Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
Here are two images of the unfinished Museum of Image & Sound in Rio de Janeiro by Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
The building sits across from Copacabana’s famed beach and tiled boardwalk. The street you’re looking at is Avenida Atlântica.
The idea behind the architecture was to create a kind of “vertical boulevard” on the building’s beachside facade. Clever.
It is particularly impactful when you see it within the context of Copacabana’s delightfully formidable streetwall and curving promenade.
But it is unclear when the building will ultimately be finished. Construction started in 2010 and it first stalled in 2012. Too bad.
BuildZoom, which is a tool to help people find local contractors, recently looked at construction costs across the US.
Here is their 30-city average index running from 1950 to roughly today:
Here is a chart showing the most and least expensive cities (that is, the cities that deviate the most from their 30-city average):
BNN Bloomberg just published this article on the Toronto condo market. It is based on a roundtable discussion that was held at their Toronto office last week with Jim Ritchie of Tridel, Jared Menkes of Menkes Developments, Shamez Virani of CentreCourt, and Jane Renwick of Diamond Kilmer Developments.
The overarching theme is that, after a couple of frenetic record setting years, the market should settle down in 2019, which is likely a good thing. Hopefully that will also temper construction cost inflation. We have been seeing double digit increases over the last few years (hence some of the cancelled projects).
But as Jared points out, the fundamentals here are still strong and there are a number of supply constraints creating upward pressure on pricing:
Jared Menkes, executive vice president of high-rise residential at Menkes Developments was unwavering for the future. “There’s a lot of red tape that’s slowing down bringing more product to market,” Menkes said. “I promise you, pricing is going up.”
For the rest of the article, click here.
Here are two images of the unfinished Museum of Image & Sound in Rio de Janeiro by Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
The building sits across from Copacabana’s famed beach and tiled boardwalk. The street you’re looking at is Avenida Atlântica.
The idea behind the architecture was to create a kind of “vertical boulevard” on the building’s beachside facade. Clever.
It is particularly impactful when you see it within the context of Copacabana’s delightfully formidable streetwall and curving promenade.
But it is unclear when the building will ultimately be finished. Construction started in 2010 and it first stalled in 2012. Too bad.
BuildZoom, which is a tool to help people find local contractors, recently looked at construction costs across the US.
Here is their 30-city average index running from 1950 to roughly today:
Here is a chart showing the most and least expensive cities (that is, the cities that deviate the most from their 30-city average):
BNN Bloomberg just published this article on the Toronto condo market. It is based on a roundtable discussion that was held at their Toronto office last week with Jim Ritchie of Tridel, Jared Menkes of Menkes Developments, Shamez Virani of CentreCourt, and Jane Renwick of Diamond Kilmer Developments.
The overarching theme is that, after a couple of frenetic record setting years, the market should settle down in 2019, which is likely a good thing. Hopefully that will also temper construction cost inflation. We have been seeing double digit increases over the last few years (hence some of the cancelled projects).
But as Jared points out, the fundamentals here are still strong and there are a number of supply constraints creating upward pressure on pricing:
Jared Menkes, executive vice president of high-rise residential at Menkes Developments was unwavering for the future. “There’s a lot of red tape that’s slowing down bringing more product to market,” Menkes said. “I promise you, pricing is going up.”
For the rest of the article, click here.
And here is a chart that compares labor cost appreciation to material costs:
Labor costs account for the bulk of the geographic variation in construction costs and the most expensive cities to build in also tend to have the highest median home prices.
The way to read the above chart is that any city with a y-axis value greater than 1 means that labor costs have appreciated faster than material costs from 2008 to 2017.
In the case of San Francisco, labor costs have appreciated 32.8% (> 1.3) faster than material costs.
Part of this likely has to do with the fact that San Francisco is an expensive city in which to live. People have to be paid more if they’re going to work there.
Full blog post from BuildZoom, here.
And here is a chart that compares labor cost appreciation to material costs:
Labor costs account for the bulk of the geographic variation in construction costs and the most expensive cities to build in also tend to have the highest median home prices.
The way to read the above chart is that any city with a y-axis value greater than 1 means that labor costs have appreciated faster than material costs from 2008 to 2017.
In the case of San Francisco, labor costs have appreciated 32.8% (> 1.3) faster than material costs.
Part of this likely has to do with the fact that San Francisco is an expensive city in which to live. People have to be paid more if they’re going to work there.
Full blog post from BuildZoom, here.
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