Tag: real estate

• The most expensive home in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood

  The most expensive home in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood is currently under contract and is expected to close in the next few months (at least according to the WSJ). It is a 4,270 square-foot penthouse, with a 500 square-foot terrace, that occupies the full top floor of Olympia Dumbo.

  The asking price / contract price is $17.5 million, which works out to be about USD 4,098 per square foot (or CAD 5,486 per square foot based on the exchange rate right now). Based on this price per pound, an equivalent 600 square foot suite would cost you about CAD $3.3 million.

  The land was purchased in 2018 for about $98 million. I don’t know what the total GFA of the building is, but it does have 76 residences, so that works out to about USD 1,289,473 per suite (or CAD 1,726,624 per suite), for the land cost alone.

  This should give you an indication of what the end suite pricing would need to be to make this development feasible, and likely also speaks to its average suite size. New York City tends to build much bigger suites. Certainly compared to here in Toronto.

  Also, notice that I didn’t say unit?

  2023.01.17

• Basketball and housing and football, oh my

  

  Three quick and unrelated things for today’s post:

  1.

  A handful of years ago, before the pandemic, Bullpen Consulting, Slate Asset Management, and AD HOC STUDIO started a somewhat irregular basketball meetup for Toronto’s development industry called City Builder Ball. It, of course, fell off the rails during the pandemic, but as of this month we are officially back at it! We played over the weekend and I can’t tell you how much fun it was to run around a gym for an hour and play basketball very poorly — so much fun. The next meetup will be in January and if you’d like to join, drop Ben Myers of Bullpen an email to get on the mailing list. It is open to all.

  2.

  A few months ago I wrote about a passion project that I am working on with a friend, called Unlyst. The idea is to see if there is a way to leverage the “wisdom of crowds” to determine the current market value of housing. And the way it works is that we feature a home on the website, people (or the crowd) get 14 days to input what they think it’s worth, and then we come up with something we are calling an “unlysted value.” There’s a lot of evidence of this sort of thing working exceptionally well for other markets, so we’re very curious to see if it can work for housing. If you’re interested in contributing your home and/or just seeing how it works, check out unlyst.com.

  3.

  World Cup Finals. What a game! A huge congratulations to Argentina and, of course, Messi. I should, however, come clean and say that I know virtually nothing about football, I don’t know why the field is so big, and that my overall impression of the game used to be mostly consistent with this Simpsons’ take (albeit with more sensationalized flopping by men with faux hawks). But since Canada qualified this year, I felt it was my duty to watch — at least some bits and until we got eliminated. And since the finals are the finals, and since I have an open crush on France, I figured this would also be a good game to watch. Turns out I was right. And now, I am fairly certain that it has turned me into a true fan — or at the very least a “I could watch a finals game every 4 years” kind of fan. Who knew that soccer, I mean football, could be so thrilling?

  Photo by Florian Wehde on Unsplash

  2022.12.18

• People like TikTok and grocery stores

  Dan Frommer has just just released his latest Consumer Trends report (2023). If you’d like to download a free copy, you can do that over here. It is amazing to see how big of a deal Tik Tok has become. In Q3 2022, the average Android user spent 98 minutes per day in the app. That is a lot, and it’s roughly 2x what Facebook and Instagram each saw (though if you combine these two apps, I guess they’re pretty similar). Either way, this is where people’s attention is now being spent. For those of us in real estate, the report also has some interesting slides on grocery stores. The key message here is that physical stores remain hugely important.

  The year-over-year change in online grocery spending is now flat to a little negative:

  

  No matter which generation you ask, more people prefer shopping for groceries in-store, versus online:

  

  And even when people do shop for groceries “online”, they still tend to pick them up from their local store or have that local store deliver it to them (so the store matters):

  

  For the full report, click here.

