Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 675

Apple's self-driving system and/or car project has been in the news again recently. Last month, Bloomberg reported that the company was hoping to start production by as early as 2024. But this week, projections were revised and we're probably looking at least 5 years. The details are pretty limited at this stage, as is typical of Apple (although Hyundai has been saying things ). It's also not clear whether the company is set on developing both an electric vehicle and a self-driving system, or just the latter. But the company has been hiring lots of engineers to work on the project, including a bunch of ex-Tesla employees. Supposedly, Apple now has " several hundred engineers " working on this initiative, most of whom are focused on the self-driving system part. Who really knows how and when this all unfolds, but I would bet that software is going to continue eating the world .

https://twitter.com/CarletonU_Arch/status/1349010011947741189?s=20

Next Tuesday, January 19, I am helping to teach the introductory class of a Certificate of Real Estate Development program that is jointly offered by Carleton University's Sprott School of Business and Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism. Here is a full list of the instructors and key note speakers that will be participating in the program. Obviously it is all being done online this time around.

One of the great things about this program is that it's a partnership between their school of architecture and their school of business. As you might expect given my background, I am biased in my view that this is a great way to teach real estate development. And it's one of the reasons why I enjoyed my time so much at the University of Pennsylvania. I was free to take classes at whatever "school" I wanted to.

When I later went on to study at the Rotman School, I actually tried to advocate for a better real estate development curriculum and for increased collaboration across the business and architecture schools (both alma maters). The response I got, at least back then, was that Rotman already had a real estate major and that it was fine just the way it was. Cool.

For more information or to register for Carleton's Certificate of Real Estate Development program, click here . I think there are only a few spots remaining.

Apartment List's quarterly Renter Migration Report (Q4 2020) offers up some interesting insights into what may be playing out in the apartment sector right now. The most striking takeaway seems to be the surge in people looking for short-term rentals (leases of six months or less). And while the data has historically shown that those looking to move to a new metro are more likely to be looking for a short-term rental compared to those searching within their current metro, that spread really widened starting in the spring of last year. See above.

And when you drill even deeper, the most popular inbound destination -- at least according to Apartment List's search data -- seems to be Honolulu. In the second half of 2020, about 26.8% of users searching in Honolulu from somewhere else in the US were looking for a short-term lease. This is compared to 14.9% during the same time period in 2019. Intuitively this makes sense to me. If you're in lockdown and working from home, why the hell not do it from Hawaii? We've all have this same thought.

Apartment List goes on to speculate that this short-term rental spike could be an indication that the inbound and outbound flows we're seeing right now with certain cities may not be all that permanent. People are simply optimizing for the current environment. Though this data is representative of intent, rather than of leases consummated. Either way, that would be my guess . But who knows. Maybe some people will discover that surfing in the morning and working from the beach is a pretty enjoyable way to live.