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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  • Land is not the problem right now

    April 13, 2026 · View original

    This is a follow-up to yesterday’s post about too many people allegedly speculating on underutilized urban land. Over the weekend, I saw Patrick Condon, a professor at UBC and author of the book “Broken City: Land Speculation, Inequality, and Urban Crisis,” argue that “urban land is the impossible-to-ignore driver of the housing crisis.” Is it really? Let me offer the developer’s perspective and explain what has happened in Toronto.

    It is certainly true that the price of development land appreciated rapidly toward the end of the last cycle and that, at the time, there was enough margin for developers to bifurcate the work of zoning land and actually building out projects. But since 2022, that has gone away, and we have seen a dramatic correction in pricing.

    According to Bullpen and Batory’s Q4-2025 High-Rise Land Insights Report, the average sold price for a high-density site in the GTA has gone from $119 per buildable square foot in 2019 to $78 per buildable square foot at the end of last year (a ~34% decline).

    But this is a blended average. In my experience, the falloff in pricing has been even more dramatic and, in many cases, land now feels illiquid. With rents declining and new condominiums not selling, what’s the value? Land prices are a function of what you can do with the land. If what you can do disappears, so too does the value. Land is not the problem right now.

    But even if we were to ignore current market factors, it’s debatable whether land prices were really the primary driver of unaffordable housing. About six years ago, Toronto developer Urban Capital published a pro forma comparison between a project they did in 2005 and a project they were doing in 2020.

    What they found over this 15-year period was that construction costs increased by 91%, land costs increased by 160%, and government fees and taxes increased by some 413% (development charges alone increased by 3,244%!). The price of development land certainly increased, surpassing the rate of inflation, but we can’t ignore that roughly a third of the price of a new home became government fees and taxes.

    Today, there are countless development models that don’t pencil even if you plug the land value in at $0. That tells me that we’ve got bigger problems.

    Cover photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

  • Carrots over sticks

    April 12, 2026 · View original

    This recent article by Inga Saffron in the Philadelphia Inquirer is behind a paywall and so I, admittedly, haven’t read it. But it seems to cover a common urban dilemma: Center City Philadelphia has too many surface parking lots while simultaneously having a need for more housing. The problem, as the argument goes, is that the city’s tax system is under-assessing vacant land, creating an incentive to sit on it, and a disincentive to develop new housing. The solution: tax land more; tax improvements less.

    (Forgive me if this isn’t entirely accurate with Saffron’s position.)

    It’s a classic “stick versus carrot” approach. Let’s beat landowners and developers into building more housing. Now, in some situations, I can see the allure of this line of thinking. If we’re talking about someone who has owned a surface parking lot for many decades and it’s generating a nice stream of cash, there might be little incentive to develop it or sell the land to someone who will develop it. But as a general rule, I believe that carrots are far more productive than sticks.

    I have at least two concerns with trying to tax landowners into compliance. One, you have to be careful not to create a double-edged sword. Taxing based on the “highest and best use” can work to suppress some of the small businesses that make cities great. For example, should a site with a local bookstore in a small heritage building, or a mom-and-pop restaurant in a single-storey building, be forced into higher-density housing? I don’t think so.

    Two, blaming low taxes for the lack of housing can distract from the more fundamental question: Why aren’t more developers building housing if there’s a need and an availability of land? When I lived in Philadelphia during grad school, I remember developers telling me the following: “The thing about Philly is that the build-costs are the same as New York (Philly is a strong labour union city), but the rents you can command are obviously nowhere near the same.” Sticks don’t work if the math doesn’t math!

    I don’t know how the market has evolved since the late 2000s, but I do know that developers want to develop. And they will do so if the economics make sense and the right carrots exist.

    Cover photo by G Visuals on Unsplash

  • Most people don’t want Paris, they want a city that looks like Paris

    April 11, 2026 · View original

    I recently came across this tweet by Patrick Collison, the CEO of Stripe, where he argues that the YIMBY movement “employs an inadvertently dishonest sleight-of-hand” when it promises “Paris-scale density” only to ultimately deliver something quite different in cities.

    In the post, he shares a fairly banal mid-rise development that looks nothing like Paris, and then says that if we’re talking about Paris-style building, he’d be all for it, and likely voters would be too. His point seems to be that if only we made developments more beautiful, fewer people would oppose them.

