
Canada 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...

The 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...
The 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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Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.

Canada 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...

The 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...
The 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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>4.2K subscribers

This morning BILD and Altus Group released their January 2019 new home sales figures for the Greater Toronto Area.
Here are the highlights:
1,362 new homes sold in January 2019 across the GTA. This is up 14% compared to last January.
Of these, 942 (~69%) were condominiums (includes low, mid, and high-rise, as well as townhouses). And 420 (~31%) were single-family homes (includes detached, semi-detached, and freehold townhouses).
Condominium sales volume is sitting only about 5% below the 10-year average and the benchmark price increased this month to $803,638, which represents a 12.5% year-over-year increase.
On the other hand, single-family home sales are down about 53% from the 10-year average and the benchmark price decreased by about 8.1% compared to last year. It is sitting at $1,130,046.
While there continues to be a bifurcation in the new home market, we are seeing improvements across the board and the data is consistent with Altus' prediction that 2019 will see an increase in overall sales.
It is also important to consider how geography might factor into the above numbers. Here are the January sales numbers for the last three years broken down by region within the GTA:

Just under 80% of the new condominiums sold last month took place in Toronto, whereas only about 1.2% of the single-family homes sold last month took place in the city. You can count them on one hand. There were only 5.
So rather than just look at this in terms of housing type, I think the other way to interpret the data is that it could suggest strong and continued demand for centrally located and transit-oriented communities.
And that just so happens to translate into a condominium.
Photo by Eugene Aikimov on Unsplash

This morning BILD and Altus Group released their January 2019 new home sales figures for the Greater Toronto Area.
Here are the highlights:
1,362 new homes sold in January 2019 across the GTA. This is up 14% compared to last January.
Of these, 942 (~69%) were condominiums (includes low, mid, and high-rise, as well as townhouses). And 420 (~31%) were single-family homes (includes detached, semi-detached, and freehold townhouses).
Condominium sales volume is sitting only about 5% below the 10-year average and the benchmark price increased this month to $803,638, which represents a 12.5% year-over-year increase.
On the other hand, single-family home sales are down about 53% from the 10-year average and the benchmark price decreased by about 8.1% compared to last year. It is sitting at $1,130,046.
While there continues to be a bifurcation in the new home market, we are seeing improvements across the board and the data is consistent with Altus' prediction that 2019 will see an increase in overall sales.
It is also important to consider how geography might factor into the above numbers. Here are the January sales numbers for the last three years broken down by region within the GTA:

Just under 80% of the new condominiums sold last month took place in Toronto, whereas only about 1.2% of the single-family homes sold last month took place in the city. You can count them on one hand. There were only 5.
So rather than just look at this in terms of housing type, I think the other way to interpret the data is that it could suggest strong and continued demand for centrally located and transit-oriented communities.
And that just so happens to translate into a condominium.
Photo by Eugene Aikimov on Unsplash
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