130 highrise building projects in Toronto lead North America

Toronto still has more highrise buildings under construction than any other city in North America, but the gap between Canada's largest city and second-place New York City is getting smaller.

There are 130 highriseprojects under construction in Toronto, more than in any other North American city.

New York is second, with 91 projects, and Montreal is thirdwith 25.

• Watch thisCBC documentary: The Condo Game

That's the word fromEmporis, a construction data firm that monitors developmentactivity around the world.

Toronto has maintained top spot in the rankings for several years now, but New York, the traditional home of iconic skyscrapers, is narrowing the gap of late.

"On the basis of current developments, we assume that New York will catch up with Toronto as early as 2015,"EmporisanalystMatthewKeuteniussaid in a release.

It wasn't that long ago that Toronto had twice the number of construction projects on the go as the second-mostactive market. But an uptick in construction in New York has changed that.

Emporis defines a highrise as a building at least 35 metres tall. Buildings more than 40 storeys tall are considered skyscrapers.

The Toronto area is also a leaderin terms of the percentage of those tall buildings that are residential in nature.

Downtown Toronto condos average $367K

In Toronto, Markham, Ont., and Burnaby, B.C. some 92 per cent of the tall buildings under construction are residential in nature. That ratio is normally around 65 per cent inmost other cities.

"It is notable, too, that current residential highrise construction in Canada comprises almost exclusively condominiums, while in the USA it includes a relatively large proportion of rental apartments," Emporis said.

In Chicago, for example, 80 per cent of the residential highrises under construction are new rental apartments not individually ownedcondominiums.

A total of13,797 new condominium units were sold in the city of Torontolast year, a decline of 22 per cent from the all-time record set in 2012, recent numbers fromreal estate data firmUrbanationrecently showed.

"Momentum is expected to help usher in more new projects during the first half of 2014,"Urbanation'svice-president Shaun Hildebrand says.

According to the latest data available, the average price of a downtown Toronto condo hit $367,376 in December, a rise from7.6 per cent from the same month a year ago.

Toronto has been the main hub for highrise construction for several years now, but since the boom started later in Toronto than it did elsewhere, itremains well behind other citiesin terms of completed projects.

There are currently 6,069 buildings classified as "highrises" in New York Citymore than three times the number in Toronto.