Month: July 2017

• Power to the people

  Bloomberg columnist Barry Ritholtz recently interviewed Richard Barton about his startup companies. Barton founded Expedia while he was an executive at Microsoft (Gates and Ballmer era) and then went on to cofound Zillow (real estate site) and Glassdoor (jobs site). 

  I’ve been following the work of Barton for many years now because I admire the common thread among his startups: They’re about bringing transparency to industries where transparency is lacking. I used to try and dissect his thinking when I was working on my own real estate/tech startup.

  I believe there’s still a lot of room for transparency in the real estate space, but that doesn’t negate the work that Barton has done. He’s all about using technology to bring “power to the people.” That’s a good thing.

  Click here to listen to the podcast.

  2017.07.31

• The best party in town!

  Friend: Ever go to Jilly’s?

  Me: No, actually.

  Friend: Same.

  Me: What about you? [Addressed to random guy in elevator]

  Random guy in elevator: I’m from Portland. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  I went to check out the new Broadview Hotel last night in Riverdale, Toronto. (Riverside if we’re being pedantic.)

  Originally built in 1891 and most recently a boarding house with strip club at grade (Jilly’s – the best party in town!), the building was acquired in 2014 by developer Streetcar and turned into a “58-room boutique hotel and charismatic gathering spot.” The soft opening was July 27, 2017.

  Official website here. Lots of interior photos here.

  Besides the pink neon above the lobby bar (which is obviously great), I really like what they did in the stairwells. Credit to Supermilk Studio. Here’s a photo I snapped last night while trying to find the WC:

  

  Each floor is painted with murals that pay tribute to the building’s history, from the early days of Dingman’s Hall to its most recent iteration as Jilly’s.

  Interestingly enough, the building originally served as an important social hub for the community, though it did not initially house a hotel. On the ground floor was a bank (see, there’s a long tradition of this) and above it were offices and grand meeting halls.

  It wasn’t until the original developer sold the building that it was converted to a hotel and granted a liquor license. It’s worth noting that this conversion is said to have faced stiff community opposition. A hotel that serves alcohol to people? Not in my 1906 backyard.

  With the reopening of the new Broadview Hotel this summer, you could argue that east of the Don River is once again regaining its grand gathering spot. And the feeling I got when I stepped foot inside the hotel last night was that it was time. The demand was latent and, yes, condos wouldn’t have cut it.

  At the same time, this is obviously bigger than the east side. There are many who don’t know this building’s infamous history. Jilly’s? What’s that? Time to go for a walk in the stairwells.

  2017.07.30

• Laneway house support map

  I posted the following image to Twitter this morning:

  

  It’s a map of some of the people who support my proposed laneway house (in midtown Toronto) and have signed their name at lanewaylove.com.

  To me, this is an incredible demonstration of the kind of broad-based support that exists in this city today for laneway housing/suites.

  I met with some of my neighbors last week to discuss the proposal and one of them said to me: “I can tell that you’re genuinely passionate about this idea.” 

  My response: “You’re absolutely right. I am. This is not just about my singular project or the money. This is about something much bigger for the city.”

  Clearly, many others see that as well. 

  I know that there’s been a lot of laneway talk on the blog over the past few weeks and months. It’s been on my mind as I prepare for my project’s hearing next month.

  For those of you who have no interest in laneway housing/accessory dwelling units, rest assured that the laneway content should subside (a little) after the summer.

  2017.07.29

• Less is more

  The Wall Street Journal recently asked: Venice Beach Is a Hot Place to Live, So Why Is Its Housing Supply Shrinking? 

  According to Issi Romem, chief economist at BuildZoom, it’s because Venice Beach is the toughest place in America to build housing.

  Here are some numbers from the WSJ:

  “The Venice Beach population is shrinking even as the local economy has boomed. The neighborhood had about 27,000 residents in 2015, about 3,800 fewer than in 2000, according to U.S. Census data. At the same time, the ZIP Code has added 4,000 new jobs, according to Jed Kolko, chief economist at employment website Indeed.”

  And here is a chart that speaks to the relationship between housing prices and housing supply:

  

  Housing supply, alone, isn’t going to solve all of our problems. But it certainly matters. Also, what’s up with Chicago?

  2017.07.29

• Contentment as vice

  “Contentment used to be a virtue. Now it’s a vice.”

