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Thinking outside the micro loft to find your space

For those living in Victoria’s micro lofts, urban living is as much about what is outside the home as in it. Good thing, because the spaces — picture a hotel room, a two-car garage or a shipping container — don’t have a lot of room to spare.
Melodie Hutmacher
Melodie Hutmacher moved from a two-storey, two-bedroom townhouse in Comox to a 400-square-foot condo in the Soho building in Victoria in 2007.

For those living in Victoria’s micro lofts, urban living is as much about what is outside the home as in it. Good thing, because the spaces — picture a hotel room, a two-car garage or a shipping container — don’t have a lot of room to spare.

“I remember my initial thought walking through the door was, ‘Is this it? It’s so tiny,’ ” says Melodie Hutmacher, who is in her 40s. “But I wanted to live downtown and that’s the sacrifice you have to make.”

Hutmacher lives in a 400-square-foot condo in the Soho building on Mason Street. She got rid of half of the furniture from her two-storey, two-bedroom Comox townhouse when she moved in 2007. Now, she says, she uses her entire living space. “People are moving to de-cluttering, getting rid of the extraneous stuff we don’t need in our lives.”

Hutmacher says living in a small space motivates her to take advantage of Victoria’s downtown.

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“It does encourage me to get out more because there’s so much more right at my fingertips,” she says. “I can walk pretty much everywhere I need to go.”

There’s undoubtedly a lifestyle change involved in micro-loft living, says developer Jon Stovell, who describes the tiny suites as a “300-square-foot condominium with a $3-million living room.”

Grocery stores, coffee shops, restaurants, bars and theatres are within walking distance and entertaining is done outside the home — think cocktail parties around the rooftop barbecue and lounge area — rather than in it.

“The amenities that you don’t have inside your home, you find immediately outside your home,” says Stovell, who works for Reliance Properties. “Micro lofts will only work really well in very urban locations.”

Reliance is redeveloping the 1891 Janion building, situated in a prime downtown location bounded by Store Street, the Johnson Street Bridge and the Inner Harbour.

A six-storey structure is being added to the rear of the building to accommodate the 122 units, most of which are between 250 and 350 square feet.

People lined up overnight in the rain to secure one of the micro lofts, which started at $109,900 for a 243-square-foot unit. (That translates to about $583 a month, including mortgage payments, strata fees and taxes after a $17,000 down payment.)

The Janion micro lofts have queen-size Murphy beds, which fold into the wall to reveal a small two-person dining table. Appliances are compact with a wall oven, narrow fridge and freezer, and dishwasher that blends into the cabinetry. Things we use on a daily basis are more compact and take up less space; laptops and tablets have replaced bulky PCs, flatscreen TVs have replaced older models that needed their own cabinet and books can be read on e-readers.

Stovell says his development received interest from a broad range of people, from first-time buyers wanting to test the waters to investors looking for a rental property.

“It’s pretty much an emerging trend,” he says. “It’s still early days for micro lofts. There’s certainly a very strong demand.”

Tony Zarsadias, owner of the Condo Group, a real estate company focusing on condominiums, suspects that most people bought a micro loft in the Janion as an investment property and intend to rent it out. That’s because the

Janion has a very flexible zoning permit, called transient zoning, which is similar to that of a hotel and eliminates a lot of rental restrictions.

“The value of having a unit that can always be rented is high,” Zarsadias says.

Clients eyeing small condos that they plan to live in range from retired people looking to downsize from their single-family homes to free up money for travelling to young working professionals who crave being in the centre of a vibrant, bustling downtown.

“They need to buy something that’s less expensive. It’s not that they can’t afford it, but all they want to afford is a micro-condo so they’ll adapt their life to fit it,” Zarsadias says.

There’s also the eco-minded urban citizens who want to reduce their carbon footprint and bicycle to work rather than drive.

“There certainly is a growing community in Victoria of people who just don’t drive,” he says. “They live and work downtown, they walk or ride their bikes. They just don't have the need for a lot of space. People are trying to live a little more simply.”

Developer Chris Le Fevre has been including small units of about 400 square feet in his downtown condo developments for the past 10 years. The New England on Government Street, a redevelopment of the 1892 New England

Hotel, is set to open in March with 22 studio rental suites between 275 and 325 square feet which will rent for $775 a month and up.

“I think there’s a trend to modesty that prevails within the housing industry at large, and this is one area of it,” Le Fevre says. “People are more accepting of smaller spaces — and to the extreme in downtown locations, where they don’t need all the paraphernalia. It’s a different style of living.”

The Mosaic building on Yates Street was among the first in Victoria to introduce compact units, the smallest of which is about 350 square feet, “which at that time was very scary to the market,” says developer Don Charity. “I used to pace hotel rooms and say, ‘Oh my God, this is a small apartment.’ ”

Charity and Fraser McColl are developing the Juke Box condominium, where the smallest unit is a 400-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment. “Europe has been doing this for centuries. . . . We in North American have had excess,” Charity says.

kderosa@timescolonist.com