SOTTO SOTTO HOW A SMALL RESTAURANT BECAME A 'SECOND HOME' FOR A-LISTERS On Christmas night, a still-unexplained fire destroyed the building at 116 Avenue Rd., home to Spuntini restaurant on the top floor an the aptly named Sotto Sotto (Italian for underneath) in the basement.  Many Yorkville residents were tipped off to the three-alarm disaster via the throngs of smoke and screaming sirens. Ninety firefighters worked to put out the blaze, which officials... [read more]

HOW TALL CAN WE GROW? Yonge & Bloor Condos Break Barriers There's no denying that Toronto is a vertical city. Toronto has the second highest number of high-rises of any North American city and is building new towers faster than any other city in the western hemisphere. With dramatically increasing urban populations, and the commercial and infrastructure requirements that come with that, we need to build up in order to accommodate density. In response, Toronto real estate... [read more]

GTA NEW HIGH-RISE CONDO SALES IN MAY FLY TO 2ND-HIGHEST MONTHLY TOTAL EVER There is only one month on record in which a greater number of new high-rise homes were sold across the GTA than this May.  High-rise home sales totalled 3,623 units last month, the second-highest monthly tally after November 2011's and up a blistering 76% from a year earlier, according to the latest data from Altus Group, a real estate data company.  In November 2011, new high-rise sales... [read more]

IS TORONTO GETTING A NEW APPLE STORE? A RUMOUR RUNDOWN The Eaton Centre Apple Store is a harrowing place to visit. It's continually packed with a 50-50 mix of blue-shirted Apple employees and flustered customers - and, what's more, it's the only place in the city centre where it's possible to get in-person customer service for an Apple device. The place's unpleasantness has touched the life of any downtown-dweller who has ever shattered an iPhone screen. (which... [read more]

ONTARIO TRIED A SPECULATION TAX ON PROPERTY AND THE MARKET COLLAPSED OVERNIGHT For decades, Barry Lebow has kept a scapbook of one of the most traumatic business days in his life. There are some dates you always remember, and for the Ontario real estate industry it's April 9, 1974. That is the day the province shocked the sector by announcing a 50% land speculation tax.  "We had no wind of this," said Lebow, now 69. "I was 27 years old and I owned 53 houses... [read more]