Jeremiah Shamess of Colliers made the claim this week that land values in some areas of the Toronto region are down 25%. He then shared a chart from Alan Leela showing how various factors have increased or decreased land values since 2020.

Broadly speaking, a revenue increase and/or more development density should increase land values; whereas something like inclusionary zoning, which is a cost to the project, should decrease land values. Indeed, this is one of the arguments in favor of inclusionary zoning: "Don't worry about the additional cost to the project because landowners will simply pay for it through reduced land prices."

In theory, all of this is correct.

Land is (or should be) the residual claimant in a development pro forma. Start with your revenue, subtract your costs, and then see what is left over for the land. (Though keep in mind that what is left over for the land could be $0 or even a negative number.)

But as I have argued before in the context of inclusionary zoning, I don't think things always play out so neatly in the market. Put differently, if the cost impact of inclusionary zoning is something like $44 psf, I don't think all landowners suddenly drop their prices accordingly -- especially in a rising market where developers are competing fiercely for land.

They don't care about your residual value model. Many or most will just hang on to their number and wait for someone to pay it.

So what I am saying with all of this is that, yeah, there are factors that put either downward or upward pressure on land values. But how it all actually plays out in the market tends to depend on the macro environment and what else is going on at the time. And right now we are at a point in the cycle where there is clearly downward pressure on land values.

I like looking at real estate values over longer periods of time because it helps to put things into perspective. 

Below is a land value index for Manhattan running from 1950 to 2014 that was recently created by economists out of Rutgers University.

The study was also cited in this recent article by Richard Florida.

Here are some of the highlights from their study:

We find three major cycles with land values reaching their nadir in 1977, just after the city’s fiscal crisis.

Since 1993, land prices have risen much faster than population or employment, at an average annual rate of 15.8%.

We estimate the entire amount of developable land on Manhattan in 2014 was worth approximately $1.74 trillion.

We estimate the long run return to Manhattan land values [since the island was first inhabited by Dutch settlers in 1626] to be about 6.4%.

What’s fascinating to me is the accelerated appreciation. The index starts at 100 in 1950, ends up slightly above that by 1993, and then simply takes off.

This morning I stumbled upon the following chart (via The Atlantic) summarizing the locations of the 100 tallest skyscrapers in the world.

As you can see North America dominated tall buildings for most of the 20th century. But then in the 1980s, Asia starting building. Then in the 2000s, the Middle East started building. And today, Asia and the Middle East are where the world’s “supertalls” sit.

What’s fascinating about this shift is that in many cases, there’s absolutely no physical or economic need to developing so tall. Yes, rising land values can drive up the height of a building, but not to the extent that we’ve been seeing.

Instead, building “the tallest building in the world” is more symbolic than anything else. It’s about ego. It’s about asserting your position on the global stage. And so while this is a chart about tall buildings, it’s actually a pretty telling chart about global ambitions.