Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1045

It has been a busy year end. No slowdown whatsoever on my end as I make my way through the last week of the year in the office. Because I love what I do so much (I’m grateful for that), I have a habit of getting completely absorbed in my work. That’s a good thing, but it also means I probably neglect other things, like I have with my Christmas shopping this year.

So I’m looking forward to the holiday slowdown so that I can spend more time with family and friends, workout more, and dedicate more time to this blog and photography. 

I’m also going to be traveling after Christmas. And since I’ve been feeling lately that I need to challenge myself more with this blog, expect it to skew toward a travel/photoblog for about a week. I am sure it will still relate to many of the topics that we regularly discuss on this blog. Or maybe it won’t.

What are your plans for the holidays?

The Guardian has just published a fascinating article about the reprivatization of property in Warsaw. This is the process by which previously nationalized property is returned to pre-communist owners, or their heirs.

Not surprisingly, the government gets a lot of these sorts of claims, though many of them are clearly bogus. Between 2007 and 2017, Warsaw City Hall estimates that 447 properties, representing about 4,479 dwellings units, were reprivatized.

For some, all of this is restitution for widespread expropriation during the communist era . But for others, it quite simply means eviction. 

The story at the beginning of the article – about a family who is immediately evicted from their apartment and has their belongings thrown out – seems almost hard to believe. One would think that there would be more sensible transition policies in place.

Another negative has to do with the uncertainty that this creates in the market. Why would you buy and/or invest in a property if there was any inkling that it could be taken away from you? You wouldn’t. 

Click here to read, ‘They stole the soul of the city’: how Warsaw’s reprivatisation is causing chaos. If any of you are familiar with the Warsaw property market, please do leave a comment below.

It’s the Christmas and holiday season, which means two very important things. 

One, it’s time for the latest rendition of Urban Capital’s annual Naughty or Nice party. That was last week and it was #7. Here are the obligatory photo booth snaps to prove it happened.

And two, the latest issue of Site Magazine (from Urban Capital) is now out. 

This year I wrote a piece called “The Canada mission”. It’s all about Urban Capital’s pan-Canadian mission to build from coast to coast. How it happened. The challenges. What’s driving it. And what have been the results.

The article includes case studies from Urban Capital’s two newest markets: Saskatoon and Winnipeg. 

One of the things that I didn’t fully appreciate until I started researching for the article was just how pioneering these projects were. At the time, there were no proof points to suggest that the pro formas would work. And this is a leap of faith that Urban Capital has had to make on many of its projects.

Click here to download a PDF of the full magazine.