Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 612

Sundae , which is a residential real estate marketplace that connects distressed sellers and/or dated properties with potential investors, has just raised $80 million in Series C funding . Since its founding in 2018, the company has raised a total of $135 million.

The marketplace is largely targeted at investors looking to buy, renovate, and then flip off-market homes. The company has also said that it is looking to protect distressed and/or uninformed sellers from opportunistic buyers.

The way it works is that Sundae lists the home and then aggregates demand from qualified local investors. These investors then bid against each other, in an auction, to buy the home. Presumably this is a good thing for homeowners.

Once a bid has been accepted, Sundae will then advance $10k to the seller to help with moving and other expenses. Supposedly the company delivers, on average, about 10 offers within the first few days of a listing.

Sundae appears to have a narrower focus compared to other real estate startups like Opendoor. This is a marketplace for “as-is” homes and a solution to “predatory wholesalers” who buy off-market and then quickly assign the paper.

But perhaps this is just the start of more change in the real estate industry.

One of the biggest challenges with living through this pandemic has been finding a good public toilet. Drinking in the park is all fine and dandy, but at some point you're going to need to find a place to pee. From experience, I can tell you that this can be a challenge in places like Toronto and Vancouver. But from the looks of it, the situation is a bit different in Tokyo. Japan, apparently, views its toilets as a symbol of its world-renowned hospitality culture. And so it takes great pride in the design of its public toilets. Last year, Tokyo invited 16 creators from around the world to redesign 17 of its public toilets throughout Shibuya. The list of creators includes big names like Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma, Shigeru Ban, Toyo Ito, and many others. And the result is probably the nicest collection of public toilets that you have ever seen (somewhere around 9 of them are already operational with the balance expected to open sometime this year). The uniforms worn by the maintenance staff were even designed by Nigo (creator of the fashion brand A Bathine Ape ). That's attention to detail.

For more about The Tokyo Toilet project and to check out the completed toilets, click here .

Image: The Tokyo Toilet

My realtor friend Mark Savel tagged me in this earlier today.

Pine Hill Homes has recently completed a laneway suite here in Toronto and they have now put out a call for artists to come up with something creative for its front facade. I think this is a great / fun idea and so I'm sharing it today on the blog.

I think it also speaks to one of the differences between laneway suites and the main houses that now host them. Could you imagine a builder doing a call to artists for the front facade of a house not on a laneway? It seems less likely to me. But I think that the laneway side is viewed as a little less precious, and that creates an opportunity for playfulness.

This, in my mind, is a great thing.

If you decide to participate and your work is selected, you'll have all of your materials paid for and you'll also get an honorarium. I don't know how much the honorarium is, or where this house is actually located, but I'm sure you can find these things out by contacting Pine Hill .

I'm looking forward to seeing what ultimately gets selected and put up.