No, I don’t mean the TV show where an “average-looking-for-television” man sorts his way through a maze of women and picks one….to pretend that he will stay with after the show is over.

I mean the style of condo where your stove is next to your night-stand!

Beggars can’t be choosers, but is it worth living in a space that is slightly larger than many peoples’ walk-in-closets?

Apparently, his name is “Andy” and he wants a woman that will challenge him…

Anyways…

I had an interesting experience last weekend with a client, two past clients, and perhaps a future client.

Marc and I were offering on a condo up at Yonge & Sheppard, and I needed to meet him to get his signature on a sign-back.  This was about 9PM on a Friday night (I truly have no life…) and he told me he was downtown with a few buddies.

I agreed to meet him, and he told me he was at 270 Wellington Street.  I told him I knew the place; I had sold in there several times.  I could barely hear him what with all the noise in the background.  It sounded like ten bachelor parties happening simultaneously.

Marc said, “I’m at Check’s place, you know it right?”

I should think so.  After all, I sold it to him.

I stepped off the elevator on the 7th floor of “The Icon” and the fact that I couldn’t remember the actual unit number made no difference what with all the hooting and hollering coming from the south end of the hall.

I let myself in, and found a room with ten guys playing beer pong.  For some people, university simply never ends.  It seems like forever since I’ve played flip-cup…

I looked around the room and saw three clients of mine, and a handful of other guys I had either met before or heard of in passing.

Check’s place was just as good as I remembered it, and the addition of several kegs of beer didn’t hurt either.

Check said he loved living here and he agreed with my theory that there is nobody over 35-years-old in the building.  At that point, Peter yelled out “And he has Squeeze living down the hallway!”

Small world, I suppose.  But there is one subtle difference between Check’s beautiful 670 square foot, 1-bedroom-plus den condo and that of Squeeze, and it was summed up rather mildly by the fourth drunk guy to the right as he shouted, “But Squeeze lives in a f*cking bachelor!”

The room roared with good-hearted tomfoolery, and many ping-pong balls were drained into many half-full cups of beer.

Squeeze shrugged it off, but after I had obtained Marc’s signature and gone on my merry way, I began to question why a guy who makes some decent cash and owns his bachelor condo free-and-clear is still living in such a small space.

It’s not a matter of affordability, so what could it be?

Is it comfort?  Do people grow so accustomed to their “home” that they live beneath their means?

Is it a potential timing of the market?  Is he waiting for the market to bottom?

Or maybe, unlike most investment bankers, he isn’t enamoured with what other people think, and he isn’t driven by ego and the never-ending quest to be the best at things that don’t matter…

Nevertheless, it occurred to me that I have yet to sell a bachelor condo in all my years in the business, and I have only ever known two people to live in them.

Take a look at this:

This is a bachelor unit of 450 square feet.

I’m not a fan of the galley-kitchen, but I suppose any complaints would be redundant at this point.

This unit has a 21 square foot storage cabinet, a “bedroom” closet, a linen closet, and a hall closet.  Noticeably absent is a washer/dryer.

I’m sorry, but I just can’t picture having my bed four feet away from my couch.  It’s a little too intimate for me.  I mean, if “out in the open” is the theme here, then why doesn’t somebody who loses out on a seat on my couch just curl up in my bed?  It happens to be next to the couch anyways, so what’s the difference?

“Hey Greg, you’re diggin’ the high thread-count of those sheets, aren’t you?”

Here is an even smaller unit:

This unit is a whopping 390 square feet and leaves nothing to the imagination.

I haven’t heard the word “alcove” since Uncle Joey was living in one on the main floor of the Tanner household on Full House.  Oh, that crazy Danny Tanner!

Living in 390 square feet seems to me to be a fate slightly worse than death, but it would appear that people actually do it!

What gave me the idea for writing this post was a new listing that came out today at 24 Noble Street, where I seem to have been hanging out one a week lately.

The unit is a bachelor, and priced at $189,900.  Parking in this building is first-come, first-serve in the back lot, but I have yet to witness a night where there wasn’t a space to be had.

With a mere 5% downpayment, this condo would carry for the low-low price of $779 per month, plus maintenance fees.

$779 per month.

Just out of curiosity, how is the rental market right now in downtown Toronto?  What can you get for $779 per month?

I have always maintained that the cheaper a property is, the higher the demand will be.  Quite simply, there are only so many people who can afford $3 Million houses, thus it seems to reason that the properties at the opposite end of the spectrum will always have the highest demand.

Could we also reason that the lower the price, the higher the potential for appreciation?  “Sky’s the limit” might apply more-so to those properties that are closest to the ground.

To carry a property for $779 per month AND be able to live in it seems like a pretty reasonable proposition.

I have never been a fan of bachelor condos, but if it gets your foot in the door to paying down principal on a mortgage, then it is definitely worth a shot.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I PVR’d the latest episode of The Bachelorette and I just opened a bottle of Pinot Griggio while stepping out of a pleasant bubble bath…