighbourhood continues to attract leading brands (Ritz Carlton, Shangri La, Nobu) and will soon be the home to world class buildings by the top architects on the planet (Bjarke Ingels, Frank Gehry). This neighbourhood is only getting better.
- The magical investor equation – Located in a low supply, high demand area – just a quick look at the TalkCondo map shows you that condo supply is very limited in this area
- AAA Developer – developed by Pemberton, one of the most trusted names in condo development in the GTA
Floor Plans and Prices are now available for 543 Richmond Condos, and you can check them out at 543 Richmond Condos Floor Plans.
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543 Richmond Condos – Top Reasons to Invest: Transcript
Roy Bhandari: Welcome to the TalkCondo release right now. Today we’re going to be talking about the first, biggest condo launch in downtown Toronto this fall. It is 543 Richmond, residences on Portland. Today, we’re going to talk about the few things that we think investors should really be paying attention to, for this condominium is an awesome project, and I think everybody should be really paying close attention to this one.
Roy Bhandari: So the first thing that we’re really excited about is the location. It’s interesting because Pemberton, for this one, they didn’t need to go with a flashy name. The name of the address was all they needed, 543 Richmond. So give us a quick rundown on the location. I know the walk score here is amazing, the transit score here is amazing. Mike, give us a quick rundown on that.
Mike Santos: Yes, with a 98 walk score, 100 transit score-
Roy Bhandari: Yep.
Mike Santos: Basically, if you want to be everywhere all at once, this is the place to be. You are just steps away from Queen Street, all the trendy shops and restaurants and everything, shops around there on Queen Street. Just five minutes from King Street West, which we’ll go into a little bit later, which is amazing. Trinity and Stanley Bellwoods Park to the west about 10 minutes. This is all walking, by the way. 15 minutes to entertainment district, 15 minutes to Kensington. You have OCAD, University of Toronto’s … There’s everything that you could-
Roy Bhandari: It’s never ending.
Mike Santos: Yeah. If you were the kind of person that wants to be in five, ten different neighborhoods all at one time, this is the spot to be.
Amit Bhandari: The exact intersection, by the way, is Richmond and Portland, as well.
Mike Santos: Yes.
Roy Bhandari: Yeah, so Richmond and Portland is interesting because the King West neighborhood, sort of the heart of the King West neighborhood is considered King and Portland.
Amit Bhandari: Right.
Roy Bhandari: That’s where all your restaurants are, that’s where the Thompson Hotel is. All of these things come together in this little pocket. I remember I think it was this time last year we sold Kingly Condominiums-
Amit Bhandari: Yeah.
Roy Bhandari: … at King and Portland. It was sold out in a weekend.
Amit Bhandari: Yep. The demand was insane.
Roy Bhandari: We’re going to come back to Kingly a little bit later, but it’s really important to understand the proximity to King and Portland.
Amit Bhandari: Yep.
Roy Bhandari: I want to transition to the second thing that we’re really excited about. Obviously the location is amazing today. The thing that we get really excited about is the location tomorrow. If you’ve been following along anything that we’ve been doing, you’ll know how excited about the future of the King West neighborhood we are. I think for good reason. I want to zoom out and look at the thousand-foot view for a second. We talk a lot about the tech boom in Toronto right now.
Amit Bhandari: Yep.
Roy Bhandari: We pulled up some stats and we were shocked to see some of these numbers. In the last 12 months, Toronto was the number one city for adding tech jobs.
Amit Bhandari: Yep.
Roy Bhandari: If you take the next four cities, which are Manhattan, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, and added their four numbers together, we still created more tech jobs than the next four combined. If you’re not seeing what’s going on in Toronto right now, you’re not paying attention.
Mike Santos: We’ve been going on about this-
Roy Bhandari: Yeah. It’s an ongoing thing. What we’re seeing is that a lot more of these tech jobs are finding home in King West.
Amit Bhandari: Yep.
Roy Bhandari: From a demographic standpoint, it makes sense, because the kind of people that the tech companies want to hire already live in King West.
Amit Bhandari: Yep.
Roy Bhandari: Give us … I mean, you [inaudible 00:03:45] a few examples.
