JOURNALISM
WHEN YOU THINK OF AN INTERNET SPAT between two opposing viewpoints, you probably wouldn’t expect a crown insurance lending corporation and a few major real estate companies to be at the center of it. Then again, you also probably wouldn’t expect an unprecedented global pandemic of COVID-19’s scale, which was enough to push the Canadian … Continue reading Evan Siddall Versus the World: A Summary of the 2020 CMHC Saga
The court of public opinion is a very delicate place, and a company like AirBnB – with all of the unsubtle characters that brought it success – show just how quickly an organization can find itself on the jury’s bad side. AirBnB was founded in 2008, marketed as a discount accommodation service for cash-strapped travellers … Continue reading Why No One is Buying into the AirBnB Pity Party
Introduction The Toronto housing market stands at the intersection of housing affordability and availability, with asking rents trending higher amid wages that struggle to keep up. While average rental rates for private condominiums (condos) have outpaced increases in wages, so too have rates for purpose-built rentals. Exacerbating the issue further, developers are economically incentivized … Continue reading High and Low: The Soaring Demand and Limited Supply of Toronto’s
Purpose-Built Multifamily Market
Introduction Having a roommate is not just part of the college experience — it is a growing trend in the workforce. More and more companies are working together under the same roof in nine to five harmony in what is known as coworking space: a more flexible alternative to traditional office space where multiple workers can share … Continue reading How Coworking Co-Opts the Traditional Office Space
Easy come, easy go: Amazon cancels plans for Long Island City — but what does this mean for the office it’s leaving behind? Photo Credit: Jeffrey Zeldman. In February 2019, Amazon, Inc. (Amazon) officially broke it off with Long Island City (LIC), cancelling previously announced plans to construct a 4.0 million-square foot (sf ) campus in the city’s … Continue reading Queen for 90 Days — What’s Next for Long Island City’s One Court Square?
Malls were emphasizing the importance of keeping anchor tenants, but in the case of Payless Shoesource, it now appears that the shoe is on the other foot. Photo Credit: Mike Mozart The closure of all 2,300 of Payless ShoeSource’s (Payless or the Company) stores in the United States and Canada seems like a minimal event on … Continue reading Unhappy Feet 2: Payless ShoeSource Files for Second Bankruptcy in Total Store Shutdown
For the past 14 months, news outlets have been gripped by Amazon.com Inc.’s (Amazon) selection process for its second headquarters (HQ2). For cities in the running, the prospect of a major tech company like Amazon expanding into their areas would mean a significant economic boost with analysts forecasting as many as 50,000 new jobs and … Continue reading How One Court Square Won Big with Amazon’s HQ2 Bid
While the reported Gymboree closures will likely not act as a sole catalyst for a decline of a mall, DBRS cautions that there are regional malls that can ill afford to lose one more national retail tenants. The Gymboree Group, Inc. (Gymboree) is not exactly jumping for joy this year, as the children’s clothing retailer is … Continue reading Is Gymboree Going Nighty-Night?
In a largely unsurprising move, Sears Holdings Corporation (Sears) filed for bankruptcy on October 15, 2018. Soon thereafter, the notoriously troubled franchise — which had already announced that 150 stores would close in 2018 — announced an additional two rounds of closures. The latest closures include an initial round of 142 locations, with liquidation sales expected to be … Continue reading The Fall of an Icon — Sears and the Evolution of the Great American Shopping Mall
On Tuesday, November 6, 2018, Californians took to the polls to determine the fate of Proposition 10, a statewide rent-control measure that would repeal the Costa–Hawkins Rental Housing Act (Costa-Hawkins) and allow individual municipalities to exercise more control over multifamily rental rates. The citizen-run measure was stopped in its tracks with a voting margin of … Continue reading Costa-Hawkins Prevails, Securing Certainty in the Los Angeles Multifamily Market
Stephanie Hughes 