Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 806

Today we setup our construction webcam for Junction House . Here is a screenshot from this afternoon:

As you can tell, Mitchell Demolition is now on site. They still have some work to do inside the existing buildings, but after that everything will be coming down.

If you'd like to take a look at the public live feed, click here . It will also be available (embedded) on junctionhouse.ca in the next week or so.

Thank you Notion for letting us setup on your rooftop. If you aren't familiar with Notion, check them out here . They make custom apparel and other cool stuff right in the Junction.

Using data from Turner & Townsend, Curbed recently reported that the most expensive city in the world in which to build is now San Francisco. On average, it costs USD 417 per square foot. San Francisco is followed by New York ($368 psf), London, Zurich, and Hong Kong. New York took the top spot last year, but San Francisco shot up this year because of, you know, tech.

This number was calculated using a blend of six different types of construction , everything from apartment high-rise and prestige office to general hospital and warehouse distribution centers.

Now, I'm not exactly sure what this number includes. But I'm assuming it is only direct construction costs and doesn't include (contractor) general conditions, land, or any soft costs, which are all significant. Once you add in these other cost inputs, I am sure that you can start to see how things -- including the cost of new housing -- can quickly escalate.

Algorithmic home buying companies (or iBuyers) have now started to expand into Los Angeles . If you recall, most of these companies started in smaller markets where the homes are more homogenous, relatively inexpensive, and generally less liquid. Places like Phoenix .

By tackling the second largest housing market in the US (after New York City), the algorithms of Opendoor, Redfin, and Zillow will now need to content with an older housing stock, greater variability, and higher values.

All of these companies have increased their maximum offer price. The sweet spot for algorithmic home buying has typically been in the $150,000 to $300,000 range. Last year, two-thirds of all homes bought by iBuyers were in this range. I can't imagine that gets you very much in LA.

I keep expecting these companies to scale into something more beyond just iBuying and flipping. Perhaps we will see that happen once they establish themselves in country's biggest markets.

Photo by  Josh Rose  on  Unsplash