Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1075

I just discovered an interesting new Seattle-based startup called Loftium . 

The way it works is that they provide down payment assistance (up to $50,000) to prospective homeowners as long as they commit to renting out one of the home’s bedrooms on Airbnb for 12 to 36 months. Loftium is positioning it as a way to help first time buyers get onto the property ladder.

Here’s an example of how the math might work (taken from the New York Times ):

The details certainly matter a great deal here but, high level, the homeowner gets $50k upfront, ~$1k per month in shared Airbnb revenue, and the opportunity to buy a home. You just have to be committed to being a host.

And from Loftium’s perspective, they put out $50k at the outset and get back just over $28k a year for 3 years. Assuming these assumptions are correct, that’s a pretty good IRR. 

However, if the home doesn’t generate enough Airbnb income during the agreed upon term, Loftium is on the hook because the homeowner doesn’t owe anything after the “ services contract ” expires.

Think this will fly? Would you use it?

I’m in Philly right now for a good friend’s wedding. 

I always feel nostalgic when I come back to this city. Some of my most memorable years were spent here. I grew a lot in those 3 years. I also think that Philly is a highly underrated city – such an intimate urban scale.

I’m staying at the newly renovated Warwick Hotel in Rittenhouse Square. The lobby is beautiful , as are the corridors, but the rooms already feel a bit a dated to me. However the Barcelona Chair in my room is a welcome addition. That thing will never go out of style.

My hotel happens to be two blocks away from my old apartment at 17th and Spruce. So I decided to do a walk-by while I waited for my room to be ready. My roommate and I had the entire second floor of this building:

It was palatial, especially given the bargain price and its location in Rittenhouse Square . 

The graffiti you see above is located on the north wall of the kitchen. I think that’s a recent addition. The fire stair you see provided access to the roof of the building (as well as the street, I hope). I’m not sure we were supposed to go up there, but we obviously used it for parties.

Grillmaster Deli is still next door. They kept me fed when I was studying at home and too busy to cook. That was often. And across the street is the Italian restaurant with its sidewalk patio that I used to look out onto from my bedroom.

This walk-up apartment was by no means fancy. Though it did have ensuite laundry, which was a nice improvement from my previous place. But it was unabashedly urban. My kind of place.

On September 14, 2017, Hyperloop One announced the 10 winners of its Global Challenge. These are the world’s “most promising” Hyperloop routes; selected through a process that began in May 2016 and involved more than 2,600 registered teams.

The winners:

1. Canada | Toronto-Montreal
   

2. India | Bengaluru-Chennai
   

3. India | Mumbai-Chennai
   

4. Mexico | Mexico City-Guadalajara
   

5. UK | Edinburgh-London
   

6. UK | Glasgow-Liverpool
   

7. US | Chicago-Columbus-Pittsburgh
   

8. US | Miami-Orlando
   

9. US | Cheyenne-Denver-Pueblo
   

10. US | Dallas-Laredo-Houston
    

If you aren’t familiar with what Hyperloop One is trying to accomplish, here is a quick video explaining the basics. Their goal is to have the world’s first operating Hyperloop by 2021.

If you happen to live in one of the above regions (about 148 million of us do), then you are probably already seeing the headlines in your feeds. For Canada, the promise is of  connecting 25% of our country’s population with one single Hyperloop route.

It would mean Toronto-Montreal in just 39 minutes:

This is shorter than many morning commutes. So it’s not hard to see why this is a tantalizing proposition. It would mean a union of our two biggest cities and our capital. More accessible Montreal bagels . And maybe, just maybe, a strengthened sense of bilingualism in this country. 

But there are also critics who believe that all of this Hyperloop hype is simply a distraction. Why not focus on proven technologies as opposed to some fanciful pipe dream that may never materialize? This is about stroking political egos as opposed to real progress.

My views are pretty simple on this one.

Will Hyperloop Canada happen? Maybe. Maybe not. I sure hope it does. But it may not. It’s easy to draw lines on a map. It’s much harder to actually execute on those lines. And of course, logistics aside, the technology is still being developed.

But if all we ever focused our energy on were things that have already been “proven”, we likely wouldn’t create many new things. Things that today are proven, were once unproven. But they became proven because there were folks who didn’t let that minor detail deter them from trying. They went for it.

So if a private company would like to go out and raise $160 million from private investors to try and figure out how to sustainably connect Canada’s two largest cities in 39 minutes, I am more than happy to cheerlead. Because I’m not the one trying. Who am I to naysay?