For more than a decade, Canada’s condo boom was on. Investors, at home and abroad, drove the craze over reselling preconstruction units. Rents skyrocketed, all while the condos themselves shrank in size. Today, the bubble has burst and the housing crisis continues. New condo sales in markets like Toronto and Hamilton are at 35-year lows and prices are driving potential homebuyers out of the city core. Is this actually an opportunity for developers to course correct to find “the missing middle?”

Erica Alini, personal economics reporter for The Globe, explains why shoebox condos have been so appealing for North American developers, why the market for them has cratered and what needs to change to build cities with higher density at a liveable scale.

Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at thedecibel@globeandmail.com

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