    I had to read the tweet a few times to make sure I was understanding it correctly because the “Paris-scale density” language was throwing me off. Paris is not a medium-density city. It’s a high-density city and generally considered to be the highest-density city in Europe. Is this the Paris promise?

    I don’t actually think most people want Paris; they want a city that looks like Paris, and that’s because they ignore most of its urban ingredients and only focus on the two most obvious things: (1) its outward architectural expressions and (2) its modest building heights.

    Paris-scale density is single-stair buildings with minimal setbacks and stepbacks, dark light wells, tiny 130-square-foot studios in the penthouse, no parking minimums, and area population densities that can exceed 50,000 people per km2. Is this what most voters want, provided they look pretty?

    For the purposes of this post, let’s just run with the argument that urban environments people broadly feel are beautiful would elicit less NIMBY opposition. Just build Paris-like buildings. Unfortunately, I also don’t think the answer is as simple as this.

    As Sam Deutsch of Better Cities points out, this runs counter to NIMBY history. Let’s not forget that the Paris everyone visits today was vehemently opposed during the time of its initial development and that the city’s most iconic structure was called a hateful column of bolted sheet metal, among other things.

    Beautiful buildings and great places are, of course, fundamental to cities. But even then, expect turbulence along the way.

    Cover photo by Deniz Bireroglu on Unsplash

  • One front door

    April 10, 2026 · View original

    In April of 2025, a bill was introduced in Washington, DC, called the One Front Door Amendment Act. It aims to do what many cities are now working on or considering, which is to allow single-stair/egress buildings up to six storeys. This, as most of you know, is very common throughout the world. It’s a key ingredient in fine-grained infill housing, but it is generally not permissible in Canada and the US above certain build heights. In DC, I understand the current limit is 3 storeys.

    The bill had its first Council reading last month and it passed unanimously (13-0). There is the small problem of there being no funding to enact the bill (it was passed “subject to appropriations’), but I call that a minor detail. The deadline for the Department of Buildings to issue new rules is July 1, 2027, which means this is how long they have to find the money and then do the technical work required to allow these new single-stair buildings. It’s not done yet, but from the outside, it appears to be progressing.

    Now the obvious question becomes: what the hell is taking Toronto so long? What is our deadline for implementation? As far as I know, there isn’t one. (Please correct me if I’m wrong.) We now permit 6-storey apartments along all “Major Streets” in the city — from a planning perspective, at least — except the economics do not work at scale, and the requirement for two exit stairs remains one of the major obstacles. Enough with the navel-gazing. Let’s get building, Toronto!

    Cover photo by Andy Feliciotti on Unsplash

  • How Ontario’s new HST rebate changes new home pricing

    April 9, 2026 · View original

    On March 25, 2026, the Ontario government announced that it would be expanding the HST rebate to lower the cost of new homes. Here’s the full media briefing PDF. Since then, every developer, lawyer, and sales team in the city has been scrambling to figure it all out and incorporate it into their projects. This includes us.

    Today on the blog, I thought it might be useful to do the following: (1) explain how I understand the proposed rebate program works (or will work, to be exact), (2) talk about how I’m seeing the industry respond to the announcement (naturally, there’s been some criticism), and (3) shamelessly plug one of our HST rebate-eligible homes at Junction House.

    First, I need to caveat this post by saying that, oh boy, I’m not an accountant or lawyer, and that this proposal is still subject to regulatory enactment. So, I could be wrong about something, the proposal might not get passed, or maybe something outrageous happens, potentially precipitated by a post on Truth Social. Do your own research. Talk to your advisors. Having said all this, the industry fully expects this to pass, and developers are already relying on the fact that it will, perhaps by this summer.

    Second, it’s helpful to understand how new homes are typically priced in the market and how the existing new home HST rebate works. Developers in the Toronto market typically price their homes inclusive of HST, but net of the current new home HST rebate. As it stands today, this rebate caps out at $24,000, translating to an effective HST rate that is lower than the current rate of 13%, depending on the price of the home.

