Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 980

Happy Canada Day to the Canadian readers of this blog. Here is a picture that I took of the CN Tower a few weeks ago just after sunset from Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport ( YTZ ). It also symbolizes Canada for me. 80mm f/1.2 in case you’re wondering.

In some parts of this country, July 1st has another, perhaps more laborious, significance: It is “moving day.” In 18th century Quebec it was forbidden for les  seigneurs to evict farming tenants during the winter, a law that was simply inherited from France at the time.

As time went on, this evolved into a law – baked into the Civil Code of Lower Canada (1866) – requiring that all residential leases run from May 1 to April 30. May 1 was “moving day.”

In 1973, it was determined that May 1 was too disruptive to children in school and so an extension was granted on all leases, automatically pushing the date to July 1. It also meant moving in the summer, as opposed to in the spring when weather can be unpredictable in Quebec.

The requirement of fixed lease terms was also removed at this time (1974 onward), but tradition has persisted and July 1 remains known as “ moving day .” This seems to me like a logistical nightmare and a highly impractical way of allocating resources, but perhaps I’m just missing some of the nuances.

In any event, whether you’re sitting on a dock reading the Canadian Constitution Act of 1867 with a Brickworks cider , moving all of your belongings (in what is a hot weekend), or doing something completely different, I hope you’re having a good one. Happy Canada Day.

A few days ago it was announced that Blackstone has entered the multi-family space in Canada through a JV with Starlight Investments . They are buying 6 undisclosed multi-family buildings. 5 in Toronto. And 1 in Montréal. The total is 746 units.

The message in the press release is that apartment buildings in Canada are difficult to find and buy at meaningful scale. Most are held by small private investors and those owners are reluctant to sell. 

At the same time, places like Toronto and Montréal have built relatively little purpose-built rental over the past few decades. Supply is restricted. 

This is an interesting stat from the announcement : The Canadian rental market is about 2 million housing units. Dallas, alone, is 500,000 units. But this must only be purpose-built, investment grade, and/or some other subset of units. Because there are over 14 million private households and over 4.4 million rented households in Canada ( 2016 data ).

They also hint at a longer-term relationship between Blackstone and Starlight. Perhaps that will translate into some purpose-built rental development in the future.

On a related note, I recently picked up the book, King of Capital: The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone . It was published in 2012, so it’s not new. But as soon as I stumbled upon it, I picked it up. It was new to me.

Once I’m finished it maybe I’ll report back here on the blog.

Photo by Warren Wong on Unsplash

Remember my post from a few weeks ago about “ planners on bikes getting coffee? ” Well it happened. That’s the potential of blogging and Twitter. (I sold $TWTR too early.) 

Here is the selfie to prove it:

Jason Thorne and I met up with Gil Meslin and Liam Hanebury (Liam needs Twitter) of Artscape and they toured us around a few of their projects, including one of their first artist live/work projects on Queen West.

I do, however, have to confess that we didn’t have any coffee. I can’t drink coffee in the evening because it keeps me up at night. I already have too many things on my mind.

Trying to hold a group conversation on a bike is also not as easy as talking in a car, but I would still label the inaugural session a success, even if I was posing as a planner without a bicycle helmet.

If any of you have any suggestions for the next meet-up or I would like to join, drop me/us a line on the Twitter machine .