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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  • Toward more family condos

    The Ryerson City Building Institute and Urbanation recently published a terrific report called: Bedrooms in the Sky. Is Toronto Building the Right Condo Supply? 

    Here is a quick synopsis: The 35-44 year old age bracket in this city will see significant growth over the next decade; single family homes are really expensive; and we’re not building enough family-friendly condo units.

    When Urbanation looked at the data for all condo units currently under construction they found that the unit mixes still skewed toward 1-bedroom units, but that the number of 3-bedroom units is starting to trend upward. That feels right.

    The report also talks about the affordability gap between condos and houses. The average condo in the Greater Toronto Area costs about $511,000, while the average detached house costs $1,134,000.

    However, this isn’t exactly an accurate comparison because the average condo is smaller in size than the average house. I think a better metric is to look at price per square foot.

    Also, houses give you the flexibility of a secondary suite. Right now that usually means a basement apartment, but pretty soon it’ll likely include a laneway suite. That creates an additional income stream and helps with overall affordability.

    In any event, up until maybe recently, houses generally looked cheaper on a per square foot basis. And my view – which I have written about extensively on this blog – was that as soon as houses become “more expensive”, we’ll see an uptick in larger family-oriented condos.

    A few weeks ago I went to an open house in a desirable area of Toronto. It was for a 1,300 sf semi-detached house with good bones, but in need of a full gut. Basement was low, only suitable for humans around 5′ tall. It sold for $1 million.

    Let’s say that house needs $300,000 to bring it up to the level of a new condo. If that doesn’t include some sort of extension, now you’re in for $1.3 million or about $1,000 per square foot. You can still find a condo for less than that.

    Which is one of the reasons why I think we’re now starting to see an uptick in larger/family units. (We are trying to do it at Junction House.) 

    But like all things in real estate, these things move slowly. The condos under construction today were designed years ago. Changes take time to work themselves through the system.

  • Winner-take-all cities

    Richard Florida, Charlotta Mellander, and Karen M. King have a new working paper out called Winner-Take-All Cities.

    It is about the phenomenon of “winner-take-all urbanism” and how a select number of alpha cities seem to overrepresent when it comes to talent, economic activity, innovation, and wealth creation.

    In this study they look at economic output, innovation (venture capital-backed startups), and billionaire wealth in each city. They then compare these factors to the distribution of the population.

    Here are the Alpha cities they looked at:

    In some cases the above concentrations were multiples of what the city’s population would lead you to predict. Their conclusion: “We find clear evidence of a winner-take-all urbanism
    across the global economy and the world’s cities.”

  • Five great surges of capital and technology, 1771-2017

    Carlota Perez is a professor that specializes in the social and economic impact of technological change. In 2002, she published an influential book called Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages.

    One of her arguments is that economic growth since the Industrial Revolution has occurred through a series of cycles and surges, ultimately culminating in a fifth great surge centered around information and telecommunications. This is our current economic environment.

    Perez was recently interviewed by strategy + business and they published this diagram (if it’s too small, click through to the article):

    The five surges of capital and technology since 1771 are:

    1. Industrial Revolution
    2. Steam and Railways
    3. Steel, Electricity, and Heavy Engineering
    4. Oil, Automobiles, and Mass Production 
    5. Information and Telecommunications

    Number 4 – oil, automobiles, and mass production – is what produced widespread suburbanization, a middle class filled with homeowners, and new forms of retail employment. And I am sure that most of you would agree that it’s not quite over yet.

    According to Perez, each cycle has two phases: an installation phase and a deployment phase. This latter phase is a “golden age.” But in between these two phases is a turning point that is typically characterized by some sort of crisis and recession. 

    Her belief is that we are in this turning point right now. You see it with Brexit. The demagogues being elected. And more. If you buy this, the key question naturally becomes: How do we cross this chasm and enter our next golden age?

    What’s also important to keep in mind about this theory is that it means that what we are seeing today, socio-economically, is not in fact new. We’ve been through this before. I’ll end with this quote from the interview with Perez:

    In the 1920s, wealth distribution looked the same as it does today. The top 1 percent received 25 percent of society’s total income. By the 1950s it was down to 10 percent. Every installation period brings inequality until the state comes back actively to reverse it and relieve social unrest.

    So what’s happening today may be temporary and it may be history repeating itself. If you’re interested in this topic, you can read the full interview here.

  • Bowling Lane House, Calgary

    I just finished going through the work of Studio North. My friend Peter introduced me to them through this Globe article. 

    They are a Calgary-based design-build practice that have completed a number of laneway houses, as well as bigger projects such as this 34 unit townhouse project in Canmore, Alberta.

    What (not surprisingly) caught my attention was their focus on laneway/accessory dwellings. Pictured above is their Bowling Lane House in Crescent Heights, Calgary. 

    It’s a 700 sf one-bedroom house that sits behind a 1920′s heritage house. Here is an axonometric of that relationship (the existing house was made transparent):

    Here is an elevation from the main street. Look at how neatly it tucks behind the existing house. All you really notice is the garage of Bowling Lane House.

    Here is how Bowling Lane House fits into its laneway.

