Our cost consultant, Finnegan Marshall, gave our team a presentation today on what’s happening with construction costs in Toronto and across Canada. I’ve said this before, but hard costs are no joke right now. One of the areas that they focused on was the impact… Read More
100 Franklin is my kind of project. Developed by DDG Partners, 100 Franklin is a small boutique condominium project that was completed last year in New York’s Tribeca. From what I can tell, there are only 10 residences in the project, ranging from 1,427 to… Read More
My realtor friend Mark Savel tagged me in this earlier today. Pine Hill Homes has recently completed a laneway suite here in Toronto and they have now put out a call for artists to come up with something creative for its front facade. I think… Read More
The Greater Toronto Area builds a lot more condominiums than purpose-built rental units. This isn’t the case everywhere though. I was recently reading an article about Salt Lake City and how developers there don’t want to build condominiums. It’s mostly rental housing. There’s simply too… Read More
Here are some interesting figures from a recent Statistics Canada article about Canada’s national net worth. In the first quarter of this year, Canada’s national net worth increased by over $1 trillion or 7.7% to reach nearly $15 trillion. This is, as I understand it,… Read More
A friend of mine circulated this tweet storm over the weekend. It is an explanation of how NYC’s housing market works using the example of oranges. The author ends by saying that, “it is a parody and an exaggeration, but I promise you it’s not… Read More
Here are two charts from a recent blog post by Ryerson University’s Centre for Urban Research and Land Development. The charts compare residential building permits issued for ground-related housing vs. apartment suites. Over the last two quarters (Q4 2020 and Q1 2021), the Greater Golden… Read More
Let’s talk some more about floor plan designs and the economic constraints that form part of the decision making process. There continues to be a narrative out there that for-profit developers only want to construct small apartments (a form of social engineering perhaps) and that… Read More
I came across the above floor plan over the weekend. I reshared it on Twitter and there was then a pretty good discussion about what people like and don’t like. I mean, who doesn’t like looking at floor plans? The suite is 790 square feet… Read More
Witold Rybczynski makes an interesting comparison between military and civilian (city) planning in a recent blog post called, “The Fog of Life.” Here’s an excerpt: Good military planning, as I understand it, is based on preparing for “what if,” that is, developing different scenarios. What… Read More