    Let me explain:

    – Price on the purchase agreement: $925,000 (again, this is inclusive of HST but net of the $24k rebate) – Base price excluding any HST = ($925,000 + $24,000) / 1.13 = $839,823.01 – HST payable to government = $925,000 – $839,823.01 = $85,176.99 – Effective HST rate = $85,176.99 / $839,823.01 = 10.1% (which is less than 13% because of the $24k rebate)

    In practice, the way this typically works is that the buyer, who is assumed to qualify for the rebate, assigns it to the developer as part of the closing process. The developer receives the benefit of this rebate, and so they only need to remit the remaining 10.1% to the government. Importantly, this particular rebate is meant for people intending to move into the new home. If they are not doing this, then a separate rebate process applies.

    Now, here’s what’s proposed for the new HST program, which is available only for purchases made between April 1, 2026 and March 31, 2027, and applicable to homes used as a primary place of residence or as a residential rental property:

    – Up to $1,000,000: Full 13% HST rebate (up to $130,000). – $1,000,001 to $1,500,000: Flat maximum rebate of $130,000. – $1,500,001 to $1,850,000: The rebate phases down proportionally from $130,000 to $24,000. – Over $1,850,000: The rebate is capped at the standard Ontario maximum of $24,000 (same as today).

    Given that most developers have been pricing inclusive of HST, but net of the current rebate, there’s some math involved to figure out what purchasers will ultimately be paying for a new home bought over the next 12 months. But for homes under $1,850,000, the answer is less than before! (More on this below.)

    Another important question is how this will work given that the eligibility time period has started, but the proposal hasn’t passed and isn’t in force yet. The way we are thinking about it is generally in the following two ways.

    If a purchaser is buying a new home and closing on it today, they will have to pay the HST as has been customary in the past, but then the expectation is that, once the proposal is enacted, the purchaser will get it refunded (as per the above). Going back to our $925k example above, the $85k would still get paid up front, and then remitted to the government, but then the purchaser would get it back, bringing their net price down to $839k.

    If a purchaser is buying a new home today and expecting to close on it after the proposal is enacted, one reasonable assumption is that the proper protocols will be in place such that the purchaser isn’t paying the HST upfront only to get it back later. In our example, they would instead be paying the $839k up front. Developers are contracting for this scenario today, but how exactly the paperwork will flow in the future remains TBD.

    One of the unexpected benefits of this proposal, at least for me, is that it has me thinking more in terms of net prices, excluding any HST. And I like this better. I think it’s a more transparent way to communicate with purchasers. We as an industry should use this moment as an opportunity to move toward this practice.

    In fact, what I would like to be able to do is enumerate the following to buyers: “Here is the price of your new home. Now let’s add the HST, development charges, education development charges, parkland dedication fees, community benefit charges, and so on.” Because I think, only then, would it become clear to the general public how much we tax new housing.

    Now let’s talk more broadly about how the market is responding to this proposal.

    One of the criticisms of this proposal is that it will only serve to increase developer margins. And indeed, this proposal does represent a cost reduction in development pro formas. But what I will say is that every single developer that I have spoken to is using this as an opportunity to reduce their pricing and pass along the savings (typically 1:1) to new home buyers. The reality is that the market is too soft to do anything else.

    This is a perfect example of the cost-plus pricing model that we often talk about on this blog. Developers typically price based on their costs. Now that costs have come down (because of this proposal), they are lowering their prices accordingly. And those who do not follow suit will no longer be competitive in the market.

    The market froze out in recent years because, suddenly, the price people were willing to pay for new homes was less than developers’ costs. The floor had been reached. But now the floor has been lowered in a direct effort to clear out inventory and reset the market. It’s a good time to be a new home buyer, and I have already started to feel a change in sentiment across the industry.

    On that note, I would like to turn your attention to a penthouse suite at Junction House that we just listed for sale. It’s a two-bedroom and two-bath home and, yes, it’s HST rebate-eligible! It’s one of my favourite suites in the building. If you’d like to learn more, reach out to Paul Johnston at Unique Urban Homes ([paul@pauljohnston.com](mailto:paul@pauljohnston.com)).

  • The return of the American rowhome

    April 8, 2026 · View original

    My internet friend Bobby Fijan is one of the founders of a mission-driven company called The American Housing Corporation. It was founded in 2024. They opened their first factory in Austin in 2025, and they’re now actively working on their first collection of modular homes.

