Not sweating the small stuff
Parisian and his partner live large in 335 square feet on Queen St. — and they love it
When Erwan Roux set out to work abroad in Canada, the native Parisian envisioned moving into a big North American house.
But when he and his partner, Mikael Martinez, arrived in Toronto in January, they instead opted to move into one of the city’s smallest condos — and they love it.
“In Paris, there are a lot of very small apartments. It’s easy to find one that’s only eight square metres (87 square feet). We thought that living in Toronto, we’d have a big place. But when we saw this apartment, we fell in love and took it right away,” Roux said.
Roux moved into a “micro-condo” in Smart House, a building that recently opened at Queen St. W. and University Ave.
The unit is technically a one-bedroom, though it’s more of a studio because there’s only a sliding door separating the bedroom from the rest of the living space.
It measures 335 square feet, and it’s not even the smallest unit in the building.
When Smart House, which bills itself as a place for people who love “small but well-thought-out space,” was first announced in 2013, it garnered lots of press because its tiniest units, at 289 square feet, were to be the smallest condos ever built in Toronto.
(Floor plans for current rental listings show a unit at only 276 square feet.)
Critics called it a crazy consequence of the city’s red-hot condo market and questioned who would ever live in such a small space.
Urbanists countered that micro-condos are the wave of the future because they’re cheaper, have lower heating and cooling costs, and allow more people to live downtown.
“In the 1950s, the automobile and the creation of highways created this migration out to the suburbs,” said Cherise Burda, executive director of Ryerson University’s City Building Institute.
“But there’s been a recent return of the population to the centre.”
More downtown jobs bring more people, and that in turn attracts more jobs, creating a “snowball effect” of residents who want to move downtown, Burda explained.
But this also creates affordability problems, as demand for existing housing skyrockets.
“Micro-units offer affordability and an attractive lifestyle,” she said, adding that those who choose to live in such homes trade long, stressful commutes for less personal space.
“Micro-units shouldn’t be thought of as simply small; they’re better designed — a more efficient approach to managing space.”
Six years after Smart House was first proposed, the Star decided to visit the newly opened complex to find out who ended up living there and why they chose the city’s smallest microcondos.
“Yes, it’s very small,” said Roux, laughing.
“But we love the big windows and the view of the skyline. And you can’t beat the location.”
Living steps from Osgoode subway station and a short walk from restaurants, bars, nightclubs and theatres means that you don’t actually spend that much time at home, he said.
“We are home to eat and sleep but the rest of the time we are out. It’s like this in Paris,” Roux said.
“In the summer, it will be even better.”
Brian Persaud, a real estate agent and author of Investing in Condominiums, said microcondos are the inevitable result of developers having higher land and construction costs, but wanting to keep the price of individual units down.
“In Toronto, condos under $600,000 are more attractive and sell more easily than those priced at $700,000 and up,” he said.
But while development costs are rising across the city, Persaud notes that microcondos will only fly in the heart of downtown.
“It’s OK for certain locations but you would not be able to get away with that outside the core,” Persaud said.
“You will always get investors looking at them, but the question is whether end-users will want them.
“If you’re on top of the subway in the core, you’ll always have people looking to buy or rent there.”
Mehrunisa Kadir has lived in a North York house and a downtown apartment tower.
But when the York University business student heard about Smart House, she knew she wanted to live there and put down a pre-construction deposit right away.
Three years later, she’s freshly moved in to her two-bedroom, 699-square-foot unit with her best friend as a roommate. “It’s not that small,” she said. “They’ve distributed the space really well.”
In her previous lodgings, she had to buy shelves to store all her clothes and kitchen utensils.
But at Smart House, the storage is so well designed that she doesn’t use all her closets and cupboards, even though she moved from a much bigger place.
“I’ve never had so much space — even in a house,” she said.
Kadir says she has adapted her lifestyle to make more flexible use of her space.
She uses the kitchen island as a dining room table, for example.
One bedroom is very small, she said, fitting a queen-sized bed and not much else.
But the other, bigger bedroom has a Murphy bed that converts into a couch, making it a living room when she’s not sleeping.
“We don’t need lots of room because we’re students,” she said.
“It’s obviously too small for a family.
“But a young couple? It’s an ideal space for that.”
Like Roux, Kadir says the best thing about her apartment is the easy access to local restaurants.
“I used to use Uber Eats. But now I just walk out the front door to get my food.”