When contemplating the purchase of real estate in any neighbourhood in Toronto, you have to consider the current demographic.

Who lives there now and who is going to be purchasing when you go to sell in a couple years?

I still love those demotivational posters, I don’t care how childish they are!

If you’re bored at work one day – just go to Google Images and type “demotivational posters” and have a browse through the results.  Who comes up with this stuff?

You have to admit, however, that the above graphic is true.  I grew up watching game shows in the 1980’s and elderly people were always a part of them.  Sadly, American television these days is far too concerned with image to ever consider allowing Agnes, Betty, Mabel, Gertrude, or Marjorie to step onto the set of a reality television show or game show.

But can you blame the producers?

Why would anybody want to watch octogenarians when they can watch the beautiful people that are hand-chosen “at random?”

The producers know their demographics, and society would much rather see robots like Kris Humphries and Kim Kardashian than anybody remotely real.

I had an interesting chat with a client last week about demographics when we were looking at condominium townhouses for his eventual move to downtown Toronto.

My client is a young guy who is getting out of his parents’ house in Richmond Hill, and he has decided that he wants to live in a condo townhouse, but he isn’t sure where.  He looked to me for advice, and I gave him a handful of areas:

1.  Yonge & Eglinton – There are condo townhouses on Lillian & Redpath.
2.  Queen & Bathurst – Just north of Queen Street is a complex on Carr Street, south of the park.
3.  Broadview & Dundas – This is the area I wrote about on Monday, which has a fantastic view of the Don Valley Parkway and the Don River…
4.  King & Strachan – Prime Liberty Village is in the area south of the GO train tracks.
5.  Dufferin & King – I call this “Liberty Village north,” and I don’t mention in in the same breath as Liberty Village proper.

My client honed in on areas 3, 4, and 5, and we set out on a sunny Friday afternoon to take a look.

My client is a web-site designer who sets a lot of business meetings in Starbucks and Tim Horton’s across the city, and he works out of his home.  He recognized the need early on to live in the city in which he works, and to be able to rest on his laurels when he talks about his ‘hood.

He’s 29-years-old and in a business where people want somebody who is ahead of the curve in every way, and that might be reflected in where he lives.

For this reason, we weren’t just going to look at the properties themselves, but rather the current inhabitants.

This is the part where I have to be very, very careful not to rub anybody the wrong way.  I don’t want to come off as sounding sexist, racist, prejudiced, or insensitive in any way, but the “demographic assessment” that my client and I did last weekend took into consideration ALL factors.

We looked heavily at who was living in the units we were viewing, and who was living in the complexes themselves.

We looked at age, sex, nationality, marital-status, estimated income, and everything in between.

Let’s not pretend that every person in the world is equal, and all the city’s neighbourhoods are as well.  Are there, are are there not, certain demographic clusters in the city that are easily identifiable, if not named after the demographic that lives there?  Chinatown, Little Italy, et al.  I know there is no neighbourhood called “WASP Village,” but I’m sure you more creative types can think of a few areas that meet that description…

Am I out of line?  Or am I talking about something that we all understand?

Our first stop on Friday’s tour was the townhouse complex at Broadview & Dundas.  We saw about six condo townhouses in the Broadview & Dundas complex, and we drew a few conclusions.

Many of these condos were in very rough shape, and many of them were very, very crammed!

It seemed as if five people were living inside one of the 2-bedroom units, and we noticed several “English For Beginner” type books.

Again – please don’t call me insensitive.  I’m simply doing my JOB.

After viewing a half-dozen units, we concluded that many of these units are inhabited by lower-income families, and new Canadians.

There is also some subsidized housing on Matilda Street at the south end of the townhouse complex, and we watched as an old lady emptied a coffee can full of cigarette butts out her window and onto the ground below.

Honestly, I think it’s quite fair to make this assessment.  When you’re dealing with the purchase of a $400,000 asset, you want to consider all of the variables, and real estate always involves people.

After leaving Broadview & Dundas, we headed to Liberty Village north and the townhouses on Laidlaw Street.  The first unit we looked at belonged to a real estate agent, and it wasn’t an investment property – it was his primary residence.

I’m not saying that any property owned by a Realtor is a good property, nor am I suggesting that every Realtor lives in a great property.  But my client likened it to a golf-pro saying, “A Taylor Made driver is the only driver I’ll ever use.”

The properties on Laidlaw and Joe Shuster Way were certainly more presentable than those at Broadview & Danforth, both in terms of the cleanliness and the overall quality of the finishes, but it just felt as if somebody else lived there.  Make no mistakes – there were a few dumps, but overall it felt as if there were a lot of young professionals living in the complex, and we didn’t see any condos where a family of eight was crammed inside.

We continued on to the “prime” Liberty Village condo townhouses on East Liberty, Western Battery, and Pirandello.  I call these “prime” because as I’ve mentioned in the past, I think the whole key to being in Liberty Village is to actually BE IN Liberty Village.  The townhouses on Laidlaw and Joe Shuster are simply not the same thing.  They’re a KM away and they’re tucked behind three new condo developments.

It was in a Western Battery Road condo that my client finally felt like he “belonged.”

The first unit we went into was clearly owned by a young man, as evidenced by his nine different bottles of designer label cologne.  He also had a taste for expensive shoes and belts, as well as fine vodkas.

My client does not own designer cologne, belts, or vodkas, but he is a young, single man like the guy that clearly lived in this condo, and he felt like he could relate better to the unit and the area itself.

The next unit clearly had a woman’s touch, but it also contained a half-dozen medical textbooks and it became apparent that the owner of this unit was in her medical residency.  No, medical residents don’t make a ton of money, but they’re certainly on track to do so!

My client will likely only be in the condo for 2-4 years, as that seems to be the average for a first-time condo buyer, in my experience, so even though he had yet to purchase the condo, he was already considering who might purchase it a few years down the road.

The more we looked around the Liberty Village townhouses, the more we realized that they are primarily inhabited by 25-35 year olds, many of whom are single.  Not only would my client fit in with the demographic around him right now, but he would also benefit financially if the area continued to gain favour with our city’s affluent youth.

Is it out of line to suggest that lower-income families in the Broadview & Dundas complex don’t have the “big money” that today’s young, urban professional does?  I don’t think so.  I think identifying the demographics of the area in which you’re investing is good business practice, and it’s no different from reading the balance sheet of a company in which you are buying stock.

The young, urban professionals are the ones that will continue to drive the prices up in Liberty Village, and they’re the ones who will pay top dollar for my client’s unit when it’s his time to sell.