Here’s a chart from Knight Frank’s 2019 Global Affordability Monitor that I think you’ll find interesting: It compares real home price growth and real household income growth (after tax) over the last 5 years for 32 world cities. The bolded percentages represent the former and… Read More
This recent NY Times article — which makes the case that the current protests in Hong Kong are at least partially a result of inequality — has a pair of interesting diagrams that speak to the city’s tight housing market. The first compares average living… Read More
Across the 50 largest metro areas in the US, about 31.9% of millennials — those aged 18 to 34 — owned a home as of 2017. And according to recent census data (via the Redfin), only 5 of these cities had a millennial homeownership rate… Read More
This week’s federal budget announced two measures that are intended to improve housing affordability. The first is a modification to the Home Buyers’ Plan. This is a plan that gives first-time home buyers the ability to do a tax-free withdrawal from their RRSP (it does,… Read More
There’s a debate among urbanists as to the full impact of housing supply on overall affordability. But it should make intuitive sense that as new people move to a city and as new jobs are created, there will be a need for additional housing. Here… Read More
There are a number of affordable housing plans being thrown around in Toronto right now given that we have a municipal election coming up this fall. From what I have read, the plans are largely centered around surplus and/or available public land and possibly some… Read More
Throughout US history, economic growth has typically spurred an “enormous reallocation of population.” Here is a graph from a recent New York Times article called: What Happened to the American Boomtown? The argument, here, is that restrictions on development have made it so that the most prosperous… Read More
McKinsey Global Institute just published a “supply-side toolkit” for cities struggling with housing affordability. This seems to be every successful city. The article includes a long list of potential tools. Some of them you may agree with. And others you may disagree with. But I… Read More
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… Read More
The Wall Street Journal recently asked: Venice Beach Is a Hot Place to Live, So Why Is Its Housing Supply Shrinking? According to Issi Romem, chief economist at BuildZoom, it’s because Venice Beach is the toughest place in America to build housing. Here are some numbers… Read More
