Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 613

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.

James Brown and Kim Storey, who are partners at Brown + Storey Architects Inc. , recently put forward this intensification proposal for Toronto's non-Avenue-designated arterial roads. (The term Avenue is an important designation in Toronto planning.) They call these streets Un-Avenues and here's what they are getting at with this definition:

The “Un-Avenues” are the city’s north-south arteries, where the standard residential street was widened in the mid-20th century to allow for more lanes for more cars and vehicular intensification. They are not generally lined with retail, but rather with the original houses that have been devalued because of their location on the arterial roads.

These roads often serve as busy bus routes that connect directly to subways. The widening of the roads has meant there are no trees, narrow sidewalks, and negligible front. Four lanes of rush hour traffic are provided, with rare provisions for bike lanes.

The Un-Avenues run silently through the single-family residential zones of Toronto. As countless articles have pointed out, the “yellow belt,” where the single-family house reigns, occupies a substantial swath of Toronto real estate on any zoning map.

It is hard not to drive or move through Toronto's "Un-Avenues" without thinking that they belong in a different era. They speak to a Toronto that was much smaller and that was not yet a global city. There's little urbanity. And no grandeur. They feel a bit like forgotten streets in a city that has otherwise decided to grow up.

Here's what Brown + Storey are proposing as a solution (images via Spacing ):

I haven't spent enough time going through the proposal to comment on whether or not I think this is exactly what should be done. There is also the minor issue of single-family homeowners accepting towers, or anything really, next to their backyards. But I do feel strongly that something needs to be done -- for reasons of affordability, livability, urban beauty, and a bunch of other reasons.

The Greater Toronto Area builds a lot more condominiums than purpose-built rental units. This isn't the case everywhere though. I was recently reading an article about Salt Lake City and how developers there don't want to build condominiums. It's mostly rental housing. There's simply too much risk and liability with condominiums. I guess this is one of the reasons why real estate is often said to be a local business.

In any event, because of this dynamic in Toronto, condominium rentals are often used to measure the health of the overall rental market. There are simply more recent comparables to point to when you're trying to figure out what is "market." The Toronto Regional Real Estate Board recently published its Q2-2021 rental market report and here is what they found when it comes to condominium apartment rental transactions in the Greater Toronto Area:

Q2-2021 - 14,920 transactions

Q1-2021 - 13,168 transactions

Q2-2020 - 7,300 transactions

What this report tells us is that rental demand is returning. Transactions and rents are up compared to the first quarter of this year and certainly compared to Q2 of last year (2020), which was the low point of this pandemic. We are not yet back to where we were in Q1-2020 when the city was firing on all cylinders, but I have no doubt that we will get there and ultimately surpass those figures.

For the full rental market report, click here .

Photo by Narciso Arellano on Unsplash