Month: March 2018

• Two new chiefs

  

  There were some big announcements in the planning world this past week here in the Greater Toronto Area. Gregg Lintern (follow him on Twitter) was named the new chief planner of Toronto (he was previously the acting chief planner following Jennifer Keesmaat’s departure) and Andrew Whittemore (couldn’t find him on Twitter) was named the new chief planner of Mississauga.

  As I went through the articles announcing the above appointments, I couldn’t help but be reminded that this region is at an exciting and pivotal moment in its history. All of the talk is about improving urban mobility (i.e. becoming less dependent on cars); intensifying around transit stations (as well as gently intensifying neighborhoods); making downtown a better place for families; and so on.

  It can be easy to feel defeated in this big bad world of city making. Oftentimes things seem to get reduced to either urban vs. suburban rhetoric or, as if nothing else matters, this one simple question: “But, how tall is the building?” So its nice to know that those at the helm continue to see endless opportunity in this region. I know that I wouldn’t want to be doing what I’m doing anywhere else.

  Photo by mwangi gatheca on Unsplash

  2018.03.31

• Future of the American city

  

  The Knight Foundation has just announced $1 million in support to the Harvard Graduate School of Design for a multi-year, multi-city, and applied research effort that they are calling the Future of the American City. The program will start in Miami and Miami Beach, but the plan is to expand to Boston, Detroit, and Los Angeles.

  As part of this initiative, the GSD will embed faculty and urban researchers into the local community, as well as organize three design studios that will build on each other every year. In the case of Miami and Miami Beach, the 3 themes that will be explored are urban mobility, affordability, and climate change. As you know, these two cities are center ice for the problem of sea level rise.

  This sounds very similar to a design studio that I took at Penn, which was centered around water and housing issues in Bangladesh. It was a multi-year research studio (5 years in this case) and we visited and got paired up with locals in Dhaka during the course of the studio. I think these types of programs are a great way to ground the research in reality. 

  And as a fan of Miami and Miami Beach, I am curious to see what the teams come up with over the next 3 years.

  Photo by Blake Connally on Unsplash

  2018.03.30

• First 3D printed home in America

  The video below is a good follow-up to my recent post about the 100 million city and the rapid population growth that we are seeing in some parts of the developing world.

  If you can’t see the embedded video below, click here.

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvM7jFZGAec?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

  It’s a video about what is allegedly the “first permitted, 3D-printed home in America” – an 800 square foot home that was built/printed in Austin during SXSW in about 24 hours.

  The project is a partnership between New Story (a non-profit) and ICON (a construction technologies company), and the goal is to pioneer a fast and cheap housing model for the developing world.

  The cost for the above home is said to be about $4,000.

  2018.03.29

• What’s the realtor jiu-jitsu move?

  Today’s post is a set of related questions for all of you.

  Fred Wilson has a post up on his blog today called, The Jiu-Jitsu Move. It’s about how people often dismiss new technologies, market entrants, and/or consumer behaviours as silly; whereas the real power move is to embrace and leverage them. That’s what he is calling the jiu-jitsu move.

  He gives a few examples, but for obvious reasons this one stood out to me:

  I spent the day yesterday at a real estate industry event and talked to a lot of agents about the fact that their clients are often more informed than they are these days. I encouraged them to embrace that fact and use it to their advantage and not fear it. It is hard when you have grown up in an industry when your advantage was information and you no longer have that working for you.

  For all the agents (and real estate consumers) who read this blog, I am curious if you agree with the above. Are consumers increasingly more informed than agents? I am sure that many of you will disagree. But if things are really changing, what should the jiu-jitsu move be?

  2018.03.29

• Slate closes on $1.14 billion asset portfolio

  Today, the Slate Canadian Real Estate Opportunity Fund I closed on a 6.2 million square foot portfolio that it previously announced it was acquiring from Cominar Real Estate Investment Trust for approximately $1.14 billion.  

  The portfolio includes office, retail, and industrial properties in the GTA, Atlantic Canada, and Western Canada. This brings Slate Asset Management’s total assets under management to over $5 billion.

  Great work team Slate.
  

  2018.03.28

• The 100 million city

  The Guardian recently published this reminder that the real population growth in the world today is happening in Asia and Africa. The article is called, “The 100 million city: is 21st century urbanisation out of control?” Much of the data is from this 2016 paper by Daniel Hoornweg and Kevin Pope, which projected the populations of the world’s biggest cities by 2100.

  The standout example is that of Lagos, Nigeria, which went from under 200,000 people in the 1960s to an estimated 20 million people today. Though, I would imagine that the ubiquity of informal settlements makes it difficult to come up with an accurate number.