    The mission is both simple and awesome: The American middle class can no longer afford a family-oriented starter home in the cities they love. This has people leaving cities, abstaining from having kids, and forgoing economic opportunity.

    To correct this, they’re going back to what they refer to as “the original American urban home” — the rowhome. And they’re working to perfect it through vertical integration and a modular approach where prefabricated components are built in a factory and then shipped flat-packed to the site.

    They’re obviously not the first company to try to reduce the cost of new housing through prefabrication, but they believe that total vertical integration will make them different. And boy, would I like to see them succeed.

    If we truly want to bring down the cost of new housing, we need to (1) stop taxing it like we want less of it and (2) think of it in every possible way as a repeatable product and not as a custom prototype.

    Good luck, team!

    Photos from The American Housing Corporation

  • Who is really helping the self-driving cars?

    April 7, 2026 · View original

    One of the least understood aspects of self-driving cars is the extent and capacity to which they rely on remote assistance operators (RAOs).

    When a self-driving car finds itself confused in an uncertain or tricky situation (like when one rolled into an active shootout), there are typically two safety valves. The first is a manual override, where someone like a first responder might jump into the front seat and take control of the steering wheel. And the second is assistance from a remote operator.

    If the car gets confused, a human can tell it, “Hey, you, follow this path.” But how often is remote assistance being called upon? And who is actually responding on the other end? Apparently, the answer is, “I don’t know.”

    According to a recent report from Senator Ed Markey, every major AV company refuses to disclose how often they rely on an RAO. And in the case of Waymo, they rely on overseas operators in places like the Philippines.

    This has led to new proposed legislation that would, among other things, limit the number of vehicles that a single RAO can oversee, mandate that the RAO be located in the US, and require the humans to hold a local driver’s license. You know, so they’re sure to know the rules of the road.

    There’s a lot to figure out, and it seems a bit messy. But that’s what it takes. As one would expect, this is par for the course when you’re trying to rewrite urban mobility.

    Cover photo by Leo_Visions on Unsplash

  • Is Berlin still sexy?

    April 6, 2026 · View original

    I recently came across this for-sale listing from Fantastic Frank for a 3-room apartment in Berlin’s new Am Tacheles district. Naturally, I thought to myself, “Hey, this is a beautiful apartment — now let me go all the way back to the beginning of the 20th century and better understand the history of the development site.”

    Am Tacheles has been called the most controversial real estate project in Berlin’s modern history. Previously developed in 1908 as a high-end shopping arcade intended to rival the great galleries of Paris, the Friedrichstraßenpassage, as it was known, was an ambitious undertaking located in the city’s historic Jewish quarter.

    But only about six months after opening, the project went bankrupt. The existing building then went on to live numerous lives, ranging from an AEG showroom to a building used to house French war prisoners, before ultimately being co-opted by artists in 1990 as a way to save it from demolition.

    It was at this point that it was given the name Tacheles, which is a Yiddish word meaning “to speak straight.” Supposedly, this was a reference to the area’s history as a thriving Jewish quarter and a message about political honesty (it is located in the former East Berlin, where that wasn’t a thing).

    For the next two decades, the site became a global symbol of Berlin’s “poor but sexy” identity. The ownership vacuum created by the fall of the Berlin Wall meant that nobody really knew who owned what. This was a disaster for clear property rights and capital investment, but fortuitous for squatters who needed cheap (okay, free) space to experiment with art and techno music.

    In my view, this was ultimately a net positive for the city. It created an urban vitality that nobody could have predicted, demonstrating the potential of people and cities when allowed to experiment and take risks.

    But then, basically, two things happened: (1) people eventually figured out who owned what, and (2) the development potential of the site became increasingly valuable. This is the quintessential urban cycle. First, the artists and creatives come in to take advantage of cheap space. They then make the area cool. And then developers like me come in to monetize it, completing the cycle.

    Fast forward to today, and Am Tacheles (they kept the name) is a new master-planned community designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron and one of the most desirable (and thus expensive) areas in Berlin. It’s also quite a bit tidier there these days, though they did preserve some of the graffiti.

