Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1068

In the US you can reduce your taxable income by deducting the mortgage interest you pay toward your principal residence . You can’t do this in Canada , at least not on the property where you live.

However, there are limitations . It is capped at loans up to $500,000 or up to $1M if you’re married and you file jointly. On the other end of the spectrum, you also need a loan big enough such that an itemized deduction will save you more money than the standard deduction.

Not surprisingly, the MID is popular among homeowners. And from a public policy standpoint, one of its selling features is that it’s supposed to stimulate homeownership. But many have argued that it doesn’t actually do this – it unequally benefits people with larger mortgages. (Canada has a higher homeownership rate than the US.)

Right now  it looks like you need to buying a home worth at least $305,000 in order for the mortgage interest deduction to make economic sense for you. Again, if your loan isn’t big enough, you’re simply going to opt for the standard deduction. 

In 2015, about 22% of all US taxpayers opted to take advantage of the MID. According to Zillow , only about 29% of all homes in the US are valuable enough for the MID to actually make sense. Though in some cities, like San Francisco, it’s pretty much all of the homes. Of course.

Zillow also recently looked at what the recent tax reforms put forward by the Trump Administration would mean for the MID and the real estate market . 

One of proposed changes is a doubling of the standard deduction. What this means, based on Zillow’s math, is that you would need to be buying a home worth at least $801,000 today for the MID to make sense. This also means that the deduction would now only benefit about 5% of all homes in the US.

This would seem to only exacerbate the criticism that the MID does not in fact stimulate homeownership in the segment of the market that needs it the most. But perhaps this is the only politically palatable way of removing it – gradually.

Photo by Erol Ahmed on Unsplash

Over the past few weeks, I have heard a number of people say that Apple AirPods are hands down the best wireless headphones on the market. 

Yes, they look like mini hair dryers. But everyone kept telling me that they are simply indispensable if you talk on the phone a lot and/or you’re tired of accidentally unplugging your headphones at the gym.

I have a wireless headset for my landline at the office and I absolutely love it. I don’t know how I ever worked without one.

I also fumble over and yank on my headphone cable so often at the gym that my Urbanears are now cutting in and out. I’m not sure if it’s the headphones or my phone’s jack. 

So I got myself some AirPods. 

I’m probably late to this party, but they are indeed awesome. They instantly pair with your phone as soon as you take them out of their recharging case and put them into your ears. Want to pause what you’re listening to? Just take one of them out of your ears. It’s all seamless.

They’re also a game changer if you pair them with the new Apple Watch Series 3. Now you don’t even need your phone to make and take calls.

Word of mouth: More effective than even Apple’s own superlatives.

Over the past few weeks Drake has been posting teasers on social media of his temporary condo in Toronto. It’s temporary because he’s waiting for his 35,000 square foot faux chateau to be completed in the Bridle Path. (See, some Millennials in Toronto are still able to break into the housing market .)

Here is one of those posts taken from Instagram :

A lot of fans have been wondering which condo building Drake has been teasing. I like Drake, but my interest was peaked more as an architecture and real estate nerd.

Given the position of the CN Tower in the above picture, it looks like the building is to the north and just slightly to the east. The other clues are the curtain wall system ( SOTAWALL THERMO-3 series , I think) and the perimeter heating at the base of the windows. These are somewhat atypical details for a condo in Toronto. Also, if you look closely at the corner you’ll see that the south facade appears to slope outward.

So my guess: The Residences at the Ritz-Carlton, Toronto – designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox with Page + Steele as the local architect of record.