Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 547

Earlier today, Toronto City Council voted 19-5 in favor of the new garden suite policies . This is great news, and something that I have been writing about since our laneway suite policies were first introduced and later expanded across the city in 2018-2019.

The simplest way of thinking about this new housing type is that they're like laneway suites, except now the permissions have been expanded to include all of the properties that don't have access to a lane. In other words, they are backyard cottages (also known as accessory dwelling units).

Not every property is going to be suitable for a garden suite, but these new policies do apply to all low-rise "Neighbourhoods" of Toronto. So this is yet another important milestone for what is ultimately a broader look at housing supply in our low-rise communities. Next on deck is likely to be more multi-unit dwellings .

If you're interested in building a garden suite and would like to connect with an accomplished architect, I am most certainly not your best resource. I would recommend Gabriel Fain (the architect behind Mackay Laneway House) or Craig Race (an important pioneer/entrepreneur in this space).

If you happen to have made boatloads of money in crypto (which sadly isn't me), one sensible thing you could do is put some of that money into luxury residential real estate. You know, to diversify your portfolio.

According to this recent WSJ article , it is already happening, with some developers and some homeowners now accepting cryptocurrencies in lieu of US dollars and other fiat currencies. This is helpful if you've managed to accumulate a bunch of crypto and don't want to convert it. It can also be easier when it comes to moving the funds around:

Avi Dabir, vice president of business development at FTX US, said he sees real estate as a growing sector for the company because crypto transactions are faster and more efficient than traditional deals, which rely on an often-cumbersome banking system.“If I want to send a wire transfer today using my traditional bank account, it’s got to be banking hours, I need to make sure I hit that wire cutoff time and I can’t do it on the weekends,” he said. “That’s not a problem with cryptocurrency. It’s open 24/7.”

But of course it is still early days for crypto. The article suggests that most developers and owners are arranging for any crypto received to be immediately converted into US dollars at closing. This is presumably because of how volatile cryptocurrencies tend to be -- at least right now.

To accept crypto, PMG had to partner with a regulated exchange that could quickly convert crypto to U.S. dollars, then convince an escrow agent to accept down payments from the exchange, rather than directly from the developer. Mr. Shear said most escrow agents looked at him like he was crazy, but “20 lawyers, one year later, and a lot of brain damage, everybody got comfortable.”

There are also tax considerations (that I am really not an expert on). If you bought $100 worth of Ethereum and it is now worth $10 million, you are responsible for paying tax on this gain if/when you sell, trade, or otherwise dispose of the crypto. And it is my understanding that if you were to use this $10 million in Ethereum to buy something like a condo in Miami, it would also be considered a taxable event.

Maybe all of this becomes commonplace or maybe it doesn't. But it sure is interesting to see crypto already starting to flow into hard assets like real estate.

So 2021 was a pretty good year for condominiums here in the Greater Toronto Area. According to the latest data (Q4-2021) from Urbanation , this is what happened last year:

• 30,844 new condominium sales. This is a 69% increase compared to 2020, which saw 18,282 new unit sales.

• Fourth quarter alone saw 8,361 unit sales, which is the best quarter on record according to Urbanation.

• Unsold inventory dropped 26% year-over-year because sales exceeded the number of new project launches by over 4,000 units.

• Average price for an unsold condominium unit in Q4-2021 reached $1,322 psf, which is an 18% increase compared to the year before.

• Resale condominiums also did exceptionally well with 29,880 unit sales -- a 49% annual increase.

• All in all, some 60,000 condominium units were purchased last year in the GTA. Of course, some were ready to be lived in and some were future homes.