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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Tag: bild

  • Development approval timelines in the Greater Toronto Area

    Altus Group recently completed a study for BILD (Building Industry and Land Development Association) that looked at the various factors that might be contributing to housing affordability and supply issues here in the Greater Toronto Area. One area that they looked at was development approval timelines, and I thought these were two interesting charts:

    What this is suggesting is that approval timelines don’t seem to really vary based on project size. Whether you’re rezoning for 3-50 homes or 400-500 homes, it’s probably going to take you a similar amount of time. This in turn creates a strong incentivize to want to develop bigger projects. Among other things, it brings down the “number of days per unit” metric shown in this second chart.

    I have spoken anecdotally before about minimum project size inflation, and here’s some data to support why that is happening. But it really is too bad. We should be doing more to incentivize smaller infill projects. Our cities need development at all scales.

  • Voting now open for BILD’s People’s Choice Award

    Today’s post is going to be a self-serving one.

    Some of you might remember that back in June I wrote about One Delisle being a finalist for four 2021 BILD Awards. One of them was the People’s Choice Award, where I also mentioned that voting would open in August. Well, it is now August (yes, already) and voting is open. If you’d like to cast a vote, you can do that over here. (No login necessary.) There are some wonderful projects on this top 10 list. But in my entirely biased opinion, One Delisle is the project for you.

  • One Delisle is a BILD Awards finalist for Project of the Year

    BILD just announced its finalists for the 2021 BILD Awards.

    This is probably the most noteworthy awards program in the development industry here in the Greater Toronto Area. And so I am pretty excited to announce that One Delisle is a finalist for the following awards:

    • Project of the Year, Mid/High-Rise (Pinnacle Award)
    • People’s Choice Award (Voting Opens August 2021)
    • Best Suite Design, Large — West Penthouse Residence
    • Best Innovative Suite Design – Sky Collection Suite

    The full list can be found over here (PDF). All of the finalists’ work is also going to be posted on the BILD Awards website before the end of this week.

    The actual winners will be announced this fall at the Awards Gala on October 7, 2021. I’m not sure if it has been decided yet whether it will be in person or online, but we all know that in person would be much better. Let’s hope that will be the case.

    Given the good news, our office decided that it was probably a good idea to make a few margaritas this evening:

    Whatever the end result, we are thrilled to be a finalist.

    We are also a past recipient of the “Best Innovative Suite Design” award, which was given to our House Collection of suites at Junction House. So I guess we like working our floor plans.

    Congratulations to the full One Delisle team. This is well deserved.

  • Fees on homes

    A colleague of mine sent me this Bloomberg article today and said, “Here’s an article about things you already know.” The article cites a recent report by Altus Group that compared government-related fees on new housing across Canada and the U.S. What they discovered will not surprise any of you who are in the industry: Toronto has some of the highest government-imposed charges on new homes.

    For new condo apartments, the report found that government charges can add up to as much as C$124,582 per unit. That’s about 50% higher than the average unit in the U.S. and about 30% higher than the average unit in Canada (see above chart for the list of cities). While all of us in the industry can appreciate this, I don’t think most homeowners and tenants understand this. Hopefully they’re reading this post.

    Chart: Bloomberg

  • Price of a new condominium in Toronto increased 12.5% over the last year

    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

  • New high-rise home prices up 39.5% year-over-year

    February data (2018) for the new home market in the Greater Toronto Area was released this past week by BILD and Altus. I seem to have gotten into the habit of writing about this every month.

    The benchmark price for new low-rise single-family housing was down slightly from January to $1,219,874, but still up 12.8% from a year prior.

    The benchmark price for new high-rise housing was up a whopping 39.5% year-over-year to $729,735. But part of this is being driven by an equally dramatic increase in average unit sizes.

    Here is the relevant graph:

    image

    The story continues to be about tight supply, historically low developer inventories, and a lack of affordable low-rise product. 

    As I have argued many times before on this blog, I believe these factors — and in particular the last one — are, at least partly, driving this recent pop in high-rise pricing. People are priced out and now searching for substitutes.

    So my prediction continues to be that we will see a convergence (i.e. diminishing spread) between new low-rise and high-rise pricing.

    That will also bring about design and product changes on the high-rise side.

