Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1025

A friend of mine sent me this article earlier today with a sarcastic comment about the relationship between housing supply and rents.

The article talks about how rents in almost every Manhattan neighborhood have fallen compared to a year ago because of a flood of new apartment supply coming online. The median rent dropped 3.6% (year-over-year) which is the biggest decline since October 2011.

There has also been a spike in the number of leases with some sort of incentive attached to it (see above). As a landlord you typically want to use incentives, such as free rent, before resorting to lower face rents. Because lower rents mean a lower overall net operating income, which in turns depresses the value of your property.

But sometimes you have no choice:

“Landlords have finally realized, ‘OK, we have to adjust these prices because the concessions aren’t doing as much,’” said Hal Gavzie, who oversees leasing for Douglas Elliman. “Customers are looking past the concessions being offered and just looking for the best deals they can find.”

A few weeks ago I wrote about a similar story playing out in Seattle . It’s almost as if excess housing supply is driving down rents.

David Chipperfield Architects has just won a design competition for the tallest building in Hamburg. It is set to rise 230 meters and look something like this:

There’s a real elegance to its simplicity. It also feels like an appropriate pairing with the nearby  Elbphilharmonie  designed by Herzog & de Meuron.

But the first thing I thought to myself when I saw the design was: “Must be office. There are no outdoor spaces.”

And sure enough, the plan is for 104,000 sm of primarily office. There are also plans for restaurants, shops, exhibition areas, and a hotel and bar.

Some architects begrudge having to incorporate balconies into their tower designs because they can break up the elevations, muddy the concept, and create thermal bridging concerns.

This tower – called the Elbtower – is a good example of why that is the case.

Image via Dezeen

According to Walter Isaacson – the bestselling author of their biographies – it is this:

I started with Ben Franklin, and then Einstein, and then Steve Jobs—[they were all] innovative and creative. And I said, “Well, what pattern [leads to] that?” The pattern wasn’t that they were smart, because you’ve met lots of smart people, and they don’t usually amount to much. The pattern tends to be curiosity across disciplines.

This excerpt was taken from a conversation between Isaacson and Adam Grant , which you can read or watch here . 

Here is another excerpt that speaks to the way in which Jobs prided himself on working at the intersection of technology and the humanities:

I’ll give you a tiny example. The Mac that came out in 2000 had a handle on it, and they say, “This is a desktop machine. We don’t need the handle—people aren’t really supposed to move it around. It’ll cost us another sixty dollars [per computer].” And Steve said, “The handle is there because it makes the machine approachable. My mom is afraid of her computer, but if there’s a little thing [where] she can put her hand, where she can touch it and she knows it won’t break, that makes her connect emotionally to the computer better.” And he was right. But it cost money, and the Mac didn’t make as much.

The entire conversation resonated with me partly because I think of development as being a career that, by necessity, requires you to work across disciplines. 

I also sometimes wonder if I have too many broad-ranging interests. It can be overwhelming. But apparently that’s a good thing for innovation and creativity.