Being a successful agent in a competitive market takes work — there’s no question you must deliver value to your clients and stand out among the crowd.

A simple way to do this is to become better informed about the area and product you’re selling. And if that happens to be condominiums in Toronto, Fusioncorp Developments’ CEO and co-founder, Nick Ainis, can help.

Backed by detailed research, Ainis’ book, Building Toronto’s Skyline, is a 10-chapter story of how Toronto’s iconic residential towers evolved — from their early late 19th-century start to today’s modern high-rise buildings. The book, written with Charlie M. Wordsworth, launched last fall.

“In modern-day Toronto, so many people reside in apartments or condos that it’s difficult to imagine a time when renting a small area of a larger building was an unconventional, even shocking, way of life. Incredibly, Toronto was an anomaly in North America before 1899 because there were no purpose-built apartment buildings in the city.”

 

– Nick Ainis

Inspiration

When asked about his inspiration for the book, Ainis told REM it comes from “a love of what I do, and a genuine curiosity with history and the evolution of the condominium industry in Toronto. I was really interested in seeing the development and evolution of the condominium industry through the decades.”

In fact, Ainis is fascinated by the history of condominiums all the way from antiquity with the Romans to today. This includes the North American legislation being introduced and the many social and economic factors and initiatives, like Ontario’s protected Greenbelt area.

What you’ll learn

Building Toronto’s Skyline discusses the boarding houses and low-rise apartments built early on in fast-growing urban areas as an affordable way to house working-class families. It goes on with information about high-rise condominiums being introduced during the mid-20th century, when developers tried out new construction techniques and building materials.

“Improved technology in construction, metallurgy and an increased abundance of resources has led to a drastic decrease in the cost of building high rises in Toronto. Laws such as the Greenbelt Act of 2005 have also limited the space available for building, motivating developers to take on the risk of building high rises to squeeze the most amount of profit out of their available space. Most of the tallest condominiums seen in Toronto today are a project of the past 20 years of growth in the industry.”

 

– Nick Ainis

Ainis describes the book as “a must-read for anyone interested in Toronto’s history and its evolution to today’s modern city.” It comments on:

• The benefits and downsides of condominiums vs apartment buildings
• How population changes, demographics and economic development changed the housing market
• The origins of condominiums from Rome to the first modern condominiums
• Key legislation influencing the propagation of condominiums
• Condominium beginnings in Toronto to its current explosive growth
• Various architectural styles of condominiums
• The future of condominiums: how they’ll look and the needs they’ll serve for future generations

The takeaway

As for the book’s biggest takeaway, Ainis says real estate professionals must have an understanding of what’s happening now to know what the future should hold:

“We have to study the trends to predict where we go in the future; to answer the hot questions of today including affordable housing and the housing crisis. We must look at history and the socioeconomic trends of the past to predict, meet and solve our current, present and future needs.”

 

– Nick Ainis

Building Toronto’s Skyline is available on Amazon in print, Kindle and audible editions.