Brandon Donnelly

Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

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Category: Travel

  • Are short-term rentals really a zero-sum game?

    The prevailing view on short-term rentals right now seems to be this:

    That is, it’s viewed as a zero-sum game between residents and tourists. There are only so many homes within a city, and so if any of them are to turn into short-term rentals, then it is a direct reduction in the supply of available long-term homes. This can also happen very quickly given the asset-light nature of Airbnb and the fact that these spaces aren’t usually purpose-built.

    It is for this reason that many cities have enacted strict short-term rental laws that basically only allow you to rent out your principal residence when you’re not around or if you happen to have extra space. In the case of New York, you have to be physically present when the dwelling is being rented, and so the use case is exclusively “I have extra space for you.”

    Either way, the basic idea is to stop people from removing homes from the long-term market. I do, however, find it curious that reductions in housing supply seem to be generally viewed as bad, but that increases in housing supply are often met with skepticism. Doesn’t housing supply work in both directions? Why aren’t more people clamouring for new homes to be built?

    Where my head is at on this issue is that I don’t see it as a zero-sum game. I believe that there should be rules and regulations around short-term rentals, but that they shouldn’t stamp out all use cases other than “here’s an air mattress in my living room.” At the same time, I think we should be viewing this as an opportunity. Clearly we need more homes, more hotels, and more short-term rentals.

    It’s only zero-sum if we make it that way.

  • My first Turo experience

    I used Turo for the first time this evening. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Turo is like Airbnb, but for cars. It connects people who have cars with people who need rental cars. Here is a photo of ours at SLC:

    The pickup was perfectly seamless. I got a text from an alleged human the day before. It said that they would leave the car on the second level of the parking garage next to baggage claim. And that I would get more precise instructions — such as where the key will be — after it was parked there.

    I was also told that there would be a small charge to pay in order to exit the garage. And that the charge would obviously depend on how quickly I retrieve the car after they park it. In my case it ended up being US$10, but we also stopped for food on the way.

    Overall, I’d say the pickup experience was easier and faster than your typical rental car. The car was as advertised. And thankfully, it was also there waiting for us. The two standout features for me are probably: (1) It was cheaper and (2) you get to pick your exact car. 

    This second one is important because sometimes you need a rental car so that you can drive it into a snow-covered canyon. And when faced with this situation, it can be helpful to know exactly what you’ll be getting — right down to the type of tires.

  • Framing nearing completion at Parkview Mountain House

    The building season is short in Park City. There was still snow on our site in May and there was snow again on our site by October. You can certainly build through the winter, but it’s not ideal. It slows you down, and so the team has been racing to get “closed in” before the real winter weather arrives. (Park City Mountain Resort opens for the season on November 17.)

    Right now, it looks like we’ll be finished framing by early next week. We have our framing inspection scheduled with Summit County on Wednesday. Here’s a progress shot of level three from last week:

    This is the top floor of the house, which will house the kitchen, dining area, living room, terrace (which is where the above photo was taken from), and two bay windows. The far one is going to serve as a seat in the living room, and the closer one (on the right) is going to be a workspace area. In both cases, they’re designed to orient you towards the trees and the mountain.

    Overall, this was Mattaforma’s design strategy — to create a kind of introverted house. The windows facing the street are generally small and placed to frame very specific views of the landscape; whereas the windows facing the trees and mountain are generous. The intent was to always connect you with nature as you move throughout the house.

    Sadly, PMH won’t be available for rent this winter. But if you’d like to get on the list for next summer and winter, click here.

  • That time Anthony Bourdain visited Toronto

    I’m a big fan of Anthony Bourdain and I have seen a lot of his shows. However, up until last night, I was under the impression that he had never done an episode about Toronto. Turns out I was wrong. Yesterday I discovered that, back in 2012, he did one as part of his two-season show, The Layover.

    As a born and raised Torontonian and as a fervent supporter of this city, I’m always a combination of excited and nervous before I watch a show like this. I’m excited because I love Toronto and I like seeing it showcased. But I’m nervous because, what if they don’t do a good job showing it off?

