I’ve said many times before that the real estate market is an imperfect one. Participants lack access to a lot of valuable information and there’s a significant amount of friction between buyers and sellers.
A perfect example of this can be found in this recent Toronto Star article, which is suggesting (at least in the headline) that only about 23% of Toronto’s condos are owned and rented out by investors. The article is reporting on the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s annual publication called the Canadian Housing Observer.
Of course, to come up with this number, CMHC is only reporting on data held by the MLS. It does not include units that may have been rented out via Craigslist, Kijiji, social media, a billboard in the lobby, or some other means. And I would argue that the rental side of the marketplace has a much stronger tendency to go outside of MLS as compared to sales.
So what what this means is that we have absolutely no idea what the actual percentage of investor owned units in the city really is. Here’s how CMHC put it:
Mathieu Labarge, CMHC’s deputy chief economist, acknowledged that “to complete the picture there’s a need for data,” and it simply doesn’t exist.
Nobody seems to know exactly where buyers, or their money, is coming from, why they are buying and how they intend to use the condo.
In reality, the investor percentage is going to be higher:
“We think the number is closer to 50 per cent,” says veteran Toronto development consultant Barry Lyon. “The data they (CMHC) are using has some shortcomings. It’s only part of the story.”
Now, I don’t have the answer, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that consumers and the market as a whole would be better off if it had all the information.
In it he talks about the fact that we are, for example, more likely to enjoy the food at a fancy restaurant. And we’re also more likely to enjoy a bottle of wine if it’s expensive or if we believe it comes from some desirable wine region and it’s supposed to be good (you can even just switch the bottle).
He then sums up this idea in one line that I really like: "Judgments happen long before we think they do."
Now, I’ve thought about this same idea with respect to cities. Take New York, for example. New York is famous. If I had to pick a capital for the world, it would probably be New York.
You watch it in movies and shows (even if it’s actually filmed in Toronto, Chicago or some other stand in). We read about it. We hear about it. We generally form judgments without the actual experiences. That builds brand equity. We’re supposed to like New York. Sex and the City told us so. And that makes it all that much better when we eventually get there.
Of course, it’s a bit of a catch-22. You have to be an awesome city for people to want to make movies and songs about you. But in this era of global connectedness, I think everyone, from citizens to economic development agencies, can fake it until that city makes it by investing in “
Truthfully, it’s only been over the past few months that I’ve really started to wrap my head around how Bitcoin works and what the implications of it might be. But the more I learn about it, the more it strikes me as something enormous in the making.
Essentially though, it’s a decentralized and open source digital currency that’s managed using networked computers, as opposed to any one government. And functionally, it works as a
I’ve said many times before that the real estate market is an imperfect one. Participants lack access to a lot of valuable information and there’s a significant amount of friction between buyers and sellers.
A perfect example of this can be found in this recent Toronto Star article, which is suggesting (at least in the headline) that only about 23% of Toronto’s condos are owned and rented out by investors. The article is reporting on the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s annual publication called the Canadian Housing Observer.
Of course, to come up with this number, CMHC is only reporting on data held by the MLS. It does not include units that may have been rented out via Craigslist, Kijiji, social media, a billboard in the lobby, or some other means. And I would argue that the rental side of the marketplace has a much stronger tendency to go outside of MLS as compared to sales.
So what what this means is that we have absolutely no idea what the actual percentage of investor owned units in the city really is. Here’s how CMHC put it:
Mathieu Labarge, CMHC’s deputy chief economist, acknowledged that “to complete the picture there’s a need for data,” and it simply doesn’t exist.
Nobody seems to know exactly where buyers, or their money, is coming from, why they are buying and how they intend to use the condo.
In reality, the investor percentage is going to be higher:
“We think the number is closer to 50 per cent,” says veteran Toronto development consultant Barry Lyon. “The data they (CMHC) are using has some shortcomings. It’s only part of the story.”