  2022.12.02

• We are hiring a development coordinator

  

  The development team at Slate Asset Management is again hiring for our Toronto office. We are looking for a coordinator to join the team and gain exposure to all aspects of our projects — everything from acquisitions to construction and close-out.

  For those of you who maybe aren’t familiar with all of our projects, feel free to check out Slate’s website or the “Developments” menu on this blog.

  We are always open to a variety of backgrounds; however, for this role, our ideal candidate would be someone with a bit of a design and/or construction background. Though I would encourage you to apply even if you don’t feel like you fit this description.

  Broadly speaking, our ambition with all coordinators is to have them quickly take on more responsibility and ultimately lead a portfolio of their own development projects. If this sounds interesting to you, the best way to apply is over on LinkedIn.

  Please also feel free to reach out to me directly if you have any questions about the opportunity.

  Image: 100 Lombard

  2022.08.25

• [Video] RAD Marketing’s Future Frontiers real estate podcast

  I was recently on RAD Marketing’s Future Frontiers podcast talking about real estate stuff with Daniel Marinovic (CEO and Managing Partner of Forest Gate) and Sean Zahedi (Vice President at RAD). I haven’t watched the video yet and I honestly don’t remember what I said (it was a few weeks ago), but if you’re interested, you can listen to it here and watch it on YouTube here.

  2022.03.31

• Buying condos with crypto

  If you happen to have made boatloads of money in crypto (which sadly isn’t me), one sensible thing you could do is put some of that money into luxury residential real estate. You know, to diversify your portfolio.

  According to this recent WSJ article, it is already happening, with some developers and some homeowners now accepting cryptocurrencies in lieu of US dollars and other fiat currencies. This is helpful if you’ve managed to accumulate a bunch of crypto and don’t want to convert it. It can also be easier when it comes to moving the funds around:

  Avi Dabir, vice president of business development at FTX US, said he sees real estate as a growing sector for the company because crypto transactions are faster and more efficient than traditional deals, which rely on an often-cumbersome banking system.“If I want to send a wire transfer today using my traditional bank account, it’s got to be banking hours, I need to make sure I hit that wire cutoff time and I can’t do it on the weekends,” he said. “That’s not a problem with cryptocurrency. It’s open 24/7.”

  But of course it is still early days for crypto. The article suggests that most developers and owners are arranging for any crypto received to be immediately converted into US dollars at closing. This is presumably because of how volatile cryptocurrencies tend to be — at least right now.

  To accept crypto, PMG had to partner with a regulated exchange that could quickly convert crypto to U.S. dollars, then convince an escrow agent to accept down payments from the exchange, rather than directly from the developer. Mr. Shear said most escrow agents looked at him like he was crazy, but “20 lawyers, one year later, and a lot of brain damage, everybody got comfortable.”

  There are also tax considerations (that I am really not an expert on). If you bought $100 worth of Ethereum and it is now worth $10 million, you are responsible for paying tax on this gain if/when you sell, trade, or otherwise dispose of the crypto. And it is my understanding that if you were to use this $10 million in Ethereum to buy something like a condo in Miami, it would also be considered a taxable event.

  Maybe all of this becomes commonplace or maybe it doesn’t. But it sure is interesting to see crypto already starting to flow into hard assets like real estate.

  2022.02.01

• The Tower — NFT Residences of Solana

  I am not counting on my nascent NFT collection to fund my retirement. At least not yet. But I have enjoyed collecting them this year and using them to learn about and get involved in the crypto space. Playing around and experimenting is one of the best ways to learn.

  I recently discovered a project called The Tower (DAO) and I think that many of you, particularly those in the real estate community, might find it interesting. In its simplest form, it is an NFT project where you buy “residences” in a virtual metaverse tower. They look something like this:

  

  The tower has 500 floors and 20 units per floor. And so there are 10,000 units in total. Each is unique.

  When you buy a residence, you get, among other things, a profile page on the web that allows you to show off your residence and all of the other NFTs in your crypto wallet. You can also see who else owns on your floor.

