Generally speaking my visits to LinkedIn are rare but not long ago I checked in for a few minutes and happened to see the following post (dated August 30th) made by a marketing person in the industry: “When rents surge and supply gets tighter (like it is now) it becomes easy to forget the paradoxical fact that renters are the… Read more »
Last weekend (Sunday, June 5) the Toronto Star newspaper published an article written by Donovan Vincent which examined the mismatches between regulatory reality of Ontario’s planning process and the political promises of the re-elected Doug Ford government. The last topic in the article caught my eye. It was about so-called “streamlined development,” an initiative by the Ford government to encourage… Read more »
Recently I’ve been digging through an old MS Word document into which I copy-and-pasted interesting anecdotes and funny jokes I came across whilst wandering around the interweb over the years. The following quote (source unknown) caught my eye: An alternative to apartment buildings would be neighborhoods full of tiny houses. Read it again, and then read it a few more… 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 »
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 »
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 »
The latest issue of Canadian Apartment Magazine contains an interesting article which I recommend reading. Here’s a link to the article: https://www.reminetwork.com/articles/purpose-built-rental-pro-formas-under-pressure/ The article quotes from Paul Morassutti, a CBRE executive, who comments on the findings of a report on construction costs made by another consulting firm, Finnegan Marshall. Morassutti’s quotes are interesting since he describes and comments on recent… Read more »
The Toronto Star published an article this past Sunday (August 8) which had some eye-popping opening paragraphs, worth quoting in full: And 1995 is roughly the year that Torontonians would have had to apply for subsidized housing for a chance to secure any one-bedroom units that became vacant in 2021 at 133 Broadway Avenue, a 52-unit Toronto Community Housing lowrise… Read more »
Several times during my 15+ years in the rental housing industry I’ve been told that “rentals don’t work”, usually by people who work in accounting or finance, and sometimes by people who are new to the rental housing industry. Their basic assertion is that they’ve “done the math” and found rentals “aren’t profitable,” and therefore it makes no sense to… Read more »
I’m just back from the future! When I started in this industry leasing services were a big thing, a major business element for property management firms, and a significant source of revenue for many consultants. Vacancies were high in the less desirable buildings—can you imagine 5% or 10% vacant in Toronto? That’s what it was like, and landlords were willing… Read more »