Are a Condo Locker and Parking Spot Worth the Money?

Published 12 November 2026 · By Jatin Dua, Broker of Record, RE/MAX Quantum Realty

Parking and a locker are usually priced separately in a Toronto condo, and buyers tend to treat them as either obviously essential or obviously a waste. The right answer depends on the building and the neighbourhood, and there are a couple of structural points that matter more than the monthly cost.

Parking: the first question is whether you can sell it later

Before anything else, establish how the parking space is held. There are three arrangements and they are not equivalent:

• Owned — a separate unit on title, often with its own PIN. You can sell it, usually to another owner in the building, and it carries its own small share of fees and taxes.
• Exclusive use common element — assigned to your unit, yours to use, but not separately saleable. It travels with the unit.
• Leased or licensed from the corporation — a monthly rental you may be able to give up, and which the corporation may be able to reassign.

This distinction decides your flexibility. An owned space is an asset you can dispose of if you stop driving. An exclusive-use space is not. Ask which one you are buying, and have your lawyer confirm it against the status certificate and title — not from the listing.

When parking is clearly worth it

• You own a car and street permit parking is unavailable or heavily oversubscribed in that area.
• The building has far fewer spaces than units. Scarcity drives resale value, and in some downtown buildings a space trades for a genuinely substantial sum.
• You are buying in a neighbourhood where most buyers will want one. In Etobicoke, Mississauga, North York and most of the suburban GTA, a unit without parking is materially harder to sell. The buyer pool narrows to people who do not drive, and in those areas that is a small pool.
• The spread between a unit with and without parking in that building is less than what a space trades for separately. That happens, and when it does it is straightforwardly good value.

When it is reasonable to skip

• You genuinely do not drive and are buying downtown, on a subway line, where a large share of buyers are in the same position. In the core, no-parking units sell perfectly well.
• Owned spaces in your building can be bought separately and are regularly available. You can acquire one later if things change.
• The parking premium is very large relative to the unit price. Paying a large premium for a space you will not use, in a building where it is hard to rent out, is money spent on nothing.
• You can rent a space in the building for a modest monthly amount. Check the rules first — many corporations restrict renting spaces to non-residents, and some restrict it entirely.

One forward-looking note, offered with appropriate uncertainty: the City has moved away from requiring minimum parking in new developments, and new buildings are being built with substantially fewer spaces. Which way that cuts is arguable — fewer new spaces could make existing ones scarcer and more valuable, or declining car ownership downtown could soften demand. I would not buy or skip parking on the strength of a prediction about this. Buy it based on whether you need it and whether the next buyer in that specific neighbourhood will.

Lockers: cheaper, and more useful than people expect

A locker usually costs far less than parking, and for most buyers it is the better value of the two.

Worth it when: the unit has little internal storage — and a great many newer units have almost none. Seasonal items, luggage, bicycles, winter tires, sports equipment and the things that accumulate have to live somewhere, and the alternative is a closet you needed for clothes, or paid storage elsewhere at a monthly rate that exceeds what a locker ever cost you.

Worth less when: the unit already has generous storage, or the locker is awkwardly located — three floors down, at the far end of the garage, requiring two elevators. A locker you will not walk to is not storage.

Resale: a locker rarely makes or breaks a sale, but it is a genuine tick in the box on a comparison between two similar units, and for small units it matters more than for large ones.

Practical things to check

• Go and look at both. Walk to the locker from the elevator and see how far it really is. Stand in the parking space and check it is a full-size space, not an undersized or obstructed one — and that you can actually open your door next to the pillar.
• Confirm the numbers. Space and locker numbers should match the documents. Mismatches are common and are a genuine nuisance to sort out after closing.
• Ask about security and water. Lockers in parking garages are prone to dampness and, in some buildings, to theft. Ask residents.
• Check whether they carry separate fees or taxes.
• Read the rules on renting them out if that is part of your plan.
• Ask whether EV charging is available or planned, and what the process is for installing it. This is increasingly the question that distinguishes spaces, and retrofitting charging in an older garage can be slow and expensive.

The short version

Establish whether the parking is owned, exclusive-use or leased, because that decides whether you can ever sell it. Outside the core, buy the parking — the resale pool for a unit without it is narrow. In the core, if you do not drive, skipping it is defensible. Buy the locker almost always, provided it is somewhere you will actually walk to.

General observations, not advice on a specific purchase. Have your lawyer confirm how parking and locker are held and what they cost before you waive conditions.