This week: No one wants to live in the smallest condos on the market, and when is it justified for the government to take your home? Plus, a house-hunt in Nova Scotia with $150,000 cash, and one property worth a look.

Would you live in less than 500 square feet for the right price? It’s one thing to see photos of a tiny condo and imagine your life there, but it’s another thing to actually live in one. I found that out first hand when I stayed at my friend’s 350-square-foot downtown studio during my trip to Toronto last month: The bed was also the couch, there was no room for a desk and I bumped into the drying rack every time I headed to the kitchen.

I could see why the space worked for my friend, a busy professional who works in-office nearby and visits her family in the suburbs often, but I’m not alone in my hesitation to own at any cost or size. As Shane Dingman reports, condo prices have fallen the furthest and the fastest among the smallest units – and there are few signs it’ll bottom out any time soon. Declining rents have driven renters and investors away from studio units, all but freezing the market because the potential buyers left don’t want to live in teeny quarters themselves.

But will buyers embrace small-space life if the price is right? A new Barrie development is banking on it with studios starting at $250,000. “They don’t want to live in a crappy basement apartment any more. I’m looking at it from ‘What can they afford?,’” Sean Mason, founder of home builder Sean.ca Inc., told Shane. Read more about the data and whether the days of “if you build it, they will come” are over.

When is it justified for the government to take your home or land against your will? Two high-profile proposed infrastructure projects – Ottawa’s Ontario-Quebec high-speed rail and Doug Ford’s attempt to expand Billy Bishop Airport – are shining the spotlight on expropriation and where we draw the line between necessity and injustice. And as Alex Bozikovic argues, with great power comes great responsibility – and great opportunity.

Expropriation is an immense state power, and has historically been used in ways we couldn’t possibly imagine happening today. In 1961, the Kaross family was kicked out of their home so the Toronto Board of Education could build a new parking lot for the high school one of the children attended. In the decades since, Alex writes, property owners’ rights have been strengthened and planners have reached a consensus that massive interventions require enormous justification.

But now the Alto high-speed rail between Quebec City and Windsor is forcing us as a society to decide whether it is a worthy project, and Alex argues, we should. “The value of cities is not merely that they concentrate people and transactions. It is that they create a shared world: places where strangers encounter one another, where ideas circulate, and where commerce emerges from proximity and exchange,” he writes. “If done right – with well-located downtown terminal stations – Alto would remake the cultural and economic geography of Canada.” Read his full feature column exploring the ethics of expropriation and what it takes to build a city.

Rates shown are the lowest available for each term/type and category (insured vs. uninsured) as of market close on Thursday, Sept. 10.

After more than a decade going to university and living in Ottawa, Samantha Kennedy’s house hunt led her back to her hometown of Berwick, N.S. The 29-year-old had saved up $150,000 working as a tantric yoga teacher and pleasure coach, and was determined to buy something on the shore of Bay of Fundy without a mortgage. “The water was the biggest thing to me,” she told Andrea Yu. “I find it very cleansing and grounding.”

But the real estate market in Berwick and nearby Canada Creek had changed in the 12 years since Kennedy moved away, and out-of-province buyers and other returning locals had driven prices up since the pandemic. She was willing to take out a mortgage to go up to $300,000 for a turnkey property, but also up for renovating a cheaper home.

So between a three-bedroom home in her hometown, a one-bedroom waterfront home or a dated two-bedroom in Canada Creek, what did she choose? See her three top options and the one that won her heart.