Feargus O’Sullivan is doing a series in CityLab right now on the “home designs” that define four European cities: London, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Paris. The first one is on London’s classic “two-up, two-down” design, which refers to a two storey home with a living room… Read More
All posts filed under “real estate”
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Software eats real estate
At the beginning of this year, a16z announced that they co-led a $175 million investment in the real estate company Loft. Based in São Paulo, Loft is doing in Brazil what Opendoor is doing in the US. They are bringing more liquidity to the residential… Read More
New development applications near where you live
A few weeks ago, I tweeted that I was creating a simple email newsletter that would notify you of new planning/development applications (and updates) near where you live (in Toronto). About 100 people subscribed following that tweet and we then spent the following few weeks… Read More
The re-allocation of capital (and predictions for this decade)
I have stayed at two hotels over the last month where I did not need to interact with a human as part of the check in process. And in one of those two instances I didn’t even need to interact with a computer at the… Read More
A non-zero probability of copycats
Software businesses are generally high margin businesses. But along with this feature comes some risks. Here’s an excerpt from a recent post by Scott Galloway (which is actually about FedEx): With any software start-up, there is a non-zero probability that you wake up the next… Read More
The power brokers
The Nib’s recent comic about Jane Jacobs vs. The Power Brokers (i.e. Robert Moses) is a good little overview of her lessons and legacy. But I don’t understand the claim that developers co-opted her ideals in order to exploit and gentrify urban neighborhoods. According to… Read More
Algorithmic home buying expands to Los Angeles
Algorithmic home buying companies (or iBuyers) have now started to expand into Los Angeles. If you recall, most of these companies started in smaller markets where the homes are more homogenous, relatively inexpensive, and generally less liquid. Places like Phoenix. By tackling the second largest… Read More
Who is going to buy the homes vacated by Baby Boomers?
The Wall Street Journal estimates that, from now until about 2037, roughly 21 million homes in the United States will be vacated by seniors. To put this number into perspective, it’s about 25% of the US for-sale housing stock and more than double the amount… Read More
An all-women development team
My good friend Taya Cook (of Urban Capital) and her development partner Sherry Larjani were featured in the New York Times today as a result of their Reina project and their remarkable efforts to gender balance the male-dominated commercial real estate industry. I am thrilled… Read More
Gentrification in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago is not as it would seem
Matthew L. Schuerman has a new book out called, Newcomers: Gentrification and Its Discontents. I haven’t read it. But in it, he argues that “gentrification is all around us.” Hence the title. Will Stancil has an interesting rebuttal to this position as part of his… Read More