Amit Bhandari: You know, actually, you talked about the thousand-foot view. I actually want to touch on this, because I actually think … I read about this a little bit, and I actually think this is really, really important. It sort of sets the tone for the city going into the future from a government perspective. In June, a new federal program gave Canadian companies to bring in foreign workers, high-skilled foreign workers, in as little as two weeks. It’s a 7.8 million, two-year pilot program. They announced this, that the start-up visa program, which allows foreign entrepreneurs to even get permanent residence if they move their companies to Canada. These policies are still new, but they could increase Toronto’s surging tech job numbers even further into the future.
Amit Bhandari: Another really interesting report that I read was by CBRE. What they said, they did a, I guess, a full report analyzing different markets in North America. They score Toronto as very high, in terms of the quality, in terms of the skillset. More importantly, they scored significantly better than Dallas, Minneapolis, Miami, and Phoenix. The [inaudible 00:04:58] important and really interesting thing that they found was that Toronto was the second-cheapest to operate in. 26 million total cost for a company to operate in Toronto, versus others, compared to the Bay Area, which was 57 million. It’s less than half-
Mike Santos: It’s a [crosstalk 00:05:14].
Amit Bhandari: … which is incredible.
Roy Bhandari: The big take-away for condo investors here is that this is just the beginning of the tech gap, and if you look at that gap, you look at the people … We hear it all the time, Toronto’s getting out of reach in terms of pricing. If you put all these things together, for a company to move to Toronto being significantly cheaper, the room is huge.
Amit Bhandari: It’s massive.
Roy Bhandari: The room, the view.
Amit Bhandari: It’s massive.
Roy Bhandari: You’re bringing high-skilled, high-paying jobs to Toronto all the time, and they’re coming into this neighborhood, and they’re going to want to live nearby. They’re the ones that are going to force the rents and the prices up and up and up and up.
Amit Bhandari: It also goes back. There’s a reason why there’s a lot of these tech companies that are … You said this earlier. There’s a reason why the tech companies are focusing within this neighborhood, specifically because the talent pool is here. We’ve got U of T, we’ve got York University, which is a massive boon for the city. U of T Toronto, I was reading, they themselves host 10 startup companies as a sort of like think-tank companies for the city. It’s incredible what’s going on.
Roy Bhandari: Yeah, but the other thing I wanted to focus on were the companies that specifically moving to King West.
Amit Bhandari: Yeah, exactly, within this neighborhood, yeah.
Roy Bhandari: Kingly, we already mentioned, that sold out a year ago. Shopify is moving their headquarters.
Amit Bhandari: Yep.
Roy Bhandari: We met with West Bank last week. They’re bringing the Thompson Reuters headquarters-
Amit Bhandari: We should talk about that a little bit.
Roy Bhandari: We will. We talked about the tech companies, but the other cool thing about King West and the evolution of King West, is that historically speaking, we’ve always seen the best people, the best companies, the best everything move to Yorkville.
Amit Bhandari: Yeah.
Roy Bhandari: In the next five years, the best architects on the planet, Bjarke Ingels, Frank Gehry, they’re coming to King West. The best brands, the best hotel brands. Ritz-Carlton’s already here. Shangri-La is just around the corner. Bisha just opened an amazing new hotel.
Amit Bhandari: Nobu.
Roy Bhandari: Nobu is coming. All these-
Amit Bhandari: There’s a reason.
Roy Bhandari: Yeah.
Amit Bhandari: There’s a reason why they’re coming.
Roy Bhandari: Everybody’s migrating to this area, and it’s one of those situations where this area is just going to keep getting better and better and better because the people are there, which brings the better companies, which brings the better people, which brings the better companies.
Amit Bhandari: Then it will bring in more people, it’ll drive wages higher, which in turn will drive rents higher, which in turn will drive appreciation.
Roy Bhandari: As a condo investor, this is the stuff that you should really, really, really be focusing on.
Amit Bhandari: Absolutely.
Roy Bhandari: We just think that the growth potential in this neighborhood is-
Mike Santos: Everybody’s always looking for a potential, but-
Roy Bhandari: Yeah. It’s already there. It’s already amazing.
Amit Bhandari: We should talk about Thompson Reuters.
Roy Bhandari: Yeah.
Amit Bhandari: Can we talk about it?
Roy Bhandari: Yep, sure.
Amit Bhandari: They’ll move into 19 Duncan. It’s already building their brand-new headquarters. Right now, they’re temporary housed in the South Financial Core. They wanted to hire 400 high-tech jobs over the next two years. They’re at a point already where they’re going to run out of space by the end of next year. Their aim is to invest $100 million into this new home, which is not far from 543 Richmond. It’s around the corner, and their eventual goal is to hire 1,500 people, staff at this hub of theirs, this brand-new headquarters, which is huge for the neighborhood.