  • Only 2 new single-family homes sold in Toronto last month

    Altus Group just released its January (2018) sales figures for the new home market in the Greater Toronto Area.

    – 1,251 new homes sold last month. 886 of these (or 70.8%) were condominium apartments (everything from stacked townhouses to high-rises).

    – This is down from 2,429 homes in 2017 and 2,118 homes in 2016.

    – Almost half of the new home sales (609 homes) came from Toronto alone. And almost all of these (607 homes) were condominium apartments. Only 2 new single-family homes sold in the city last month.

    – Benchmark price for single-family homes was $1,229,454, which is a 19.6% increase from January 2017.

    – Benchmark price for condominium apartments was $714,430, which is a 40.8% increase from January 2017.

    That last increase really stands out. I did a double take.

    But as we’ve talked about before, low supply and high prices seem to be pushing more buyers toward condos – and larger ones at that.

    Recently we’ve been seeing an increase in both average unit sizes and prices per square foot.

    According to Altus, sales of new single-family homes in the GTA last month were the lowest for a January since before 2000.

  • The year of the condo

    Over the past 5 years or so, real estate headlines in the Greater Toronto Area have often focused on the rapid appreciation of low-rise housing. High-rise housing simply wasn’t appreciating at the same rate – at least in aggregate terms.

    But 2017 has brought a different story. 

    If you look at BILD’s “New Homes Monthly Market Report” (data provided by Altus Group as of July 2017), you can see that high-rise pricing is now on a similar trajectory to low-rise pricing.

    Here is that graph:

    image

    This sharp uptick in pricing is also apparent when you look at the average price per square foot of new high-rise inventory. As of July, it was $764 psf across the GTA. See below.

    At the same time, average unit sizes have also jumped up to 871 square feet. So not only are new high-rise homes becoming more expensive on a normalized basis, they are also getting bigger, which further increases prices.

    image

    I recognize that we’re only seeing data up to the end of July, but, from the looks of it, 2017 is shaping up to be an extraordinary year for the condo.

    Of course, part of the reason this is happening is because remaining inventory for both low-rise and high-rise product is hitting 10-year lows. We’re back to the topic of supply.

    If you’re curious how some of these numbers have changed from the month prior (June 2017), check out this post.

  • Only 9% of new homes sold last month were low-rise single-family

    BILD (the Building Industry and Land Development Association) just released its June 2017 data for the Greater Toronto Area’s new housing market. You can read the full release here. But I would like to point out a couple of things:

    About 91 percent of the 6,046 new homes sold last month were multi-family condo apartments in high-rise and mid-rise buildings and stacked townhomes, while only nine percent were low-rise single-family homes.

    The average price of available new condo apartments continued to rise with an increase of more than $22,000 from May. June’s $627,000 average price marked a 34 percent increase from a year ago. The average available unit was 845 square feet with an average price per square foot of $742. A year ago, the average price per square foot was $587.

    From this, it’s once again clear that Toronto is in the midst of an incredible transformation from a low-rise city to a more vertical city. New supply on the low-rise side of the market is heavily constrained.

    I get the sense sometimes that many people in this city, and others, believe that access to a low-rise detached house should be a right. Go to school. Get a good job. And then buy that house with a backyard. 

    The data speaks to a very different reality.

    Photo by Victoria Heath on Unsplash

  • February housing numbers

    The Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) announced its February (2017) numbers today for the Greater Toronto Area. Here are some of the highlights:

    – At the end of February, there were 324 detached homes available in developer inventories. Ten years ago, this number was was 12,064 (detached only). 

    – If you consider all low-rise homes (detached, semi-detached, and towns) the above numbers are 1,001 (2017) and 17,304 (2007), respectively.

    – Average price of a new detached house is now $1,469,449. For all ground-related housing – again, including semis and towns – it’s $1,081,013.

    – There were more than twice as many condo apartments sold than low-rise homes in February.

    – Condo inventory is also dropping and reached a low of 10,342 units.

    – Average price of a new condo increased to $652 per square foot and the average unit size decreased to 802 square feet.

    Here’s that information in a chart from Altus Group:

    image

    The overall story here continues to be about decreasing inventory and increasing prices. There’s also the ongoing shift from low-rise to higher density housing, which I don’t view as a bad thing.