Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 848

Inc. Magazine just did a profile on Opendoor , which is a company that we have, of course, talked a lot about on this blog and that I continue to follow closely. It's interesting to read about some of the challenges that they've been having as a result of their frictionless open houses. Since all you need is a smartphone, the company has been having the ongoing problem of people camping out in their listed homes. Sometimes for weeks. They've been working to address this by restricting the hours (6AM to 9PM) and by installing motion detectors. I am sure they will figure it out. The company is also having to be careful in terms of how it positions itself alongside realtors. There are many livelihoods at stake here. Here's an excerpt from the article:

During interviews, Wu has chosen his words carefully when discussing Opendoor's potential to replace Realtors. "The reality with Realtors today," he said on stage at the Startup Grind Global Conference in Silicon Valley in February, "is their role is shifting from project management--especially in our ecosystem, where we're automating a lot of the processes--to advisement."

Fred Wilson (venture capitalist) has argued many times before on his blog that business model innovation is far more disruptive than technical innovation. I think it's valuable to keep that in mind in the context of this discussion. Opendoor continues to charge a commission fee (sometimes a higher one than is typical), but it also makes money on the flipping of homes and it has plans to vertically integrate other aspects of the real estate business. Will that do it?

Urbanation released its Q2-2019 condo market results for the Greater Toronto Area this week. It was a robust quarter, following a slower Q1. Here are a few highlights: - 8,902 condo units were sold across the GTA in Q2-2019. This is the second highest Q2 level on record after Q2-2017 (11,413 sales). - The average price for all remaining (unsold) inventory in the GTA hit $1,000 psf for the first time ever, representing a 9% year-over-year increase. - The region saw increased activity in the outskirts, including Hamilton, as a result of purchasers/investors looking for value buys. - Only 6 projects launched for pre-sale in the former/old City of Toronto (the core). The average opening price was $1,284 psf. - Average pricing for remaining units in the core is now $1,291 psf. This is the new standard for centrally located housing. For the full press release, click here .

The below Twitter thread, initiated by Brent Toderian, is a great collection of some of the "best streets in the world." https://twitter.com/brenttoderian/status/1153742040221356032?s=21 I would encourage you to click through and have a scroll. The one thing that you'll likely notice about almost all of the contributions is that the streets tend to be fairly dense/urban and they tend to be oriented around the pedestrian. No surprise there. My only qualm with some, but not all, of these streets is that -- while beautiful from an urban design standpoint -- many of them can feel quite touristy and/or commercially generic. They are the street you go to when you're visiting the place, but they are perhaps lacking in urban authenticity. I don't mean to take anything away from the beautifully designed streets in the above thread. In fact, some of them aren't at all commercial and are simply magical places to be -- period, full stop. See, for example, La Condensa (neighborhood) in Mexico City. My argument is simply that the natural cycle of cities and neighborhoods sometimes means that the best streets for new ideas and small businesses are maybe not the most beautiful ones. Part of this is a function of rents and part of this is function of the fact that the best cities are constantly reinventing themselves.