Brandon Donnelly
THE DAILY INFILL is a blog for city builders written by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
Brandon Donnelly
THE DAILY INFILL is a blog for city builders written by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
Joe Cortright recently wrote about a study by Kate Pennington (UC Berkeley), which looked at the impact of housing production on legal eviction in San Francisco. The goal was to figure out if new housing supply actually causes displacement.
To do this, Pennington went block-by-block and looked at new housing projects, as well as over a decades’ worth of eviction notices.
The relationship between the two was found to be “statistically indistinguishable from zero.” In other words, the “monthly probability of an eviction notice” does not change when new housing supply is completed nearby.
Some have been critical of her findings and some have questioned whether legal eviction notices are, in fact, the right proxy for displacement.
But I agree with Joe Cortright in that this still feels like a meaningful relationship to understand, especially when we’re talking about a tight housing market like San Francisco’s.
Photo by Matthew Cabret on Unsplash
This week I saw it reported that in this decade alone, the Seattle area is set to deliver more new rental apartments than it did in the prior 50 years combined.
And as a result, the sentiment is that new housing supply is finally starting to keep pace with demand and put downward pressure on rents.
Do you remember who was the crane capital of the US a year ago? They may still have that title.
In some of the most desirable neighborhoods of Seattle – where much of the new supply is coming online – rents dropped 6% compared to the prior quarter. At the county level, this last quarter was by far the biggest drop of the decade according to the Seattle Times.
According to Bloomberg (using data from CMHC), 2017 was a surprising record year for housing starts in Canada: 219,675 units. This is the most since 2007 and is up from 197,916 units in 2016.
The explanation: job growth (nearly 400,000 new jobs) and population growth were both more robust than expected.
Multiple unit project starts are also up significantly with 142,840 units starting in 2017. This is a 15% increase from the prior year. Of these units, 102,516 of them were “apartment-like homes.”
But all of this is nationwide data. Look at what happened in Toronto and Vancouver:
The increased activity mostly sidestepped land-constrained Toronto and Vancouver, the country’s two most expensive markets, but was robust in the suburbs and less pricey surrounding cities. Starts in Toronto fell 1 percent to 38,738 in 2017, while declining 6 percent in Vancouver to 26,204 units.
This is not because of a lack of demand. It’s becoming systematically more difficult and more costly to build new housing in these two markets.
Joe Cortright recently wrote about a study by Kate Pennington (UC Berkeley), which looked at the impact of housing production on legal eviction in San Francisco. The goal was to figure out if new housing supply actually causes displacement.
To do this, Pennington went block-by-block and looked at new housing projects, as well as over a decades’ worth of eviction notices.
The relationship between the two was found to be “statistically indistinguishable from zero.” In other words, the “monthly probability of an eviction notice” does not change when new housing supply is completed nearby.
Some have been critical of her findings and some have questioned whether legal eviction notices are, in fact, the right proxy for displacement.
But I agree with Joe Cortright in that this still feels like a meaningful relationship to understand, especially when we’re talking about a tight housing market like San Francisco’s.
Photo by Matthew Cabret on Unsplash
This week I saw it reported that in this decade alone, the Seattle area is set to deliver more new rental apartments than it did in the prior 50 years combined.
And as a result, the sentiment is that new housing supply is finally starting to keep pace with demand and put downward pressure on rents.
Do you remember who was the crane capital of the US a year ago? They may still have that title.
In some of the most desirable neighborhoods of Seattle – where much of the new supply is coming online – rents dropped 6% compared to the prior quarter. At the county level, this last quarter was by far the biggest drop of the decade according to the Seattle Times.
According to Bloomberg (using data from CMHC), 2017 was a surprising record year for housing starts in Canada: 219,675 units. This is the most since 2007 and is up from 197,916 units in 2016.
The explanation: job growth (nearly 400,000 new jobs) and population growth were both more robust than expected.
Multiple unit project starts are also up significantly with 142,840 units starting in 2017. This is a 15% increase from the prior year. Of these units, 102,516 of them were “apartment-like homes.”
But all of this is nationwide data. Look at what happened in Toronto and Vancouver:
The increased activity mostly sidestepped land-constrained Toronto and Vancouver, the country’s two most expensive markets, but was robust in the suburbs and less pricey surrounding cities. Starts in Toronto fell 1 percent to 38,738 in 2017, while declining 6 percent in Vancouver to 26,204 units.
This is not because of a lack of demand. It’s becoming systematically more difficult and more costly to build new housing in these two markets.
Funny how that works.
It’s also worth noting that the US as a whole is building far more rental apartments than condominiums. Here is a post I wrote in August 2015 which pegged condos as a percentage of overall multifamily construction at around 5.5%. That’s a tiny percentage.
Funny how that works.
It’s also worth noting that the US as a whole is building far more rental apartments than condominiums. Here is a post I wrote in August 2015 which pegged condos as a percentage of overall multifamily construction at around 5.5%. That’s a tiny percentage.
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