    Maybe it’s hometown insecurity, or maybe it’s just my inner desire to want to properly sell Toronto to the rest of the world. Either way, my mixed feelings were not unfounded.

    The episode opens with Bourdain coming into downtown from the airport and immediately saying, “It’s not a good looking town. They sort of got the worst of the architectural fads of the 20th century. It looks like every public school in America, every third-tier city library, Soviet chic, butt-ugly, glass box.”

    Things get generally more positive after this initial impression, and eventually Bourdain does admit that the city has great food, nightlife, diversity, etc. But there is this interesting moment in the middle of the episode where a bunch of Torontonians are asked: What one thing would you say best describes Toronto?

    Most didn’t know how to answer it.

    This got me thinking:

    What is our thing? There are, of course, the obvious answers. We are diverse. We have great ethnic foods. We have numerous sports teams. And people are generally nice. But these are a little too generic and boring for me. There are also truly unique features like our ravine network, but I wouldn’t call this our single most notable feature.

    The right answer, in my view, is that Toronto is the economic and cultural capital of Canada. It used to be Montréal (which you all know I love deeply), but that’s no longer the case today. Broadly speaking, there’s only one global city in this country and, like it or not, it’s Toronto.

    I think it’s important to recognize this ranking because economic opportunity is one of the principal reasons that people live in cities in the first place. And if we are to compete globally, we are going to need to be both confident about our place in the world and insanely ambitious about our goals.

    So that’s my answer: Toronto has global city status. But clearly we need to be much better at recognizing and building on it.

    Photo by Mvrkle on Unsplash

  • More lights on buildings!

    Back in undergrad, I spent a summer living and working in Taipei and Hong Kong. It was my first time being in either of these cities and I absolutely loved it. I was studying architecture. I was really developing my love of big cities. And these felt like two very real and big cities.

    Below is a cheesy tourist photo that I paid someone to take of me from the Kowloon Pier. I still have access to it because obviously my mom has it framed and prominently displayed in her kitchen:

    I’m sharing this photo because one of the things that really stood out to me about Hong Kong, in particular, was how they lit their buildings. There were neon signs (which is something that Hong Kong is, or least was, famous for); lights shining up into the sky (bad, I know); and full light shows and animations across entire building elevations.

    I immediately thought to myself: “Why don’t we have fun like this? Especially considering that Toronto can get kind of dark during the winter.”

    Well, some twenty years later, we are now starting to have more lights. We fought hard for our placemaking sign at Junction House. The CN Tower has since been illuminated. And most recently, we got 160 Front Street West. But it turns out that building lights can be a little divisive:

    My view is exactly what it was when I first landed in hot and humid Hong Kong. And so I respectfully disagree with Jocelyn Squires (though I have great admiration for her work). Architectural lighting adds color and dynamism to our cities. It can also help our cities from all looking the same.

    Let’s stop being so conservative and have some fun. Nice work, 160 Front.

  • 1/21st of a second home

    I don’t know for exactly how long, but for a very long time people have been trying to solve this real estate problem: “I have a desire to own a home, or multiple homes, around the world. However, I don’t know how often I’d actually use it/them, and this desire is both expensive and a pain in the ass.”

    And so unless you have a lot of money and can make the pain in the ass part go away, there seems to exist an ongoing need to make fulfilling this desire both cheaper and easier. Perhaps the most common ways are through a timeshare property or through some kind of fractional ownership structure, where you own a share of a property.

    Some companies are even “tokenizing” this second structure on blockchains. I have read about one company that is buying vacation homes and then issuing 365 corresponding tokens. Each token represents 1 day of occupancy (and actual title ownership apparently). In theory this sounds kind of neat, but you’re also buying a second home with potentially 364 other strangers.

