Today was the 2019 Land & Development Conference here in Toronto. I was on a panel in the morning about Proptech. I then sat in on a discussion about construction costs. But after that I had to get back to the office to prepare for a couple of meetings.

Here are my tweet takeaways (from the back of the room) during the construction cost session. You may need to click through to see the full thread.

The construction cost escalations that we have seen over the last 2-3 years have had a significant impact on new construction in this region. Niall Finnegan's view is that we are 85% of the way through this "storm."

From his experience, it takes 18 months or so for hard costs to respond to changes in demand. And so the storm we are currently in is a result of elevated condo sales from 2017-2018.

The general consensus from the panel was that costs should start to moderate sometime soon, though maybe not this year. Nobody really knows when that will happen. But if/when hard costs do adjust, it typically happens quickly.

One comment that didn't make it into my tweets, but that I found interesting, was about how uncertainty and volatility in the market -- like what we are seeing today with construction costs -- could actually stifle innovation.

Because it creates additional project risks, it limits people's appetite for other kinds of risks -- like trying new things. I can see that.

There's a lot of money at work right now trying to reinvent the way that homes are bought and sold. Perhaps the most popular trend is "instant buying" or algorithmic home buying. I have been writing about this for years, mostly because of Opendoor. But now there are lots of companies competing in this space. With this model, home sellers get the benefit of an almost immediate sale, though usually it's at a slightly lower price.

Redfin, on the other hand, is returning to something that it first tried out back in 2006: a buy now button on its online listings. It failed back then. But maybe it was simply too early. The feature allows unrepresented buyers -- that is, buyers without an agent -- to make online offers. Naturally, it's far from a single click process. But when accepted, the seller ends up paying about half the amount of commission.

According to the New York Times, the company started testing the feature in late March in the Boston area. Of the 120 homes listed on Redfin with a "start an offer" button, 5 ended up being purchased via an online bid. That's more than I would have expected. But Redfin positions these offers as being the stronger option because they save sellers money. There's also an option to tour the home on your own.

Today was the 2019 Land & Development Conference here in Toronto. I was on a panel in the morning about Proptech. I then sat in on a discussion about construction costs. But after that I had to get back to the office to prepare for a couple of meetings.

Here are my tweet takeaways (from the back of the room) during the construction cost session. You may need to click through to see the full thread.

The construction cost escalations that we have seen over the last 2-3 years have had a significant impact on new construction in this region. Niall Finnegan's view is that we are 85% of the way through this "storm."

From his experience, it takes 18 months or so for hard costs to respond to changes in demand. And so the storm we are currently in is a result of elevated condo sales from 2017-2018.

The general consensus from the panel was that costs should start to moderate sometime soon, though maybe not this year. Nobody really knows when that will happen. But if/when hard costs do adjust, it typically happens quickly.

One comment that didn't make it into my tweets, but that I found interesting, was about how uncertainty and volatility in the market -- like what we are seeing today with construction costs -- could actually stifle innovation.

Because it creates additional project risks, it limits people's appetite for other kinds of risks -- like trying new things. I can see that.

There's a lot of money at work right now trying to reinvent the way that homes are bought and sold. Perhaps the most popular trend is "instant buying" or algorithmic home buying. I have been writing about this for years, mostly because of Opendoor. But now there are lots of companies competing in this space. With this model, home sellers get the benefit of an almost immediate sale, though usually it's at a slightly lower price.

Redfin, on the other hand, is returning to something that it first tried out back in 2006: a buy now button on its online listings. It failed back then. But maybe it was simply too early. The feature allows unrepresented buyers -- that is, buyers without an agent -- to make online offers. Naturally, it's far from a single click process. But when accepted, the seller ends up paying about half the amount of commission.

According to the New York Times, the company started testing the feature in late March in the Boston area. Of the 120 homes listed on Redfin with a "start an offer" button, 5 ended up being purchased via an online bid. That's more than I would have expected. But Redfin positions these offers as being the stronger option because they save sellers money. There's also an option to tour the home on your own.