Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1330

In 2009, Vancouver created policy and legalized laneway homes . (If you’re not up on laneway housing, click here . I’ve written too much about this topic.)

Since then, the number of laneway homes built in Vancouver has steadily increased to the point where roughly 350 new homes are built every year. 

Here’s a chart I found showing the number of laneway home building permits issued in Vancouver since 2009 (the year to date number for 2015 is up to and including June):

This is pretty interesting in its own right.

But as soon as I saw this chart I started wondering how these numbers fit into the overall new home construction landscape. So I decided to dig up the City of Vancouver’s Statement of Building Permits Issued for June 2015 .

As the chart above shows, the number of laneway dwelling units built (well, permits issued) was 221 as of June 2015. But what’s really fascinating is that this numbers exceeds the number of building permits issued for single family dwellings, which was only 192!

Also super interesting is the significant spread in building permit value. 

For single family dwellings, the total value was $156,086,861 (or $812,952 per dwelling unit). On the other hand, for laneway dwellings the total value was $36,478,785 (or $165,062 per unit).

Now to be fair, if you add single family dwellings with a secondary suite into the mix, you get a total count of 608 new dwelling units (as of June 2015). But at 221 new units, laneway dwellings still make up a meaningful portion of the new construction market.

So while laneway houses might seem fringe for Toronto and other cities right now, they’re really not that fringe. In fact the numbers above start to show that they can be a viable source of new and relatively affordable single family housing.

Eventually other cities will realize this too.

https://500px.com/embed.js

On Monday, Google broke the internet when it announced that it was reorganizing itself into a holding company structure called Alphabet .

That means that Google, Inc. will now become a subsidiary, along with many other companies, of Alphabet Inc. and all shares of Google will automatically convert into the same number of shares in Alphabet.

This is huge, but also something that was likely inevitable given the passions of the founders. Apparently Larry Page has been thinking about this move for years.

As it stands pre-Alphabet, Google (with its main internet products) is basically a cash cow funding all of Google’s other experiments . But this muddied the waters and made it difficult for investors to clearly see how much the main internet products were making and how much the founders were spending on self-driving cars, delivery drones (Project Wing), and other new ideas.

Now everything will be separate.

But what’s really exciting about the reorganization is that it sets the stage for Alphabet/Google – which is arguably already one of the most important companies in the world – to become even more impactful in a wide variety of industries and disciplines, some/many not traditionally associated with tech. Each wholly owned subsidiary will have their own CEO and the founders rightly believe, I think, that this overall structure will afford them more “management scale.”

Within Google will remain search, advertising, maps, YouTube, and the Android mobile operating system. But already Alphabet is the parent company of the following other businesses:

• Calico , an anti-aging life extension company
  

• Sidewalk , a smart cities company whose mission is to improve life in cities
  

• Nest , an “internet of things” company that makes connected devices for your home
  

• Fiber , a company that offers super fast internet
  

• Google Ventures (venture capital) & Google Capital (private equity)
  

• Google X , which is the lab developing self-driving cars and delivery drones (Project Wing)
  

If you can’t tell, I’m bullish on all of this. The approach really resonates with me and I can’t wait to see what Alphabet becomes. If you’d like to read the full and official blog post announcement, click here . 

Cheers to trying new things and making big bets.

I’m hijacking Architect This City today to help my mother out and try something new.

She is looking to sell her 1 bedroom condo in the Radiocity Condominiums, located at 285 Mutual Street in Toronto . It’s called Radiocity, not because the developers thought New York was cool (my pet peeve), but because the site used to be the headquarters of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) way back when.

The 2-tower complex is located north of Carlton Street, between Church Street and Jarvis Street, and is adjacent to Canada’s National Ballet School (designed by KPMB Architects ). It’s close to College Park and Yonge & College.

It was completed/registered in 2005 and won a number of design awards, including one from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. Notable about the design is the way it integrates townhouses at the base, a public courtyard (with public art) between both towers, and the Ballet School. (A deal struck with the developer and the CBC allowed the school to buy their portion of the land for $1 ). 

The buildings were developed by Context Development and designed by architectsAlliance , which is actually the same developer-architect duo behind the building I currently live and own in. I’m clearly a big fan.

The suite is about 560 square feet. It has 9’ exposed concrete ceilings. It has one full bathroom (tub), with a stacked washer and dryer. The bedroom is about 10’ x 10’ and is setback from the outside windows and enclosed with 3 x translucent sliding doors from C-Living . (I had them installed myself and they’re much better quality than the sliding doors you’ll find in most new builds.) The kitchen and living area is open concept, and there’s a north facing balcony that overlooks a quiet private courtyard. You basically get a view of trees, greenery, and the city. The suite is located on the 7th floor.

Here’s the floor plan:

And here are a few photos. They are all the right proportions and haven’t been stretched to make the space look bigger :)

The building has 24-hour concierge, visitor parking, and 3 floors of amenities. The amenities include a gym, aerobics room, party room, saunas, media room, boardroom, multiple lounges, 2 x guest suites, a party room, and a billiard room. 

College subway station is a 7 minute walk (600m).

The Loblaws grocery store at Maple Leaf Gardens (which is awesome and also includes an LCBO) is a 5 minute walk (400m). Though I’m fairly certain you could do it in 4 minutes.

And you’re a 6 minute walk to Ryerson University (500m).

The asking price is C$349,900. The maintenance fee is $426.64 per month and the property taxes are $2,039.19 per year.

It’s a private sale, but she is willing to cooperate with buyer’s agents (2.5% commission). It’s currently furnished, but you can have it either way you want (unfurnished or furnished).

If you have any questions or would like to book a viewing, please send her or me an email. If you’re an agent just looking for a listing, please don’t. Thanks for reading. Regularly scheduled programming will resume tomorrow.

Image at the top of this post is from  architectsAlliance .