Karma Condos, 15 Grenville St: Small Suites, a Saved Victorian House

Karma Condos is the building I show buyers who want to be at Yonge and College and are happy to live small to do it. It is a 50-storey glass tower on Grenville Street with a restored 1870s Victorian house tucked against its east side, and almost every suite is under 820 square feet. The location is excellent; the fee per foot is the part I want you to look at hard. I’m Jatin Dua, RE/MAX Quantum Realty.

A tower built around an 1870s house

The most unusual thing about Karma is at its base. The site held the John Irwin House, a heritage-designated Second Empire home from the 1870s (UrbanToronto has reported both 1871 and 1873). Rather than demolish it, the builders moved it from the northwest corner of the lot to the northeast corner, beside St. Luke’s Lane, so it would sit more prominently on the street.

The engineering was unusual too. Crews drilled caissons, poured a slab on top, moved the house onto it and then dug the four-level underground garage beneath it. The restored house was planned as a shop or restaurant, which gives the building a piece of street frontage you cannot get in a typical glass podium.

Above that sits a slim architectsAlliance tower by the Peter Clewes team, with Cecconi Simone on the interiors.

Small suites, by design

Condos.ca puts the suite range at about 277 to 819 sq ft. That is the defining fact about Karma. There are studios, one-bedrooms, one-plus-dens and compact two-bedroom plans, and nothing that would suit a family that needs a third bedroom.

Some of the design choices make small spaces work better. During construction UrbanToronto noted sliding translucent glass screens on some bathrooms, which pull daylight deeper into the suite, and glass wind screens on the corner balconies at the east and west ends of the tower. Those screens make a corner balcony on a high floor far more usable.

Views depend on height and direction. From the upper floors you look south past the 78-storey Aura toward the Financial District, or north over Church-Wellesley and Bloor-Yorkville. Lower suites look into neighbouring towers, including YC Condos on Yonge, which was built right beside Karma after it.

The fee is the question

Condos.ca lists only heat and water as included, and current listings work out to about $1.10 per square foot. That is high for a 2016 building with no pool and a short inclusion list. It is partly the arithmetic of small suites: shared costs like concierge, elevators and insurance are spread over fewer square feet per owner, so a studio pays a lot per foot.

Asking fees across current listings run from about $334 to about $947. For an investor, that fee eats directly into yield. For an owner-occupier, add hydro and parking costs on top before comparing Karma with an older building that bundles more into the fee.

There is one fair point in the building’s favour. A small suite with a high fee per foot still has a modest monthly fee in dollars, and for many first-time buyers the total monthly cost is what decides affordability, not the figure per foot. Just make the comparison honestly.

Ask for the current budget, the most recent reserve fund study and the last few years of fee increases. A ten-year-old tower with a big amenity floor and a heritage structure on site has more to maintain than its age suggests.

Living at Yonge and College

Grenville Street is a short, quieter side street, which is the best thing about the address. You get Yonge and College on your doorstep, with College Park, the hospitals on University Avenue and the University of Toronto and Toronto Metropolitan University campuses within walking distance, without living directly on Yonge.

That location is why the building rents well to students, hospital staff and young professionals, and why so many suites are small. It also means you share the building with a lot of tenants. Look at the declaration and rules on leasing and move-ins, and ask management how busy the elevators are at peak times.

The area keeps adding towers. YC Condos rose next door and more projects continue around Yonge, Bay and Wellesley, so a view you buy today can be partly blocked later. The automatic panel on this page covers transit and walkability.

What Karma costs per square foot

Condos.ca puts the building average at about $987 per square foot. That is a high figure, but small suites always carry a higher price per foot, so compare it with other compact-suite towers rather than with buildings full of 900 sq ft two-bedrooms.

Current asking prices give a sense of the ladder. One-plus-dens between 500 and 600 sq ft are asking about $540,000 to $560,000, and two-bedroom-plus-den plans of 800 to 900 sq ft are asking about $1.0 million to $1.09 million. Those are asking prices, not sales.

The bigger gap is between the larger and smaller plans. Two-bedroom-plus-dens are scarce here, and they ask noticeably more per foot than the one-bedrooms. If you want the real numbers behind a particular plan, I can pull recent sales through my building sold report.

Building specifications

Amenities at Karma Condos

The amenities sit in the podium: a fitness floor overlooking Grenville, then a third-floor lounge, games room, theatre and party room opening onto an outdoor terrace with barbecues. The original plans also described his-and-hers steam rooms in the change rooms; confirm what is operating today. For people living in under 600 sq ft, a party room and a terrace are effectively their dining room and backyard, which is why these spaces matter more here than in a building of larger suites.

Jatin’s honest take on Karma Condos

Karma Condos — frequently asked questions

Looking at St. Lawrence, the Financial District and Downtown Yonge more broadly? Start with my Toronto community guide — the neighbourhoods, what each pocket is like, and how they compare.