Now, I don’t have the answer, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that consumers and the market as a whole would be better off if it had all the information.
In it he talks about the fact that we are, for example, more likely to enjoy the food at a fancy restaurant. And we’re also more likely to enjoy a bottle of wine if it’s expensive or if we believe it comes from some desirable wine region and it’s supposed to be good (you can even just switch the bottle).
He then sums up this idea in one line that I really like: "Judgments happen long before we think they do."
Now, I’ve thought about this same idea with respect to cities. Take New York, for example. New York is famous. If I had to pick a capital for the world, it would probably be New York.
You watch it in movies and shows (even if it’s actually filmed in Toronto, Chicago or some other stand in). We read about it. We hear about it. We generally form judgments without the actual experiences. That builds brand equity. We’re supposed to like New York. Sex and the City told us so. And that makes it all that much better when we eventually get there.
Of course, it’s a bit of a catch-22. You have to be an awesome city for people to want to make movies and songs about you. But in this era of global connectedness, I think everyone, from citizens to economic development agencies, can fake it until that city makes it by investing in “
Truthfully, it’s only been over the past few months that I’ve really started to wrap my head around how Bitcoin works and what the implications of it might be. But the more I learn about it, the more it strikes me as something enormous in the making.
Essentially though, it’s a decentralized and open source digital currency that’s managed using networked computers, as opposed to any one government. And functionally, it works as a
that logs every single bitcoin transaction. What this means is that when you buy or sell something using bitcoin, no exchange of bitcoin actually takes place. Instead, the distributed public ledger (called a block chain) gets updated to show who owns which coins both today and previously.
This is potentially a big deal for 2 reasons.
The first is that many people view Bitcoin as the first internet native currency. The decentralized architecture of Bitcoin matches the decentralized architecture of the internet. And so it has the possibility of becoming the transactional protocol for the internet and global commerce.
The second reason (and this is where your mind will really get blown) is that transactions can be logged in the block chain/ledger with additional information embedded into each bitcoin. What this means is that you can use Bitcoin to create contracts, such as deposits, escrows, loans and so on. And since Bitcoin is designed to function in low trust environments (ie. where nobody knows each other), there’s an opportunity to really optimize the way we buy and sell almost anything.
In fact, if you dig deeper into what’s being contemplated with Bitcoin, you’ll find things like “smart property.”
"Smart property is property whose ownership is controlled via the Bitcoin block chain, using contracts. Examples could include physical property such as cars, phones or houses."
Of course, it’s still early days for Bitcoin. But if it truly does become the transactional protocol for the internet, then I certainly do think we’ll see dramatic changes in the way we buy things like cars and real estate.
that logs every single bitcoin transaction. What this means is that when you buy or sell something using bitcoin, no exchange of bitcoin actually takes place. Instead, the distributed public ledger (called a block chain) gets updated to show who owns which coins both today and previously.
This is potentially a big deal for 2 reasons.
The first is that many people view Bitcoin as the first internet native currency. The decentralized architecture of Bitcoin matches the decentralized architecture of the internet. And so it has the possibility of becoming the transactional protocol for the internet and global commerce.
The second reason (and this is where your mind will really get blown) is that transactions can be logged in the block chain/ledger with additional information embedded into each bitcoin. What this means is that you can use Bitcoin to create contracts, such as deposits, escrows, loans and so on. And since Bitcoin is designed to function in low trust environments (ie. where nobody knows each other), there’s an opportunity to really optimize the way we buy and sell almost anything.
In fact, if you dig deeper into what’s being contemplated with Bitcoin, you’ll find things like “smart property.”
"Smart property is property whose ownership is controlled via the Bitcoin block chain, using contracts. Examples could include physical property such as cars, phones or houses."
Of course, it’s still early days for Bitcoin. But if it truly does become the transactional protocol for the internet, then I certainly do think we’ll see dramatic changes in the way we buy things like cars and real estate.
