Bloomberg recently published a good summary of Zillow’s business and their move into algorithm home buying and flipping. (They are trying to avoid the “flipping” moniker because of the negative connotations associated with it.) Zillow started buying homes directly from owners last spring. They charge… Read More
The Ryerson City Building Institute recently published a new report called, Rethinking the Tower: Innovations for Housing Attainability in Toronto. It looks at four possible approaches to improving housing attainability/affordability in the city: Micro Living: Well-designed micro units can offer a cost-effective alternative to conventional… Read More
At the end of last month, Toronto City Council adopted the “Housing Now” action plan. The first phase of the plan involves the public marketing of 11 city-owned sites for the purpose of finding non-profit and private sector partners to help redevelop the lands with… Read More
I was looking at this laneway house for sale in Toronto today. It’s located near Queen and Bathurst. It has 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms and is about 2,331 square feet (that looks to include a basement). The lot appears to be just over 13′ wide.… Read More
This past weekend I saw a few people reacting on Twitter to this article by Wendell Cox talking about how Canadian families are being denied their preferred housing choice: the detached single family home. The fact that the article is by Wendell Cox should tell… Read More
BNN Bloomberg just published this article on the Toronto condo market. It is based on a roundtable discussion that was held at their Toronto office last week with Jim Ritchie of Tridel, Jared Menkes of Menkes Developments, Shamez Virani of CentreCourt, and Jane Renwick of… Read More
Some of you may want to debate the “center of the world” title (New York may be more deserving), but Laura Parker of National Geographic recently published a great essay describing the tremendous growth that London has seen over the last 30 years thanks to in part… Read More
The Government of Ontario is currently working on a Housing Supply Action Plan that they hope will address “the barriers getting in the way of new ownership and rental housing.” Through initial consultations, they have already identified 5 key themes (my words below): The approvals/entitlement process… Read More
Joe Cortright of City Observatory recently looked at “the myth of revealed preference for [the] suburbs.” In it, he cites the work of Jonathan Levine, who is the author of a 2006 book called, Zoned Out: Regulation, Markets, and Choices in Transportation and Metropolitan Land-Use. There’s… Read More
The Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University recently published this overview of the “socioeconomic factors affecting demand for housing in Chicago.” Here is the change in population in the City of Chicago from 1950 to 2016: And here is a comparison between Chicago and… Read More
