Late last year I wrote a post (dated September 21, 2020) which used Census data to answer the question, “What are renters renting in Niagara?” I found that the bulk of Niagara’s renter households are most likely to rent detached houses and units in multi-unit buildings with less than five floors, followed by multi-unit buildings with more than five floors…. Read more »
One of the biggest frustrations with real estate consulting is having to wait to find out whether you’re right or wrong. Because most development projects, especially multi-unit rental properties, take years to get approved, built, and leased, if you as a consultant give advice to a developer you won’t find out for 3 or 4 years whether your advice was… Read more »
This past Saturday (November 6th) the print edition of the Toronto contained an interview with Dennis Mitchell, the CEO of Starlight Capital. In the interview he was asked how Starlight’s “multi-residential properties” did during the pandemic. His response: The businesses that we own collected well north of 90 per cent of their rent during the pandemic. Actually, during the recovery… Read more »
Charlie Munger is pretty much a household name in the finance and investing worlds, having made his name by becoming wealthy and being Warren Buffett’s investing partner for many decades. Apparently, he also has aspirations to be an architect. Read the article below. What can I say? To give credit where credit is due, his design is well suited to… Read more »
In my post last (last) week I talked about ‘trickle down’ supply issues and explained my reasons why I don’t think it results in increased affordability or increased access to affordable rents (some extreme situations excepted). One of the assertions I made was that rents in older buildings will keep going up, no matter how many new buildings—i.e. high-rent rentals—are… Read more »
There’s a recent article which has been making the rounds titled “How luxury apartment buildings help low-income renters.” I think it showed up first on a US website but it’s been republished in Canada. I’ve included a link to a US website below so you can read the article (I suspect that’s where the article was published first). https://fullstackeconomics.com/how-luxury-apartment-buildings-help-low-income-renters/ The… Read more »
This post is a follow up to my previous post last week (dated September 22, 2021) which examined the “gap” in average rents between 1B and 2B units in southern Ontario’s twenty largest cities. In that post I found that the gap in average rents shrank from 2010 to 2020, implying a convergence in 1B and 2B rents, which I… Read more »
In a previous post (dated August 4, 2021) I examined the contribution to rent revenues that 1B and 2B purpose-built rental units make and found that 0B and 1B units contribute a lower percentage to estimated total average rent revenues than their percentage of rental supply. In this post I’m going to take a look at the “gap” between average… Read more »
I wanted to bring to the attention of readers a really good article written by Nick Maggiulli, an analyst with Ritholtz Wealth Management. You can read the article via the link below. In his article, Nick talks about becoming an “uncertainty killer,” someone who helps eliminate or minimize uncertainty for co-workers and employers, as a way of enhancing one’s career… Read more »
For reasons due more to accident than planning, recently some articles on climate change and related issues crossed my (online) desk. One in particular was thought provoking, an article entitled “Covid-19 and Climate Change: Why we need to remember what we’ve lost” by David Roberts in vox.com. Here’s a link: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/7/7/21311027/covid-19-climate-change-global-warming-shifting-baselines The article makes the important point that humans, both… Read more »