  Still, it is one of the world’s top 10 largest cities and, by 2100, it may be the largest city in the world. The Guardian described the population as young, fertile, and increasingly urban. The median age in Nigeria is 18 and the fertility rate for the content is 4.4 births per woman.

  I am mentioning all of this today because I think it grants some perspective. This is an immense city building challenge, not only because of the unprecedented growth rate, but also because it remains largely poor. Lagos, a city, may add more than 2.2x the population of Canada, a country, during the balance of this century.

  2018.03.26

• Vancouver’s Empty Homes Tax

  In an effort to curb the much talked-about and much debated empty home situation in Vancouver (supposedly the number is ~20k vacant homes), the city, as many of you know, implemented an Empty Homes Tax.

  To enforce this, the City of Vancouver now requires that every year, every owner of residential property must file a status declaration. If you don’t file this by the deadline, the property is automatically deemed vacant and the tax (1% of assessed taxable value) and a penalty ($250) are applied.

  Last month, 11 days before the 2017 deadline, the city published the below heat map showing the concentration of Vancouver property owners who hadn’t yet made their declaration. There were just under 4,000 undeclared properties.

  

  But as Jens von Bergmann points out on his blog, Mountain Doodles (great data-driven blog), this was really just a map of where people live. Because if you also create a map of residential properties subject to the tax, which he did, it looks pretty similar to above.

  2018.03.25

• New high-rise home prices up 39.5% year-over-year

  February data (2018) for the new home market in the Greater Toronto Area was released this past week by BILD and Altus. I seem to have gotten into the habit of writing about this every month.

  The benchmark price for new low-rise single-family housing was down slightly from January to $1,219,874, but still up 12.8% from a year prior.

  The benchmark price for new high-rise housing was up a whopping 39.5% year-over-year to $729,735. But part of this is being driven by an equally dramatic increase in average unit sizes.

  Here is the relevant graph:

  

  The story continues to be about tight supply, historically low developer inventories, and a lack of affordable low-rise product. 

  As I have argued many times before on this blog, I believe these factors — and in particular the last one — are, at least partly, driving this recent pop in high-rise pricing. People are priced out and now searching for substitutes.

  So my prediction continues to be that we will see a convergence (i.e. diminishing spread) between new low-rise and high-rise pricing.

  That will also bring about design and product changes on the high-rise side.

  2018.03.24

• The most popular building amenities (according to a small subset of people)

  Here are the results from my primitive multi-unit building amenities survey:

  

  Gym is number 1. No surprise there. 46% of respondents said it was in their top 3. 

  Rooftop outdoor space at number 2 was perhaps a bit surprising. But then again, who doesn’t love a good rooftop patio?

  As for concierge service, I tend to think this was driven by package delivery. That’s certainly the biggest value add for me.

  One standout near the top, for me at least, is co-working space. Andrew LeFleur made mention of this on Twitter and I think he’s right: The changing nature of work is making these spaces more valuable in multi-family dwellings.

  And now some color on the above results.

  436 amenity selections were made as part of this survey. 

  About half of the respondents were from the Greater Toronto Area, followed by Calgary, San Francisco, Ottawa, Boston, New York City, Denver, Los Angeles, Paris, Miami, and many other cities. Shoutout to whoever responded from Kuala Lumpur and Porto Alegre.

  In terms of “Other” amenities, there were suggestions for a band rehearsal space, a vending machine, a grassy area for sports, and programming the helps you meet your neighbors.

  In terms of this one last, it can be tricky for condo buildings. Developers only provide the space. It’s then up to management. But I’ve seen it done very well in rental buildings.

  Are you surprised by any of the results from this survey?

  2018.03.24

• My new gig…

  

  So this is interesting.

  Earlier this month, Travis Kalanick – co-founder of Uber and its former CEO – formed a new venture fund called 10100. According to the WSJ, it was funded with his own money after he sold 30% of his position in Uber for a cool $1.4 billion. 

  Ten-one-hundred’s spartan website explains that the goal of the fund is “large-scale job creation, with investments in real estate, ecommerce, and emerging innovation in China and India.” On the non-profit side, the initial focus will be on “education and the future of cities.”

  Then this week, Travis tweeted out “My new gig…” and disclosed that 10100 had entered into an agreement to buy a controlling interest in a real estate holding company called City Storage Systems (CSS) for $150 million. 

  He also announced that he would become CEO.

  The focus of CSS is on the redevelopment of distressed real estate, particularly parking, retail, and industrial assets. He goes on to say: “There are over $10 trillion in these real estate assets that will need to be repurposed for the digital era in the coming years.”

  This whole series of events is a big bet on some significant changes in the real estate space.

  Photo by Martin Reisch on Unsplash

  2018.03.23