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Brandon DonnellyCanada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...
Brandon DonnellyThe bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
Brandon DonnellyThe story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
Brandon DonnellyCanada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...
Brandon DonnellyThe bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
Brandon DonnellyThe story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
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I had lunch today with a friend (from school) who runs a multifamily development company in South Florida. His business is very similar to the apartment strategy that we are now working on in Toronto, in that he builds a repeatable apartment product (garden style apartments). In fact, he was telling me that he now has a dedicated design & QA/QC team within the company. Their job is to focus on continuous optimization and on reducing construction inefficiencies.
This is the way!
But each market is obviously unique. His rents are in the US$3 - 3.25 psf range (call it ~C$4.15 - 4.50 psf), whereas in Toronto you need something closer to C$5 psf to have a feasible project. Our yields are also lower on average. It's hard work to get to an untrended yield-to-cost of 5% here. But for him, he can't raise capital with anything less than 6.5%, which represents a development spread of at least 150 bps over where multifamily cap rates are today in his market (~5%).
Juicy by comparison.
I had lunch today with a friend (from school) who runs a multifamily development company in South Florida. His business is very similar to the apartment strategy that we are now working on in Toronto, in that he builds a repeatable apartment product (garden style apartments). In fact, he was telling me that he now has a dedicated design & QA/QC team within the company. Their job is to focus on continuous optimization and on reducing construction inefficiencies.
This is the way!
But each market is obviously unique. His rents are in the US$3 - 3.25 psf range (call it ~C$4.15 - 4.50 psf), whereas in Toronto you need something closer to C$5 psf to have a feasible project. Our yields are also lower on average. It's hard work to get to an untrended yield-to-cost of 5% here. But for him, he can't raise capital with anything less than 6.5%, which represents a development spread of at least 150 bps over where multifamily cap rates are today in his market (~5%).
Juicy by comparison.
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