    Returning to our 3-room apartment listing, the asking price is €1,825,000 + €90,000 (for what I believe is a parking space). At 113 sqm, this works out to ~€16,947 per sqm or about C$2,529 per sqft (for comparison to Toronto prices). As I understand it, this is well above the average new construction home prices in the area and city.

    What is clear is that Berlin is no longer poor. It’s global-city rich. But is it still sexy?

    Cover photo and floor from Fantastic Frank

    Historic Tacheles photo via Wikipedia

    Am Tacheless photo and stairwell section from H&dM

  • Berlin industrial live-work towers on the market for €1,700,000

    April 5, 2026 · View original

    One of my developer friends — who I would say has similar design tastes to my own — once said to me, “If I like it [the design], I often assume that the general public won’t.” What he was getting at is that architects and designers often appreciate buildings and spaces for different reasons.

    For us (if I can say this without the OAA sending me another legal letter), it is often about things like the intellectual rigour behind the work, the “honesty” of the materials, and the greater social and historic context, rather than just “this has nice curb appeal.”

    So with that, I’m now going to go out on a limb and suggest that these converted industrial towers in former East Berlin fall into the category of “probably not for everyone.” Built in the 1950s by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to process graphite, and later abandoned after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the property was eventually privatized in the 1990s to raise money for the state.

    Then, between 2018 and 2021, architecture practice b+ — which has made a name for itself transforming old Brutalist buildings into super cool live-work spaces — reworked the interiors to create a workshop for itself.

    The two industrial towers are 37.2 and 42.6 metres tall. And since their volumes reminded architect Arno Brandlhuber of the towers of San Gimignano, that became the project’s name. The site area is 960 sqm, the usable floor area is around 300 sqm, and the entire property is for sale for €1,700,000. There’s also future development potential!

    I personally love the project. If Globizen were to have an office in Berlin, I’d want it to be here. But hey, what do you think?

    Photos by Future Documentation

  • The radical transformation of Greater Paris

    April 4, 2026 · View original

    Between 2010 and 2025, the Métropole du Grand Paris added nearly 160 kilometres of new or extended transit lines and opened 200 new transit stations across the region. These numbers include all modes of transport, including RER, metro, tram, cable cars, and BRT. On top of this, a further 199 new stations are scheduled to open between 2026 and 2032 (a shorter time period), meaning there’s an argument to be made that Paris is getting better and faster at delivering transit.

    Imagine that.

    This, as we have talked about before, is a remarkable achievement and one that is reshaping the Métropole — particularly outside of Paris proper. Take a look. Here’s a recent study and map from Apur that shows how these completed and upcoming lines have impacted, and are expected to impact, transit access in the region:

    The coloured areas represent access to transit within a 15-minute walk (assuming you’re able to walk at a reasonable 4 km/hr). The lightest blue areas are lines/catchment areas that existed in 2010. The medium blue represents lines/areas that came online between 2010 and 2025. And the darkest blue represents lines/areas that are scheduled to come online between 2026 and 2032.

    If you’re familiar with Paris, you’ll be able to tell that the majority of the recent transit expansion has happened outside of the boundaries of Paris. This is important because prior to 2010, all of Paris was already well-served by transit (seriously, 100% of the population was/is within walking distance of at least one transit line).

    However, this is not the case in the rest of the Métropole. In 2010, about 56% of the population (outside of Paris proper) had access to at least one line, with 23% having access to two. As of 2025, this number has increased to 66%. And by 2032, with the opening of the lines currently underway, it is expected that 80% of the population within the entire Métropole will be transit-connected.

    It’s hard to overstate the importance of these changes. The Paris region has long been criticized for the divide that exists between its historic centre and its surrounding suburbs and cities. Historically, this has been a socio-economic divide, and a built form divide. But this divide is now being erased. New infrastructure is stitching the region together, tightening its geography, and encouraging the development of new economic centres.

    Forget the Paris you know. The growth and change are now happening along its edges. Welcome to the new Greater Paris Metropolis.

    P.S. To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Métropole du Grand Paris (created on January 1, 2016), Apur recently published a book called Atlas de la Métropole du Grand Paris. I haven’t been able to find a site that will ship to Toronto, but if you’re in Paris, you can order or pick one up at the following bookstores.

    Cover photo by Ally Griffin on Unsplash

    Maps and charts from Apur