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
The big news this week for Toronto city builders is that the city has put forward a proposal to substantially increase development charges. Here’s a tweet storm that I published earlier today on the topic, and here’s a summary of what the new fees might… Read More
I watched a bit of the English leadership debate the other night. Eventually I got frustrated and went to bed, but I understand that housing affordability and overall affordability were important topics. What is clear, to anyone who cares to look, is that in most… Read More
Here are a few interesting stats from a brief report that New York City published this month about their supply of new housing units: From January 1, 2010 to June 30, 2020, New York City delivered 205,994 net new housing units across the five boroughs.… Read More
A decade of ultra luxury condos. The New York Times published this story over the weekend talking about how the luxury condo boom of the 2010s transformed New York City, and in particular Brooklyn. Below are two tables from the article: (1) The number of… Read More
A few weeks ago, I tweeted that I was creating a simple email newsletter that would notify you of new planning/development applications (and updates) near where you live (in Toronto). About 100 people subscribed following that tweet and we then spent the following few weeks… Read More
Miami has historically had a volatile housing market because of its position as a second-home destination and because of its dependency on Latin American buyers. There is perhaps no other housing market in the US with the same kind of overall reliance on capital from… Read More
Real estate development has historically been, and unfortunately still is, a male dominated business. (The story of Florence Casler is, however, a great outlier.) If you want some empirical evidence for this, pay attention to the length of the line for the men’s bathroom the… Read More
Jason Segedy, who is the Director of Planning and Urban Development for the city of Akron, Ohio, recently penned a two-part series in the American Conservative about urban revitalization in the Rust Belt. Part two is specifically about the importance of new housing in “cities left… Read More
I’ve been having a lot of discussions lately about ceiling heights. The clear height from the top of the floor to the underside of the ceiling. In Toronto there has been a bit of an evolution in ceiling heights. Older apartment and condo buildings often… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 