  I came across this line on Brad Feld’s blog. 

  For those of you who aren’t familiar with Brad, he is a successful entrepreneur and early stage VC investor. He cofounded the Foundry Group, Mobius Venture Capital, Intensity Ventures and Techstars, and sold his first company back in 1993. 

  But Brad has also struggled with depression over the years and so you’ll find that a number of his blog posts are also quite contemplative.

  This particular post – where the above line comes from – is about a societal norm that I am sure many of you can relate to. I know I can. Here’s another snippet from the post:

  “We talked for a few minutes about the overall, dominant American culture of achievement. The endless striving. The need to feel busy, important, and successful. The deep cultural norms around ambition.”

  Whether it’s because we’re all deeply insecure or because we just need to fulfill our egos, this has become our modus operandi. It has become all about “the hustle” and about “crushing it 24/7.”

  Just this evening I was at a friend’s birthday party and I couldn’t tell you how many times I said “busy.”

  “Hey Brandon, how are things?”

  “Busy!”

  This is an absolutely terrible response. I know that. And I’ve started introducing other responses into my small talk repertoire. But busy is so ingrained in our culture. Being busy makes us feel important. It means we are in demand. We do things. We create value.

  But is the reverse – not being busy – now a vice?

  Regardless of your position on the appropriate balance between contentment (being ok with what you’ve got) and work (striving for more than what you’ve got), I think the first line of this post is an incredibly poignant commentary on the life that many of us live today.

  2017.07.28

• Where’d the night go?

  I’m a few months behind on this one, but back in April the CBC published a documentary called: Where’d the night go? 

  It’s about Toronto’s grassroots music community and “DIY venues”, all of which are under pressure as a result of rising real estate values and an overall crackdown on illegal venues. This is a perfect example of what Jane Jacobs was getting at when she said that new ideas require old buildings. 

  If you can’t see the video below, click here. When I watched it, I got stuck watching 3 pre-roll ads. Sorry if that happens to you as well.

  //www.cbc.ca/i/caffeine/syndicate/?mediaId=924601923901

  2017.07.27

• Only 9% of new homes sold last month were low-rise single-family

  

  BILD (the Building Industry and Land Development Association) just released its June 2017 data for the Greater Toronto Area’s new housing market. You can read the full release here. But I would like to point out a couple of things:

  About 91 percent of the 6,046 new homes sold last month were multi-family condo apartments in high-rise and mid-rise buildings and stacked townhomes, while only nine percent were low-rise single-family homes.

  The average price of available new condo apartments continued to rise with an increase of more than $22,000 from May. June’s $627,000 average price marked a 34 percent increase from a year ago. The average available unit was 845 square feet with an average price per square foot of $742. A year ago, the average price per square foot was $587.

  From this, it’s once again clear that Toronto is in the midst of an incredible transformation from a low-rise city to a more vertical city. New supply on the low-rise side of the market is heavily constrained.

  I get the sense sometimes that many people in this city, and others, believe that access to a low-rise detached house should be a right. Go to school. Get a good job. And then buy that house with a backyard. 

  The data speaks to a very different reality.

  Photo by Victoria Heath on Unsplash

  2017.07.25

• Architecture pour tous!

  In 2015, Studiolada Architectes (of Nancy, France) completed a 117 square meter home for a retired couple. On the firm’s website they call the project: Réalisation d’une maison individuelle à Baccarat. 

  Here are two photos (1 exterior and 1 interior) via the architects:

  

  Most of the house is finished in wood. It was a modest build costing 174,361 € in total before taxes. The house itself cost 146,506 € and the standalone garage cost 20,245 € (both before taxes). The balance of the costs seem to have gone to exterior landscaping.

  If you consider only the house, that works out to be about 1,252 € per square meter or about 115 € per square foot. Speaking of reasonable.

  What’s particularly interesting about this project though is that after it was completed the architects published what they call a dossier de synthèse en Open Source (click through to download) – effectively an open source file of all the project’s documents.

  Included are all of the plans, assembly details, construction photos, and even the entire construction budget. The ambition was to build an affordable and sustainable house and then make all of the information publicly available so that others might replicate what was done.

  I think this is great.

  So I’ve decided to publicly commit to doing the same for my proposed laneway house. If and when it gets built, I will document and publish the entire journey – including all development/construction costs – and make it freely available on this blog and probably elsewhere.

