Combining Multiple Condo Units

Condos

5 minute read

August 18, 2014

I’ve seen this done countless times, but I have never seen it done effectively.

I’m sure there’s an old adage, or a saying, that explains something to the effect of, “It’s best use is for that which it was intended.”

Well, when it comes to condominiums, they’re usually most functional when they’re stand-alone, and not when a buyer decides to combine multiple units into one.

Why?  Well, because in the end, they always feel like they’re multiple units combined into one!

CombinedCondo

Have you ever walked into a duplex where the MLS listing read “Easily converts back to single family,” and thought to yourself, “Define easy?”

Imagine a duplex where the main floor of a house has a kitchen, living, and dining room, and there are two bedrooms and a bathroom in the basement.  Then the second storey has a kitchen, living/dining, and a bedroom and a bathroom.

Now how “easy” is it to convert that back to a single-family residence?

Unless you want a kitchen on your second floor, you’re talking major work here!  You’re going to have to take down interior free-standing walls on all three floors to get the “flow” of the house back to what it should be.

Now consider if this house had a third unit in the basement, which many do, and suddenly you’re ripping out everything in the structure, and starting over.

There’s nothing “easy” about converting a multi-unit dwelling back into a single-family residence.

And by the same logic, there’s nothing easy about turning multiple condominium units into ONE larger unit.

There are two ways in which this can be done:

1) Purchasing two units, and getting permission from the board of directors (after an extensive engineer’s report) to take down the concrete walls in between the units to form ONE dwelling.

2) Purchasing two units on floor plans in pre-construction, and changing those floor plans around.

Now, the first option here is almost never done.

I had a client who grew up in Brazil, and she was astonished by the fact that we can’t buy “entire floors of apartments and tear down all the walls.”  I’m sure that the way buildings are constructed in Sao Paolo may be different than here in Toronto, and their building codes must be different, as must be their process for building/renovation permits, etc.

There are places in the world where you can do this, and I know of a friend of a friend (sounds fake, but it’s true), who did this in a loft in Soho, Manhattan.

But when you’re taking down concrete or brick walls in between separate units, it can usually only be done where the building was NOT constructed with the purpose of having units that will always be stand-alone, and where the construction materials used are for that specific purpose.

Case in point: if you have a 100-year-old building converted to lofts in 1990, and then somebody buys two units in 2014 and breaks down the walls in between, then it’s much easier done than if a building was constructed in 2008, and somebody wants to break down the walls.

Most of today’s downtown Toronto condos are built with poured concrete walls in between units, and many of these are structural in nature, and cannot be removed.

The 100-year-old building example above was exactly what my colleague’s friend did in Soho.  It was much easier to knock down walls, since the entire floor of that building had no walls originally, before it was converted to lofts.

So what about the second option: combining units in pre-construction.

This is much easier to do, but I find that the units always seem to lack proper “flow.”

For some reason, when two units are combined in pre-consruction, even though you’re not breaking down walls, and technically you get to start from scratch, you can always sort of “feel” that it wasn’t designed as ONE unit.

Although there are some terrible condominium architects and designers out there, for the most part, they are better at laying out condo floor plans than we are.

So if you take two units on floor plans, and start crossing out lines, and adding walls yourself, it’s not going to feel like it “should” if it were one unit.

A purpose-built, 2,500 square foot condominium is going to have a much, much better feel, and flow, than two 1,250 square foot units that somebody combined during the pre-construction phase.

I can’t name names, since this unit is still listed for sale, but I was in a downtown $2M unit last month, over 3,000 square feet, and it absolutely sucked.

From the moment you walked in, you felt like this was originally two units, which it was.

Turn right from the foyer, and there was a hallway that was honestly 50-feet long!  Along each side of the halls were two bedrooms, a massive laundry room that had also been turned into some sort of server-room for computers, and a den.  Then the master bedroom, which was uncharacteristically large, was at the end of the hall.

Oh – and the bathroom had a urinal, which was a classy touch…

Turn left from the foyer, and there was a bedroom down the other hall, that all told, had to be about 250 feet from the master bedroom.  It was marketed as a “private, separate quarter,” but really it was just a 1-bedroom condo put together with a larger 2-bedroom condo, and it showed.

The kitchen was clearly two kitchens put together, since there was a wall in the middle of the kitchen, and it felt odd to have two of everything.

This unit lacked “flow,” and felt awful.  The only highlight was the massive living/dining room, which clearly was where the two living spaces of the two original condos were put together.

I remember seeing a condo at Radio City about 5-6 years ago where not two, but three condos had been put together, and it was cavernous, and confusing.

I went to the agent’s open house, and I actually lost the people I came with.  It was impressive that the unit was so large, but rather unimpressive that there were so many hallways, forks in the road, and doors.  Oh yeah – so many doors!

