Sorbara Group of Companies

The Sorbara Group of Companies is an integrated Ontario real estate organisation with more than eighty years of history, working across the Greater Golden Horseshoe. It covers real estate, planning, development, construction, investment and management rather than only homebuilding.

It was founded by Sam Sorbara, whose stated belief that fortune and wealth are gifts to be shared led to The Sam Sorbara Charitable Foundation, established over forty years ago.

An unusual number of genuine firsts for the Toronto region, largely through its construction affiliate Hady Construction, in business since 1952:

• Toronto’s first strip mall, in the 1950s
• Toronto’s first McDonald’s restaurant, in the 1960s
• The first retail Power Centre, in the 1990s
• The first residential loft conversion, in the 1990s

The loft conversion matters most to a residential buyer, because it opened a housing type in Toronto that is now commonplace.

Sorbara operates through affiliate companies rather than as one entity. Hady Construction handles design build, project management and general construction, and also manages the group’s industrial and commercial property. NuWall Contracting is the masonry company, working alongside Hady.

Practically, that means construction expertise sits inside the group rather than being tendered out. It also means you should confirm which entity your agreement is with, because the group name and the contracting entity are not the same thing.

Current residential communities include Valleyview, The Wedgewood on Yonge, Brooklin Trails, Everwell, Homeward Hills and Storybrook, spread across the Greater Golden Horseshoe rather than concentrated in one municipality.

The mix runs from low-rise family communities through to condominium product on Yonge Street.

Over eighty years, which puts its founding in the 1940s and makes it older than almost every builder still active in Ontario. Hady Construction alone dates to 1952.

The relevance is simple. A company that has traded through the post-war boom, the 1980s rate shock, the early 1990s Ontario crash and 2008 has demonstrated something no marketing claim can.

Identify the entity on your agreement and its Tarion registration, because the group operates through affiliates and the group’s eighty year history is not automatically the record of the company you are contracting with.

Ask which of their completed communities is closest to yours in type and price, then go and look at it. With a builder this old there is usually finished product nearby that you can inspect.

Then the usual: deposit schedule, what is standard rather than an upgrade, maintenance fee estimate on a condominium, and the closing timeline.