Fifteen years ago, you almost couldn't give a condo away. Now some people line up overnight to buy them. Partly that's because of a housing market so hot that getting your foot in the proverbial door no longer means a derelict semi, but a pint-sized condo. But another reason is the condo lifestyle, which has become an entrenched part of city life and has also altered the way the city looks.

While experts say the first-time buyers represent the majority of the condo market, and empty nesters looking to downsize from large homes comprise most of the rest, there's an emergent group on the hunt for bigger units and they're coming from surprising quarters.

Some existing condo dwellers, smitten by both the building amenities and what the surrounding vibrant neighbourhood has to offer, are ``upsizing'' when equity permits, or to accommodate an expanding household.

And there are those weary from long commutes trading high-maintenance suburban homes for condos in neighbourhoods that having been building character for decades.

"People need more than a job and a house," says Paolo Palamara, co-president of Diamante Corporation. "It's not right to have to drive for a cumulative time of 13 weeks a year to and from work. Why bother with a backyard and a pool when you're not there?"

Nick Rossi is a good example of this trend. Although he initially worried about downsizing his family from a four-bedroom home in Brampton to their 1,000-square-foot City Place investment condo, life close to theatre, restaurants and the Air Canada Centre is sweet. His 20-year-old son is close to university, the lake is five minutes away, and the building has 30,000 square feet of exercise equipment, swimming pool, sauna, billiards, and a movie theatre.

Other recent acolytes to the condo life are young families, drawn to the growing number of services in the downtown core. Architect Sybil Wa, for example, started out with her husband, Adam Parkin, a corporate banker, in a studio-sized condo near the St. Lawrence Market. With the birth of each of their two children, instead of answering the siren call of more bedrooms and a yard, they stayed in the same building but moved up in size. "The No. 1 reason why we live downtown," Wa says, "is for more time with the family. We both work in the downtown core, our children are in daycare, and without commuting, we're home with them quickly."

They're also close to some desirable natural amenities. "Centre Island is my backyard," says Wa. Being able to walk to the park, shops, movie theatres, St Lawrence market fits with her belief in sustainability – higher densities in the core mean less load on arable land.

"It just feels more responsible to give up the car. In the suburbs, you drive where you need to go, here we walk."

But there are challenges to condo life, too. Palamara has talked to many potential Diamante condo buyers who are skeptical of being able to live properly in constrained condo space.

"One family from Richmond Hill came with a whole list of areas they thought they needed. They couldn't believe it when we pared down the necessary space to 500 square feet. It's about how you live in the space, and I challenge anybody to go through their home and see what occupies each room, and then see how much you could get rid of."

Smaller spaces mean less consumption. As Wa says, "we don't need a year's worth of dental floss so we don't need the storage."

That, in turn, has led to a more communal approach to living. "We share things with others in the building – a vacuum, a child's slide, even a car. The storage issue has made us think before buying – do we need it? Can we borrow it?" Wa says.

It's a way of thinking which flies in the face of the myth that condo life is isolating and anonymous. In fact, Wa has become a connection point amongst the families who live in her building, which contains between 550 and 600 units. About 30 families and 35 children are on site, she estimates.

"Five years ago, we were a fringe group in the eyes of neighbours and management, a kind of foreigner in the vertical condo culture. Now we're the heart of it."

What did it was Halloween, five years ago, Wa organized trick or treating for the families, designing door signs for a list of participating units so others wouldn't be bothered.

She now has childless residents demanding to be part of that list.

Staying in the same building hasn't been easy, though. Getting a sandbox on one of the common area terraces, and garnering permission for children under 18 to use some of the amenities took several months of lobbying. Now, for instance, parents can work out in the gym while their child sleeps there in the stroller.

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But the challenge is space. Once child two came along, the two-bedroom 1,300-square-foot unit no longer worked as well. Determined not to move, Wa reconfigured the interior and created three bedrooms to allow each child their own, albeit tiny, space.

The cost of a family size three-bedroom is prohibitive. "We looked around at different condos in our community, but there was nothing,'' says Wa. "Larger units are usually on higher floors, are considered luxury, and much more expensive."

Many families come and go, Wa says, because "three bedrooms is the deal breaker. They love the building and the community and don't want to move, but their family has grown and they need to have a bigger space. It's tough to find a unit with a third bedroom and still be affordable."

Even though real estate marketing consultant Barry Lyon believes Toronto is affordable compared to other big cities, he admits there's an ongoing "affordable question" for families.

"They need more bedrooms, and that means more space, and highrise buildings are expensive to produce – more than double the cost as the equivalent space in single family. That means you lose affordability for young families. I don't want to see people moving out beyond 905 to raise their children, because I love the urban lifestyle."

He points to the city's "shoulder areas," where growth has resulted in intensified suburban downtowns like Mississauga, Brampton, Richmond Hill, Markham. "Because they're an answer to the commuting problem, they're thriving, with restaurants, shops, theatres, and they're good opportunities for families."

But Wa and her husband want to stay downtown near their work. Other families feel the same and are finding a way to deal with it. It's becoming more common in the building to see families with two children, and one is about to have a third.

But her concern about the pressures of keeping families in condos has led to organizing the Urban Family Workshop. Some time in June, Wa hopes to bring downtown condo-dwelling families together with planners, developers and architects to discuss what families need to keep them in the city.

There already is some demonstrated political will. In a previous interview with the Star, City Councillor Adam Vaughan (Trinity-Spadina) said he has persuaded developers launching new projects in his riding to build 10 per cent of units as three-bedrooms.

"Architects and designers are coming up with really flexible ways to build buildings so they can adapt to demographic changes to the life cycle,'' he says. ``It's been pretty positive.''

Lyon believes there is a place for government to step in and help create more affordable downtown options for families. While the "affluent market can take care of itself," Lyon said in a seminar at the 2008 Interior Design show, "what makes Toronto work is that we're relatively affordable."

That's possible for the lower end of the market – which families often fall under – with initiatives like Toronto Community Housing Corporation's (TCHC) projects in Regent Park and West Donlands and the Railway lands near Fort York, all in various stages of development.

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