I felt like I was Homer Simpson in the episode where he goes to Mr. Burns’ house and really needs to use the bathroom, and Mr. Burns tells him, “It’s the twenty-third door on your left.”

And lastly, I recall a unit I saw at 168 King Street many moons ago, where the owner – an original purchaser, had put together two units for his own purposes so that he could have family over comfortably and feel like they were in separate quarters.

Separate quarters, yes.

The problem was: it felt like separate condos, and yet through 2,500 square feet, the kitchen was the size of a standard pocket kitchen you’d expect to find in a 650 square foot condo!

There were three rooms that could be “tv rooms,” and four bedrooms!

A buyer looking for a 2,500+ square foot condo wants FLOW!

That buyer wants a large, open concept kitchen with a huge centre island with bar stools for 4-6 people, and an adjacent dining room that could seat a dozen.

That buyer doesn’t want a tiny kitchen off in the corner somewhere, next to two bedrooms and a den.

The buyer wants a large, open, bright and airy living space that is versatile enough to allow multiple configurations of furniture and seating, for a slew of people in such a massive condo!

That buyer doesn’t want one 3-person couch across from wherever the cable happens to be in the wall, and 3-4 other places throughout the maze where you could replicate this setup.

A 2,500 square foot condo has to be set up with purpose in mind.  It has to be laid out, from scratch specifically as a 2,500 square foot condo.

I simply cannot be convinced otherwise.

Here’s a childish parallel, but one that just came to mind…

Back in the day at Bessborough Public School, in between events like the Lip Sync Contest and others, we had something called “The Invention Convention” that I believed only lasted one year.

This cute little kid – probably in grade one, came up and demonstrated his invention: The Magical Cheerio Changer.  It turned Cheerios into Froot Loops!

In reality, it was just some food dye, poured over top of Cheerios, and while clearly imaginative and novel for a 6-year-old, it didn’t change Cheerios into Froot Loops; it simply made Cheerios a different colour, and made them taste terrible.

Froot Loops have an entirely different texture, make-up, and taste than Froot Loops, and one cannot be turned into the other.

You can take two 1,500 square foot condos and combine them to result in one 3,000 foot space, but it will NEVER feel the same as if it were designed as a 3,000 square foot condo to begin with…

Written By David Fleming

David Fleming is the author of Toronto Realty Blog, founded in 2007. He combined his passion for writing and real estate to create a space for honest information and two-way communication in a complex and dynamic market. David is a licensed Broker and the Broker of Record for Bosley – Toronto Realty Group

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9 Comments

  1. VC

    at 7:47 am

    There is a unit on 22 Wellesley that had 2 units put into one during pre-construction. But it was 2 units on top of each other so the owner had a 2-storey condo. It seems pretty well laid out since the living/dining room and kitchen were on the lower level and the bedrooms on top. But I felt it was a waste of space because the second floor was loft-like. They even had the door removed from the “second floor” hallway so there is one less unit on the upper floor..

  2. IanC

    at 8:06 am

    Very tricky – Might have more success appending a bachelor to an adjacent 2 bedroom – like York Quay (02 and 03 suite). It’s an older building – so they have more flow than today’s tighter condos.
    You just gotta open up the galley kitchens.

  3. A Grant

    at 9:24 am

    With the affinity developers have for small 500 sq/ft condos, I’ve always wondered how urban centres are going to accommodate baby boomers looking to downsize/urbanize. One of the arguments I’ve heard often is that, well they can just buy two adjoining smaller units and combine them. This always seemed more of a fantasy than a reality, given the impossibility of completely removing load-bearing walls from 30+ story highrises.

  4. L D

    at 12:49 pm

    Deadmau5 (DJ/Producer from TO) lives in Merchandise lofts , and converted 2 units in to 1 mega unit.

    from what i saw in pictures it looked pretty sweet

  5. Chroscklh

    at 11:34 am

    I not aware of structure problems of combine units. I thought unit combos will become common place when family look for larger home but only find condo in city and combine unit still more cheaper than buy single-family for $2mm. This happens in NY all the time – but must find way around structural issue. When Citiplace units sell for $250/ft when become ghetto, combine unit may spell rennaissance of area. In my country, owner move walls – structural or not – sometimes steal walls to shore up own building. You come home “hey, why I have no wall?” Police do nothing, say “now you have indoor/outdoor living – all the rage in L.A.”

    1. ScottyP

      at 10:14 pm

      Hahahahaha

  6. Robert Ede

    at 7:09 am

    typo on otherwise good post
    Froot Loops have an entirely different texture, make-up, and taste than Froot Loops, and one cannot be turned into the other.

  7. CL

    at 11:45 pm

    I’m interested in what happens to the titles when the units get combined. Do they merge into 1 title? If not, does this mean that would be purchasers have to carry two mortgages?

  8. Elizabeth in Montreal

    at 6:30 pm

    Thanks for this reality check. I needed this perspective.

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