OK, we’ve got a lot to share today so let’s dive right in…
First off, Toronto has passed an “as of right” bylaw that allows for up to 4-plexes to be built in all residential neighbourhoods.
I’m shocked. Never thought we’d see the day.
This doesn’t mean that we’ll see 4-plexes pop up like Kellog’s pop tarts all over the city tomorrow.
You still have to meet various zoning rules on the actual structure but it does move things forward and make the process a tad easier for sure.
Yesterday, we had lunch with Craig Race who spoke at the last YLYT event (Craig Race Architecture, you can find him on Twitter @craigitect).
He has been sharing some great drawings of what is possible for some time and this new as-of-right ruling in Toronto will push a lot of these forward.
Here’s a sampling of what he’s now helping people build in Toronto:
And Ontario desperately needs more housing everywhere, not just Toronto.
We’re excited to see if we can build something like what you see above on a couple Hamilton properties we own.
Let’s see if Hamilton follows Toronto’s lead.
Mike Moffat (@MikePMoffatt) recently shared the latest on housing supply in Ontario and it’s not looking like supply is going anywhere.
It’s a small chart so we’ll call out the important numbers.
The Ontario 10-year housing plan is calling for 1,229,000 new homes to be built across all the municipalities.
This would mean we should have 155K new housing units by this time.
We have 86,000 starts and 67,000 completions so far.
We’re only 15 months into this 10-year plan but we’re starting off with a whimper.
Keep this in mind while you read this…
Canada’s population grew by just over 1 million people in 2022.
That’s our largest growth rate ever. That’s a 2.7% increase which is much higher than the mean of 1.1% since 1972.
Much of that increase is immigration and non-permanent residents (students, work permits and refugees). Ontario absorbs the vast majority of these categories.
And these population trends don’t seem like they’re slowing down much.
We’re convinced that if you own a single-family home here in Ontario…ten years from now it’ll be like owning a unicorn.
So how high can Ontario real estate prices realistically go?
This is the ultimate question, isn’t it?
It’s the one we get asked all the time.
And it’s the wrong question.
The question is not how high real estate values will go.
The question is how devalued will your dollars become.
If you think the dollars will lose value over the next ten years then it will take more of them to buy a house.
If you think the dollars will lose value at an accelerated rate over the next ten years then the dollar price of property may increase at an accelerated rate.
But this isn’t the question that’s ever asked, is it?
And because most real estate analysts and economists don’t discuss the devaluation of the dollar, it confuses people.
They think real estate prices are going “up”.
It’s the value of their dollars that are going “down”.
That’s what we should all be paying attention to.
Remember, the Canadian government just a couple years ago thought we’d be in a budget surplus by 2027.
That’s now out the window.
Check out this latest projection:
We’re going to keep running deficits and creating new dollars forever it would seem.
That chart is in the BILLIONS. We are short billions of dollars in this country every year going forward.
And government projections are always wrong, LOL.
For instance, what happens if a recession hits? Will those numbers on the chart get better or worse? Won’t even more dollars need to be printed? Is that in these projections? No.
This quote comes to mind more and more frequently for us:
“Those who do not own hard assets are increasingly tending to drown in debt from which they will realistically never escape, unable to save except by speculation.” - p. 19 Bitcoin is Venice
All signs, to us, point to hard assets like income property being something you want to own.
As dollars are being devalued, as the population explodes, and as little housing supply is coming onto the market…it would seem to us that these trends are your friend.
These debt trends are also why, while we dismissed it years ago, we now understand Bitcoin's value.
A scarce asset, an immutable ledger, that is global and permissionless, and built on open-source software…protected by more computing power than anything the world has ever seen.
It’s a software and hardware engineering miracle.
And that’s why we’re pumped to be on a “Real Estate & Bitcoin” panel at the upcoming Canadian Bitcoin Conference on June 17 & 18, 2023 in Toronto.
We just received a discount code from the organizers that you can use if you’d like to come and check it out.
You can save over $100 off a ticket for the weekend by using the discount code: “PARTNER”.
If you have any issues just email info@CanadianBitcoinConf.com
The full agenda is available at CanadianBitcoinConf.com
Lately, Bitcoin conferences have become huge. This is the first one in Toronto and it’s a smaller scale than many others. So this is a great opportunity to meet and chat with the speakers and attendees there.
There’s a brand new global monetary network being built out with Bitcoin.
We learned long ago that you want to “ride economic trends”. This is one trend we plan on riding for many years.
And we haven’t even discussed what AI (Artificial Intelligence) is going to do to this inflationary environment that we live in! We’ll discuss that in future emails.
That’s it for this week, everyone!
Enjoy the sunshine.
Tom & Nick.
