Brandon DonnellyCanada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...
Brandon DonnellyThe bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
Brandon DonnellyThe story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
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Brandon DonnellyCanada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...
Brandon DonnellyThe bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
Brandon DonnellyThe story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
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Brandon DonnellyHow affordable is a Nabr home?
Support Brandon Donnelly
Brandon DonnellyHow affordable is a Nabr home?
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We have been speaking about Nabr and the productization of housing for the last year (and, more broadly, about prefabricated housing for probably as long as this blog has existed). And now it is possible to go on to Nabr's website and reserve a new home in their San Jose project. Here's what that looks like:
What is immediately clear is that this is an obvious improvement over the way that new homes are typically purchased. The pricing is transparent. You can easily see the floor plan and features of each home. And if you'd like to reserve one, you can go ahead and do that right away for $1,000:
You can also specify whether or not you're interested in Nabr's lease-to-purchase program (known as LEAP). More information on that can be found, over here.
But the exciting question remains whether thinking about and executing on this new housing as a product, rather than as an individual project, will ultimately bring greater cost efficiencies and savings. In other words: can it make housing more affordable?
Today, the base pricing for SoFA One looks something like this:
Home 1002: $1,415,000, ~1080 sf (excluding exterior space), $1,310 psf
Home 1003: $2,144,000, ~1547 sf (excluding exterior space), $1,386 psf
Home 1108: $938,000, ~795 sf (excluding exterior space), $1,180 psf
These are just the first 3 homes that showed up for me when I opened the website. And while I'm not intimately familiar with the San Jose housing market, Realtor tells me that the median sold price is $1.2 million and that the median list price per square foot is about $766.
Though not really an apples-to-apples comparison, this suggests to me that the above pricing may not be as affordable as some people were hoping for. However, it is more or less where I figured pricing would need to be in order to make a high-rise project like this pencil.
Does this change over time with more product scale? I think it could.
We have been speaking about Nabr and the productization of housing for the last year (and, more broadly, about prefabricated housing for probably as long as this blog has existed). And now it is possible to go on to Nabr's website and reserve a new home in their San Jose project. Here's what that looks like:
What is immediately clear is that this is an obvious improvement over the way that new homes are typically purchased. The pricing is transparent. You can easily see the floor plan and features of each home. And if you'd like to reserve one, you can go ahead and do that right away for $1,000:
You can also specify whether or not you're interested in Nabr's lease-to-purchase program (known as LEAP). More information on that can be found, over here.
But the exciting question remains whether thinking about and executing on this new housing as a product, rather than as an individual project, will ultimately bring greater cost efficiencies and savings. In other words: can it make housing more affordable?
Today, the base pricing for SoFA One looks something like this:
Home 1002: $1,415,000, ~1080 sf (excluding exterior space), $1,310 psf
Home 1003: $2,144,000, ~1547 sf (excluding exterior space), $1,386 psf
Home 1108: $938,000, ~795 sf (excluding exterior space), $1,180 psf
These are just the first 3 homes that showed up for me when I opened the website. And while I'm not intimately familiar with the San Jose housing market, Realtor tells me that the median sold price is $1.2 million and that the median list price per square foot is about $766.
Though not really an apples-to-apples comparison, this suggests to me that the above pricing may not be as affordable as some people were hoping for. However, it is more or less where I figured pricing would need to be in order to make a high-rise project like this pencil.
Does this change over time with more product scale? I think it could.
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