  Of course there are plans for a lot more. As part of The Tower’s roadmap, the team wants to direct some of the funds that it raises toward real-world affordable housing. There’s also a roommate model in the works where, presumably, people can share their residences and earn tokens.

  Now, I have no idea how a project like this ends up evolving or what it ultimately becomes. But I think it’s a fun example of the kind of creative projects that are being developed as a result of the fact that we can now all take ownership over scarce digital assets.

  Many of these “assets” will likely end up going to $0. But others, as we have seen, will come to be worth a lot.

  2021.11.19

• Grocery-anchored real estate as food logistics

  Blair Welch, co-founder of Slate Asset Management, was recently on Institutional Real Estate’s podcast talking about grocery-anchored real estate. In it, he talks about the role that this asset class plays in last-mile food logistics, why ecommerce might actually be strengthening its importance, and why it needs to be considered as being distinct from other kinds of retailing. This is a topic that we have covered a few times before on the blog and I think many of you might find it interesting. To have a listen, click here.

  2021.11.16

• Workplace occupancy-sensor company raises $125 million funding round

  

  Density, which is a company that provides occupancy-tracking sensors, announced this week that it has just completed a $125 million funding round at a ~$1 billion valuation. This is their Series D. Official announcements, here and here.

  On a practical level, the company provides workplace space analytics. They offer sensors that allow companies to anonymously measure how people are using their offices.

  How long people are at their desks for (possibly weird), which conference rooms are most used, where people socialize, and so on. With the idea being that if you measure it, you can then optimize it. It’s about how to best use your real estate.

  But their overarching mission is “to measure and improve out footprint on the world.” Their ambitions seem to go beyond just office space. It’s about how we occupy our cities, and using analytics to more efficiently design and build them going forward. And that’s pretty interesting.

  I’m not intimately familiar with the company, but I thought I would share the news with all of you in case you’d also like to check them out.

  2021.11.11

• NFTs and real estate

  I have started using my NFT collection as a rotating face on my Apple Watch. The one you see below is a Cool Bean, but I have many others in the gallery. Lately, I have been gravitating towards NFTs on the Solana blockchain because of how fast and cheap it is to transact. Though I am still much longer with ETH.

  NFT art as watch face @CoolBeansNFT pic.twitter.com/9yGM12PmHn

  — Brandon Donnelly (@donnelly_b) October 27, 2021

  This is all pretty geeky stuff, but it reminded me just how early we are when it comes to web3. NFT art has exploded over the last year, but the broader ecosystem is still getting built out. We are all going to want mediums in which to display and experience this new form of art. And as soon as that happens, I suspect they won’t be thought of as “just JPEGs” anymore.

  (One of the nicest digital art displays that I have seen is the MONO X7. It’s currently available for pre-order but I haven’t yet pulled the trigger.)

  On a related note, I follow a human on Twitter who goes by 6529, because that is the Cryptopunk number that she/he owns. 6529 is incredibly bullish on crypto and NFTs, and tends to write long and insightful threads about it. One of the most recent ones is about real estate and I think that many of you will find it a worthwhile read.

  1/ On Real Estate
  
  You invest in real estate – the largest and most tangible asset class in the world.
  
  You don't believe in any of this NFT mumbo jumbo.
  
  What you are just buying a token? The JPG is somewhere else? What are you even buying?

  — 6529 (@punk6529) October 26, 2021

  What I particularly like about it is that it reminds us that so much of what we consider to be normal and the status quo is actually just a construct that people before us created. Usually it’s not perfect and there are many inherent flaws, but it’s the best that could be done at the time. That or it just worked.

  And because it’s the way it’s been “always done”, it just recedes into the background and most of us don’t give it much thought. Of course, so much of entrepreneurship is about questioning the status quo and doing things differently. Why this way? Could it be better? And it’s precisely during these moments of change where lots of value is created.

  2021.10.27