During COVID, every developer was terrified that their costs were going to run way from them. According to this recent Globe and Mail article, residential building costs increased 55% since 2020. At the same time, city fees were being increased and some people, for whatever… Read More
Metro Vancouver, which includes the City of Vancouver and 20 other municipalities, is proposing to increase its development cost charges (DCC): Metro Vancouver is proposing to increase DCCs by roughly $23,000 per new single-family home; $21,000 per new townhome; and $14,000 per new apartment. For example, fees for… Read More
There are lots of ideas out there for how to improve the supply of new rental housing. But it is important to remember, at least here in our market, that the playing field is not level between new condominiums and new rental homes. We have… Read More
Last week, Sierra Communities (developer) and my friend Gabriel Fain (architect of Mackay Laneway House fame) submitted the above development proposal for 2760 Dundas Street West in the Junction. It is a beautiful proposal. So not surprisingly, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Here are… Read More
Following yesterday’s post about the most expensive home in Brooklyn’s Dumbo, Jed Bryne of Oak City CRE fame shot me a note asking about the typical land multiple that developers need in Canada in order to make a project feasible. In other words, if your… Read More
Here’s the thing about housing: The delegates insisted on one hand that “housing is for living not speculation”, but on the other, emphasised the critical importance of real estate to China’s economic growth. In other words, things are complicated. We want housing to be affordable… Read More
I tweeted two polls today. The first one is mostly useless: It asked whether developers should build more 3-bedroom apartments/condominiums. And not surprisingly, the vast majority of people voted yes. Of course, the problem with this poll is that it says nothing about the overall… Read More
Anyone who has ever worked on a development pro forma will know that the process generally works like this: You start with a bunch of assumptions. You assemble those assumptions in a way that will allow you to determine if the project in question is… Read More
In the wake of Bill 23, there has been a lot of discussion and concern around development charges and parkland dedication revenues. At a high level, the concern is that the proposed changes will reduce the amount of money that cities are able to collect… Read More
Bullpen Consulting just released its latest land insights reports for the Greater Toronto Area. For the period of Q2-2022, Ben Myers and the team identified 46 high-density residential land transactions with an average price of $95 per buildable square foot. This is down from $112… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 