York Region is calling on the province to give the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority the power to oversee implementation of the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan. That was one of eight key recommendations York Region has put forward to the Ontario government in its engagement process to determine whether the plan needs to be updated or amended. The recommendations put forward by the region were received for information by councillors during their committee of the whole meeting on... [read more]

When you think of real estate development in small towns, what do you imagine? For most investors, large land parcels with massive master-planned communities are the first thing to come to mind. Proportionately, this type of development is responsible for bringing a lot of units to market in the past few market cycles. It may not be especially well-suited to meet the changing demands we've seen in the Greater Toronto Area as a result of the "urban exodus" phenomena I wrote about... [read more]

The attention economy. We currently live in the most attention-scarce market in history. This requires people who serve products and services to that market to adapt at an accelerating pace. Things follow this rule in a variety of industries, even ones that operate on longer cycles, including politics, as we've learned.  The most epitomic illustration of this can be found in Netflix's documentary called "The Big Hack". When I look at this solely from the perspective... [read more]

Today’s 3-pointer will be brief, and it could very quickly become functionally irrelevant as the coronavirus panic spreads from grocery stores to real estate viewings. There are 3 statistically-biased reasons you really shouldn’t get too wrapped up in the idea that “spring market” pricing is any different than the other seasons: People – selection bias Product – selection bias Pricing – observer bias I have this... [read more]

It seems like we've pretty progressively found a temporary new normal, with little change in most major metrics. The big one to watch for now is going to be price, which could be gradually dragged down by excess supply. In the microeconomic outlook, it appears we're already seeing opportunism propping up the market on a transactional basis, as we've bounced off fundamentals without rebounding from suppressed capitalization rates we saw in the past few years. It seems like... [read more]