I started thinking about this the other night. For the first 18 years of my life, in other words, up until I moved away to university, I lived for the most part in a detached single-family house in the suburbs of Toronto. But since then, I have almost exclusively lived in apartments/condominiums ranging from converted houses to high-rise buildings.

This was true when I was at the University of Toronto and it was true when I lived in Philadelphia for grad school. In my first year of grad school I lived in a converted house in a questionable area of West Philly. In my second year I lived in a high-rise brutalist building. And in my third year I lived in a small three level walk-up apartment above a pet store and a really great deli. This perhaps not surprising given I was a student.

But since moving back to Toronto, the same has been true. I initially invested and lived in a single-family house, but then decided I preferred living in a condominium and so I have done that ever since. Maybe this changes with kids or maybe it doesn't. But it's interesting to think about the housing types we have chosen or were handed. Location and other factors certainly play a role.

What housing type have you lived in the most throughout your life? Let us know in the comment section below.

Cover photo by Michal GADEK on Unsplash

Over the last few years, there's been growing concern around institutional buyers (namely "Wall Street") buying up too many single-family houses and then renting them out.

But as we spoke about last year, the number of homes owned in this way is actually quite small. The vast majority of homes are owner occupied. And the second largest share of owners is what you might call "small landlords." That is, people who own somewhere between 1-9 homes.

So if the specific concern is that people are out there buying houses and then renting them out, the more fruitful target would be these small landlords. But nobody seems too fussed by them, which leads me to believe that this is an instance of symbolic politics theory. In other words, it's the association with the big bad Wall Street that people don't like.

Whatever the reason, here's the data on the largest single-family house buyers in the US last year (2024) via SFR Analytics:

Here are the metro areas where they transacted:

And here's this same data in heat map form:

The largest buyer was Opendoor, which is a so-called iBuyer. We've spoken about this company a lot on this blog. They don't actually want to hold any of the homes they buy. Instead, they buy, renovate, and then resell as quickly as possible.

The second largest was New Western. They are a wholesaler or "double-close buyer." These buyers want to own for an even shorter period of time and sometimes never actually own the home; instead they just assign their contract. What they're trying to do is buy at a discount and then immediately turn around and sell for a profit.

Note: SFR Analytics believes that New Western's count might be meaningfully understated in the above data. The company uses lots of different LLCs and acquisition strategies and so it's hard to aggregate the data. Assigning a contract also doesn't show up in any county records, so it's kind of impossible to track these. It's just like assigning a pre-construction condominium agreement.

Even still, what this data suggests is that single-family rental funds aren't as dominant as some might think. The overall counts for all of the largest buyers also remain relatively small. Last year, over 4 million existing homes (including condominiums and co-ops) were bought and sold in the US. And this was a nearly 30-year low.

Cover photo by Michael Tuszynski on Unsplash

This is a beautiful house:

Designed by Johnsen Schmaling Architects and located in Milwaukee's Lower East Side neighborhood, the home sits on a long 24-foot wide parcel that backs onto the Milwaukee River.

When I first saw where it was located I immediately assumed that it was a coveted location. I mean, the backyard terraces down and has direct access to the water. But one of the things that's interesting about this lot is that it had been sitting vacant for over two decades!

According to the architect, the city had condemned and demolished the previous house, and so the current owners purchased the vacant lot directly from the Milwaukee Department of City Development. Every market is different.

I don't know Milwaukee, like at all. But I did spend a good 15 minutes street viewing the area. And I have come to the informed conclusion that this is the kind of first home you build for yourself when you're a resolute urbanist.

This is where you live when you don't want to have to drive everywhere and when you want to be able to walk down to Brady Street for dinner. I respect this. So as much as I enjoy the architecture (I love a good courtyard), I think the context surrounding this build is equally interesting.

Here is a forgotten urban lot, directly on the water, that was vacant and overlooked for over twenty years. Obviously, nobody saw any value in it. Then one day, some people came along and said "let's create something incredible." And that's exactly what they did.

This is one of the things that makes cities so wonderful. They are always evolving. And there are always opportunities that others are overlooking.

Photos via Johnsen Schmaling Architects