Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 913

I was looking at this laneway house for sale in Toronto today. It’s located near Queen and Bathurst. It has 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms and is about 2,331 square feet (that looks to include a basement). The lot appears to be just over 13′ wide. And the asking price is $2,845,000.

Single family homes aren’t typically considered on a per square foot basis, but if you do the math here, it works out to be around $1,220 psf. The property previously sold in 2017 for $805,000, which was prior to it being redeveloped. So it likely traded based on land value.

When Toronto first started considering modern laneway houses, some people thought that only individuals of questionable moral fiber would want to live in one. But today, there are countless examples of some pretty remarkable laneway houses. 

And in some cases you might need about $3 million or so.

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) recently published their annual study looking at all of the 200+ meter tall buildings completed over the last year.

143 were completed around the world. The all-time record was 147, which was in 2017. Last year, 18 “supertalls” were also completed. A supertall building is generally defined as having a height of 300m or more.

The tallest building completed in 2018 was China Zun in Beijing . Pictured above. It is 527.7m tall (to tip), but the occupied height is 513.5m. 

It was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates and looks like a Chinese finger trap. All iconic buildings deserve an endearing nickname, right?

Below are a few interesting charts from the report. The first is the total number of tall buildings over 200m from 1920 to 2019. At whatever point they chose in the 1920s, there were only 2. Things sure changed starting in the 1980s.

That exponential growth happens to coincide with tall building growth in Asia and in particular China. The next few charts show (1) the handover from North America to Asia; (2) completions per year (broken down by talls and supertalls); and (3) completions by China, I mean country, last year.

The full 2018 year in review report can be found here .

Image: CTBUH

I have been writing about the real estate startup Opendoor for many years here on the blog. Another promising startup in this space is Knock , and today it was announced  that they just raised a $400 million Series B round (led by Foundry Group ).

They share some similarities with Opendoor, but they are also different in that their focus is on home trade-ins. They tell you what your current home is worth, help you find a new home, and then coordinate “a seamless swap.” For more on how they work, go here .

One of the ways in which they are similar to Opendoor is that they front the cash for new home purchases. In the case of Opendoor, they buy your home with the plan of selling it in the future. And with Knock, they buy your home with the understanding that your old home will get sold.

It is certainly a more capital intensive model compared to the way that home sales are handled today. But many investors are clearly betting that it is exactly what is needed to change the status quo. 

(Credit to Jeremiah Shamess for sharing the above news with me today.)