Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1192

This month the White House released a Housing Development Toolkit . The report starts by talking about the local barriers to building and makes this statement:

“The growing severity of undersupplied housing markets is jeopardizing housing affordability for working families, increasing income inequality by reducing less-skilled workers’ access to high-wage labor markets, and stifling GDP growth by driving labor migration away from the most productive regions.”

It then goes on to highlight a number of tools that American cities have adopted or should adopt “to promote healthy responsive, affordable, high-opportunity housing markets.” 

They are:

• Establishing by-right development
  

• Taxing vacant land or donate it to non-profit developers
  

• Streamlining or shortening permitting processes and timelines
  

• Eliminate off-street parking requirements
  

• Allowing accessory dwelling units
  

• Establishing density bonuses
  

• Enacting high-density and multifamily zoning
  

• Employing inclusionary zoning
  

• Establishing development tax or value capture incentives
  

• Using property tax abatements
  

None of this will be news to regulars of this blog. We have spoken about almost every single tool in the above list. 

I’m not necessarily sold on all of them (good discussion to have), but I have gone on ad nauseam about eliminating parking minimums (off-street parking); the value of accessory dwelling units (commonly called laneway housing here in Toronto); and the negative impacts of barriers to building.

The good news is that there’s growing alignment around a similar set of actions. Change takes time. There’s usually a heavy bias towards the status quo.

I love the idea behind a “365 project.” Two examples here and here . I learned about it from Bijan Sabet .

The idea is simple. It’s a personal photography project where you post a single photo each day of the year with a short blog-style caption. In the above examples, it’s typically a description of what’s going on in their lives.

Obviously there’s a major element of discipline to this project, but I also really like that the photos become a celebration of the mundane. The ordinary. The everyday.

One photo I saw had the caption: “Today wasn’t a very good day.”

Social media has evolved to become a high curated representation of our lives. We use it in an aspirational way to tell a story about who we hope to become or who we want people to believe we already are.

I am not exempt. 

But it’s refreshing to think about “ an honest account of your life .” Unless you happen to have a life that consists entirely of Vegas trips and yacht parties, a daily photo means that it won’t always be epic and it will sometimes feel like a chore.

I frankly don’t have the time for another daily commitment beyond this blog, but I would love to do a 365 photography project. Perhaps some of you have the time and the interest.

Today I am thinking about product/market fit .

Product/market fit is startup speak for being in a good market and having a product that satisfies the needs of that market. This may sound intuitive, but having the best product doesn’t matter if there’s no market for it. I like this line from Marc Andreesen : “Markets that don’t exist don’t care how smart you are.”

So the first takeaway is to create products that people care about. Sounds simple enough. But another reason why this is a thing worth talking about is that markets evolve and there’s always a chance that you can unlock a new market that nobody else is servicing. That’s obviously riskier, but it’s an ideal scenario.

Below is another way of thinking about that. It’s a quote from Andy Rachleff .

“Investment can be explained with a 2×2 matrix. On one axis you can be right or wrong. And on the other axis you can be consensus or non-consensus. Now obviously if you’re wrong you don’t make money. What most people don’t realize is if you’re right and consensus you don’t make money. The returns get arbitraged away. The only way as an investor and as an entrepreneur to make outsized returns is by being right and non-consensus.”

It’s a lot scarier to be charting new territory and sitting in the non-consensus camp. Consensus is comforting. But this is how the game works. I try and remind myself of this on a regular basis. I would like to say more, but I will leave it at that for today’s post.