How the Toronto condo bubble burst

During a July episode of one of the GTA’s many condo investor podcasts, brokers Ralph Fox and Zhen Liang bantered about “a big problem no one’s talking about.” Many problems, actually: investors who’d gambled on flipping preconstruction units and were left holding an asset they couldn’t afford to close on; cramped downtown one-bedrooms that were sitting on the market for months with little prospect of moving; eye-watering losses; agents who’d gone AWOL.

In fact, the rapidly accelerating crash had become a topic of obsessive debate in the condo industry.