Roy Bhandari: Just in a nutshell, because we talked about a lot of stuff there, but the future of King Street is incredibly bright.
Amit Bhandari: Yep.
Roy Bhandari: We’ve got the best architects, we’ve got the best brands, we’ve got some of the biggest tech companies moving into this neighborhood, and we just think that that’s going to keep bringing the prices up and the rents up, and it’s going to have this knock-on effect. This is the sort of stuff that I think condo investors should be really, really zoning [crosstalk 00:08:55] in on, zoning in on.
Amit Bhandari: For sure.
Roy Bhandari: Transitioning into point number three. 543 Richmond, Richmond and Portland. What I wrote down here was it’s in a low-supply, high-demand area. I had a peek at [inaudible 00:09:12] condo, look at, see what was available on the preconstruction market today in this neighborhood. There is nothing. We talked about Kingly sold out. Nobu, sold out. Theatre District, sold out. The only condominium in this neighborhood that had any inventory right now was Woodsworth Condos by Brad Lamb, who had a new release recently. We’re in this amazing little pocket where demand is so high, but the supply is so low. Again, if you’re a condo investor, this is the magical-
Amit Bhandari: Perfect … Yeah.
Roy Bhandari: … the magical equation.
Amit Bhandari: Yep.
Roy Bhandari: And again, we don’t see a lot of … There’s not a huge pie plan of buildings in this neighborhood. We’re all seeing the demand getting absorbed.
Mike Santos: It’s one of those things, that people see tons of cranes building the most skyscrapers in North America, but there are certain pockets that are underserved, undersupplied right now.
Roy Bhandari: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah.
Mike Santos: Talked about the commercial component of it, that’s a huge, huge component that people don’t often get a chance to get in at this time, when these things are building. It has all the variables going for the investors.
Amit Bhandari: Yeah, [crosstalk 00:10:20].
Roy Bhandari: 100%. Last point we want to touch on is the builder.
Amit Bhandari: Yes.
Roy Bhandari: When you’re buying preconstruction, you’re buying the builder. The builder here is Pemberton Developments. If you’ve spent any time with our podcast or our videos in the past, you know how highly we speak of Pemberton Developments. Mike, give us a quick rundown on Pemberton. I know you spent a lot of time with-
Mike Santos: Yes, the same as always with Pemberton. It’s just one of those tried and tested names where, “Okay, who’s doing the project? Pemberton. Okay, great.” Check that off. Don’t even have to worry about anything ever again. Huge builder in business, over 50 years. Had the most sales in 2017. They’ve been on a tear lately. Time and Space, they did four phases there. They did Social Condos last year, and they built outside of the Downtown Core as well. Mississauga, Vaughan, Maple, Richmond Hill. They’re everywhere. They’re kind of like this project. They’re everywhere at the same time right now.
Roy Bhandari: This speaks to expertise as well.
Mike Santos: Oh yeah.
Roy Bhandari: Every neighborhood, every city, has its own unique challenges, and you have to be building to that neighborhood demographic.
Mike Santos: Always sharp projects. Features, finishes are always incredible. It’s one of those where again, just you hear the name, you’re like, “Okay, we’re good to go.”
Amit Bhandari: Yep.
Roy Bhandari: Awesome. We talked about the four main things that we’re really excited about. I think all four things are things that condo investors should be looking very, very closely at. The first one was the location as it is today. Amazing location. 98 walk score, 100 transit score. Richmond and Portland.
Roy Bhandari: The second one is that the future of King Street and King Street West, this neighborhood, King West, is so, so bright, with so many tech jobs coming. The best brands, the hotel brands in the world, are coming into this neighborhood.
Roy Bhandari: We talked about this area being a low-supply, high-demand neighborhood, which is an amazing, magical equation for condo investors.
Roy Bhandari: Finally, we talked about Pemberton, the developer. It’s one of those that you can just cross it off and put it into the back of your mind. You’re safe.
Roy Bhandari: 543 Richmond. We’re really excited about this project. I think it’s a project that any serious downtown condo investor should be looking at. The project is going to be launching very, very soon. If you’re interested in this project and learning more and getting floor plans, getting prices, contact our team and we’d be happy to help.