  I got a bit of flak (on the internet) for calling my laneway house a “prototype” project. But that’s truly what I want it to be for Toronto. Hopefully sharing more, rather than less, information will help it to serve that purpose.

  2017.07.25

• Online shopping and “last mile” real estate

  

  The Globe and Mail recently published an excellent article on “how e-commerce is driving a real estate revolution.” This is a topic that I’m very interested in: how online manifests itself offline.

  Not surprisingly, the article talks a lot about Amazon, including their 4th warehouse in the Greater Toronto Area, which is an 850,000 square foot facility in Brampton equipped with 350-pound robots (8050 Heritage Road).

  The first thing I did after reading the article was figure out the location of all of Amazon’s fulfillment centers in the GTA. Amazon doesn’t seem to publish this. But according to TaxJar, they are here (I mapped out the addresses):

  

  There are two in Brampton at the precise location where Hwy 407 (toll route) and Hwy 401 meet. The other three are distributed along Hwy 401 in Milton and in Mississauga.

  Now let’s get back to that Globe and Mail article:

  – In 6 years, Amazon has leased over 2 million square feet of warehouse space in Canada.

  – Toronto is the third largest warehouse market in North America. It represents 43% of Canada’s total inventory.

  – Average net rents have increased 9.7% over the past year and vacancy rates have dropped to 2.7% (CBRE data). In Vancouver, those same numbers are 5.1% and 3%, respectively.

  – Online shopping is thought to account for about 6.5% of all retail sales in Canada. But in Toronto, 23% of all industrial space is already e-commerce-related (CBRE data, again).

  – CBRE believes that every $1 billion in new online sales per year requires an additional 1.25 million square feet of warehouse space. 

  – Based on online sales projections, Canada needs another 27.5 million square feet of industrial space over the next 5 years. We don’t have that much space in the pipeline.

  – Clear heights are increasing for stacking purposes. Amazon’s new Brampton facility is 45 feet tall / 4 floors. 10 years ago new warehouses were 26 feet tall.

  – Average sale price of warehouses in the GTA has gone from $119.35 psf to $142.19 psf over the last year.

  Perhaps the most interesting takeaway from the article is the discussion around “last mile” distribution hubs. These are fulfillment centers located closer to the city, which are used to offer shorter delivery times: 

  “…instead of having inventory stored for days or months, these fulfilment centres will turn over their inventory in one day, sometimes twice a day.”

  This is something that I addressed in my recent presentation about the “mall of the future” at B+H’s retail design charrette. Where do these physical distribution centers want to be as online sales continue to grow and delivery times continue to compress? Where’s the future growth?

  According to this article, it’s going to be in “last mile” fulfillment real estate – relatively smaller spaces that are located very close or directly in the city center.

  Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash

  2017.07.23

• The next generation of wireless architecture will perform a lot like our cities

  

  I just finished watching this brief talk by Daniela Perdomo, who is CEO of the mesh networking startup goTenna. It was given at the recent Cities of Tomorrow conference in New York.

  The company sells a product called goTenna Mesh, which is a consumer device that pairs with your phone and allows you to create your own device-to-device (mesh) network for text and GPS communication.

  This network exists independently of centralized cell towers and so part of the value proposition is that during times of disaster – when cell service often goes down – this device allows you to maintain communication.

  I can’t say this is something I feel compelled to invest in right now, but I’m intrigued by something that Daniela mentioned in her presentation. 

  She said that traditional cell tower service degrades as more people use it. That’s why it often becomes “oversaturated” during times of crisis or when you’re at a packed event, such as a concert.

  But unlike traditional cell service, decentralized mesh networks by definition get stronger as more people participate. And that’s because the mesh gets bigger and denser. 

  So her argument was that mesh networks are actually a lot like cities. More people and more nodes make the entire ecosystem stronger and more resilient. I like that because we know that many things, such as productivity, do in fact increase as cities get bigger.

  While I may not be pulling out my wallet right now for this device, it strikes me that this wireless architecture – which mimics some of the natural strengths of our cities – is something we will certainly see more of in the future.

  Veniam is an another example of a company focused on mesh networks, but in this case it’s through vehicles. They are building “the internet of moving things.”

  Photo by Daria Shevtsova on Unsplash

  2017.07.22