Yikes. To be completely honest, I was not expecting this post and this post to blow up in the way that they did. But hey, here we are and here's the blogTO article: "Developer shames City of Toronto into issuing permit for bold new skyscraper." What all of this suggests is that most people are shocked by how long it takes and how difficult it is to build a building. I mean, what I wrote about is just one sliver among the countless other things that need to come together for it to happen. But to my mind, these are productive discussions to be having. Because the more everyone is aware, the more likely we are to improve things.

As a follow-up to last week's post about giving free land to the City of Toronto, I am now thrilled to report that, today at 12:14 PM, we received our building permit!

Some of you were keen to hear about what happened following the post. So here's the update. I published the original post last Wednesday. And to be honest, it received far more attention than I was expecting.

On Thursday morning I received a call from the city. They weren't thrilled about my post, but were very helpful and said that they would ensure the conveyance happened immediately. It then got done before noon that same day.

Planning then sent a note to buildings saying that the permit was ready for issuance. Yay. Buildings acknowledged that they were working on it, and on Monday of this week we received a summary of the outstanding fees and the instructions for the wire transfer.

We paid the fees immediately and on Tuesday we received a payment receipt from the city. Then today -- Wednesday -- we received the building permit. So it was exactly one week from post to permit. A big thanks to everyone who helped to finally move this forward.

Hopefully it's clear that last week's post came strictly from a place of prolonged frustration. I wasn't trying to be mean. Our lawyer reminded me, after the post, that we've actually been working on this land conveyance for over 2 years.

River Davis' recent article in the Wall Street Journal about Tokyo's generally flat home prices had me, again, wondering about demographics. I mean, aren't their demographics working in reverse? They have an aging population, low immigration, and a low birthrate. But Tokyo, which represents about 11% of Japan's total population, is still growing. And their home price index looks like this compared to San Francisco and New York:

Davis' argument, which of course has been made by others before, is that deregulation has allowed housing supply to actually keep up with demand. Land use policies were relaxed to allow taller and denser buildings to be built and some degree of decision making (I'm not sure how much) was moved to the central government in order to counteract the NIMBY problem that invariably attaches itself to local politics.

The result is housing numbers that look and compare like this:

In Tokyo last year, housing starts came in around 145,000, according to Japan’s land ministry. This figure is on par with the total number of new housing units authorized last year in New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Houston combined, based on the U.S. Census Bureau data. The same feat was achieved in 2017.

If we are to normalize against New York, it looks like this:

And the belief seems to be that it is working:

“A reason why housing prices in Japan are not rising as fast as in New York, for example, is the large number of housing starts,” says Masahiro Kobayashi, a director general at the Japan Housing Finance Agency, a state-run entity which supports the housing market by purchasing home loans.

One sentence that really stood out for me in the article is this one here: "Private consultants were given permission to issue building permits to speed up construction." If any of you have tried to pull a building permit for a large project in Toronto, you'll know that it can take a very long time (understatement). Maybe it is the same in your city. Should we be looking at this?

Charts: WSJ

Yikes. To be completely honest, I was not expecting this post and this post to blow up in the way that they did. But hey, here we are and here's the blogTO article: "Developer shames City of Toronto into issuing permit for bold new skyscraper." What all of this suggests is that most people are shocked by how long it takes and how difficult it is to build a building. I mean, what I wrote about is just one sliver among the countless other things that need to come together for it to happen. But to my mind, these are productive discussions to be having. Because the more everyone is aware, the more likely we are to improve things.

As a follow-up to last week's post about giving free land to the City of Toronto, I am now thrilled to report that, today at 12:14 PM, we received our building permit!

Some of you were keen to hear about what happened following the post. So here's the update. I published the original post last Wednesday. And to be honest, it received far more attention than I was expecting.

On Thursday morning I received a call from the city. They weren't thrilled about my post, but were very helpful and said that they would ensure the conveyance happened immediately. It then got done before noon that same day.

Planning then sent a note to buildings saying that the permit was ready for issuance. Yay. Buildings acknowledged that they were working on it, and on Monday of this week we received a summary of the outstanding fees and the instructions for the wire transfer.

We paid the fees immediately and on Tuesday we received a payment receipt from the city. Then today -- Wednesday -- we received the building permit. So it was exactly one week from post to permit. A big thanks to everyone who helped to finally move this forward.

Hopefully it's clear that last week's post came strictly from a place of prolonged frustration. I wasn't trying to be mean. Our lawyer reminded me, after the post, that we've actually been working on this land conveyance for over 2 years.

River Davis' recent article in the Wall Street Journal about Tokyo's generally flat home prices had me, again, wondering about demographics. I mean, aren't their demographics working in reverse? They have an aging population, low immigration, and a low birthrate. But Tokyo, which represents about 11% of Japan's total population, is still growing. And their home price index looks like this compared to San Francisco and New York:

Davis' argument, which of course has been made by others before, is that deregulation has allowed housing supply to actually keep up with demand. Land use policies were relaxed to allow taller and denser buildings to be built and some degree of decision making (I'm not sure how much) was moved to the central government in order to counteract the NIMBY problem that invariably attaches itself to local politics.

The result is housing numbers that look and compare like this:

In Tokyo last year, housing starts came in around 145,000, according to Japan’s land ministry. This figure is on par with the total number of new housing units authorized last year in New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Houston combined, based on the U.S. Census Bureau data. The same feat was achieved in 2017.

If we are to normalize against New York, it looks like this:

And the belief seems to be that it is working:

“A reason why housing prices in Japan are not rising as fast as in New York, for example, is the large number of housing starts,” says Masahiro Kobayashi, a director general at the Japan Housing Finance Agency, a state-run entity which supports the housing market by purchasing home loans.

One sentence that really stood out for me in the article is this one here: "Private consultants were given permission to issue building permits to speed up construction." If any of you have tried to pull a building permit for a large project in Toronto, you'll know that it can take a very long time (understatement). Maybe it is the same in your city. Should we be looking at this?

Charts: WSJ