    And here are two images of the double height space that they managed to create within this 700 sf house.

    Notwithstanding that this is a wider lot than what you might typically find in Toronto, it is precisely the kind of housing – both in terms of design quality and scale – that I was trying to create with Mackay Laneway House. It’s also where I was planning to move.

    Kudos to the Studio North team for driving this initiative in Calgary. You can check out the rest of their projects here. They have a number of other laneway houses within their portfolio. And all of them are beautiful.

    All images from Studio North.

  • Junction House Community Meeting

    image

    Okay, last Toronto-centric post for the week. We are back to regular scheduled programming tomorrow.

    Later this month, Councillor Gord Perks will be hosting a community meeting for Junction House (see conceptual rendering above).

    You can find all of the details, here, on the Globizen blog. But pop it into your calendars: Tuesday, November 21, 2017 from 7 to 9pm.

    Even if you can’t attend, definitely weigh in on the rooftop public art component over in the comments on the Globizen blog.

    I hope to see you all there. It’s always nice when happy people come out.

  • Bringing laneway suites to Toronto

    This morning I presented and sat on a panel at BILD called “bringing laneway suites to Toronto.” The other participants were Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon, George Pantazis (Planner at the City of Toronto), Mike Collins-Williams (Director, Policy at OHBA), and Andrew Sorbara (co-founder of Lanescape).

    Here is a photo that Mike took of me while I was talking about my failed laneway house:

    image

    For those of you wondering if/when this will happen in Toronto, here are the key takeaways from this morning: The city is already drafting laneway suite policies specific to Toronto & East York (not the other parts of the city) and they are due to report back to council in Q2-2018. Nothing is 100% certain at this stage, but there’s lots of optimism. 

    Councillor McMahon delivered this morning’s opening remarks and I was impressed by her deep commitment to laneway suites. I was also impressed by her stance on NIMBYISM, saying that education is important and that we can’t let NIMBYs stop what makes sense for the greater city.

    She gave the example of the 6 storey condominium in her ward that faced fierce community opposition a number of years back. If you can’t put a midrise building on a main street in this city, where can you put it? 

  • New Buca concept coming to midtown Toronto

    Earlier today Slate announced that King Street Food Company will be bringing a new Buca restaurant concept to the north west corner of Yonge + St. Clair in 2018. 

    (BlogTO calls Buca one of the best Italian restaurants in the city.)

    Below is a rendering of the new podium design at 2 St. Clair West, which is where they’ll be going. The design/rendering is by Gensler (the same talented group that did Ravine Bench).

    image

    The corner is going to be transformed into a double-height space and the architecture is meant to express that feeling of grandeur at the intersection. There will also be an outdoor patio at grade.

    We are all super excited about this.

    If you would like to read the full press release, you can do that here.

  • Strandkorb — a low tech solution to the elements

    I recently discovered this marvelous chair (image from here):

    image

    It’s called a strandkorb, which is a German word that translates into something along the lines of “hooded beach chair.” It was invented in the late 19th century by a basket maker looking for protection from the elements on the beach.

    Apparently they are fairly ubiquitous at resorts along the North Sea and Baltic Sea and are a bit of a cult object in Germany. They are a symbol of holiday fun, but also, to some, a symbol of German resiliency in the face of adverse weather.

    For me, the beauty of these beach chairs is that the “hood” blocks the wind. So if you orient yourself toward the sun, you could actually feel quite warm even when it may not be the perfect beach weather. They extend the season, which is paramount in cooler climates.

    I guess that’s why they have stuck around since the 1880′s. If you check out some of the (Google) photo spheres in beach towns in northern Germany, you will definitely find many a strandkorb.

  • A cohousing case study

    There’s a lot of interest right now in micro apartments. Here is a recent example from New York City. Generally speaking the model is driven by a need to increase housing affordability: shrink the apartments; lower the prices. 

    To compensate for these smaller units, the buildings are often equipped with larger shared spaces and a desire to create a sense of community.

    The below TED talk by architect Grace Kim is an interesting case study of a project that started, first, with a desire for cohabitation. Her thesis is that cohousing can make us happier, less lonely, and more socially connected.

    The cohousing community that she profiles is one that she both designed and developed and one that she now lives in and practices architecture out of.

    If you can’t see the video below, click here. It’s only 10 minutes. After you’ve watched it, let us know in the comment section below if this is a community you could see yourself being a part of.

  • 738,000 single-family homes were built last year in the US

    The New York Times recently published “a portrait of new single-family homes” in the US in 2016. Here’s that portrait:

    For those of those living in dense urban centers, this portrait is perhaps a reminder that in many other places a large single-family home can be had for about the price of a studio apartment.

    Nothing in the above portrait likely surprised you, but it’s interesting to note that over half of all new single family homes delivered last year were in “The South.” Only 7% were built in the dense northeast.

    The New York Times also recently looked at “international rents per square foot” using data from RentCafe. Here they are:

    New York City sits at the top with an average rent of $4.98 psf. This is across all boroughs. I am surprised by how low some of these international rents are. But averages rarely tell you the whole story.

    In any event, I do think that these two graphics start to speak to the economic spikiness that we are seeing across the US.