    So here’s another approach that I just learned about. The UK-based company, August, has devised a model that works like this:

    • August starts with “homeowner curation.” Meaning, they start by vetting homeowners to make sure that they’re not weird or something.
    • Once they have a suitable collection of homeowners, August sets up a new real estate entity that all of the homeowners must then fund equally.
    • This entity, by way of August, goes out and buys 5 properties, and each homeowner receives an equal share of the ownership. (Typically, they target 16-21 groups per entity.)
    • August renovates the 5 properties, gets them ready for occupancy, and then manages them on ongoing basis. This includes bookings.
    • Finally, each homeowner gets an average of 8-10 weeks per year across all of their homes.

    In terms of the homes themselves, their pied-à-terre collection includes homes in Paris, Rome, Cannes, Barcelona, and London. They are typically between 70-100 square meters with 2 bedrooms and 1-2 bathrooms. And the average price/value is supposedly around €1,250,000 (post-renovation?), with the entry price of a share starting at €340,000.

    I’m not sure if this share figure is based on 21 homeowners, but if it is, then that’s €7,140,000 of equity being raised in order to buy somewhere around €6,250,000 of real estate. Is the spread their margin for setting this all up? There’s also an annual fee per owner (€8,600), which presumably covers operating costs and the ongoing management of the properties.

    A model like this naturally provokes a lot of questions. What happens if somebody wants to sell? Does the next buyer need to be similarly vetted for overall weirdness? And how liquid is 1/21st of a 5-property apartment portfolio? I don’t know these answers, but intuitively these shares have got to be less liquid than a 100% sale.

    However, as a solution to the problem of “I have a desire to own homes across Europe but I’m not quite rich enough to make it truly carefree”, this seems like a pretty clever solution.

  • Paris in August 🇫🇷

    We’re no longer in Paris. We’ve been back in Toronto for about 3 weeks now. But the pictures live on and I finally got around to processing all of the ones that I took on my Fujifilm X-T3 (23mm f/2).

  • The Arc de Triomphe roundabout takes some getting used to

    In case I haven’t been clear enough: I love cities. I vividly remember being a kid and being excited to come downtown. My mom has told me that my eyes used to light up — every, single, time. Even today, when I’m away from Toronto and I return home, I’m excited to see the skyline. I miss it.

    This afternoon I got that same feeling on our return to Paris, even though it is not home. We spent the last two days in Normandy, specifically Étretat and Rouen, and as beautiful and as wonderful as these places are, I was genuinely excited to come back to the capital.

    My other revelation is that driving in Paris sucks.

    I would much rather walk, cycle, or take the metro. That is what this city is designed for. Still, I’m happy that we rented a car for Normandy and that I learned — after being honked at — how to appropriately conduct myself in the infamous Arc de Triomphe roundabout.

    Unlike every other roundabout in the world, you do not yield to cars already in the circle; you yield to cars entering the circle. Once you understand that, it’s significantly easier. Though, supposedly, car accidents that happen within the circle are automatically every driver’s fault and every insurer pays.

    I guess that says something about its orderliness.

    Aren’t cities wonderful?

  • Étretat 🇫🇷

    Étretat, France. Shot on a Fujifilm X-T3 with a 23mm f/2 prime lens.

  • The new standard in wired charging

    It is widely rumoured that the upcoming iPhone 15 will replace its lightning charging port with a standard USB-C port. Maybe it doesn’t happen next month, but it will happen before December 28, 2024. Because this is the conformity deadline that the European Union has set for standardized wired charging.

    This said, I am already feeling like everything has switched over. All of the charging cables in my bag right now are USB-C. And I just realized that I’m going to need to buy some new travel adapters with USB-C ports, instead of USB-A (see above). This also means that hotels, airports, airplanes, and all other places around the world are going to need to start switching over to USB-C.

    I’m thinking about this right now because we are incorporating USB plugs next to work areas in some of our development projects. And there’s no point in going with USB-A any longer. That’s done. What would be even better, though, is if we could get rid of the 15 different plug types that are used around the world and switch everything over to one standard.

    Hopefully that’s next.