Is there a long list that we can talk about? But there is a long list of things. If someone has prepared a list in advance, I would love to hear some of those things that are being laid on your lap. Mr. Stewart, go for it. Go for it now. We want to hear it. We want to hear it. Okay, well, I mean these small projects, sorry, I can jump in. I actually feel bad to the boys, Gus, he's just a bad question. No, no, no, Stewart, I'm here with this too. Just jump in, I'm sure he's got to be at you. I'm going to tie this into podcast, talk 98, which if you haven't listened to, you should. I was walking the dog last night, listening to Ben Ranton. I wasn't sure if he did a few drinks or not. But he must. Don't drink anymore, man. Actually, the best podcast that I've listened to in a while. So. Welcome to Toronto Under Construction, a podcast about everything Toronto real estate. And we have something to celebrate today. Episode 100, the tech podcast. Woo! All right. For some of you, this might be your first podcast. And if it is you, my name is Ben Meyer. I'm your host. I'm a TTA housing market analyst. So you can understand the angle that I'm coming to the conversation. If you want to look back at some of the blog posts, and audio grams and some of the clips from the show, go to patreon.com/truckpodcast, bullpen consulting.ca or Twitter @ bullpen consult. But before I introduce my guests, I want to tell you about the tremendous sponsor of the show. He can definitely help you navigate the complexities of the hiring process. He just helped find a new VP for center court developments for their rental division. And that man is Robert Barrett since 1995. His company BCGi has completed over 1,000 searches on behalf of developers, investors, occupiers, and lenders across North America. Their scope includes acquisitions development, asset management, finance, corporate real estate, and/or directors. BCGi has established partnerships, pension funds, reads, and fund managers, searching for top talent. They're a trusted source for career advice that guidance for real estate professionals in North America. Go to www.wci.ca, see what they're about. They can help you find your next top employer. So I have another fantastic show with three tremendous guests. I'm going to ask them to introduce themselves, tell us a little about who they are, what their company does, what they do with their firm, they can give a little bit of their back story. We have one returning guest from one of the OG guests from way back in the day. And I'll encourage you to go back to this first episode. But he'll give you a little refresher on who he is. And so that's actually a great way to get Stuart to go first. Thanks for having me again, Ben. It's Stuart Wilson from all terror developments. I think I was with you close to the start, maybe episode three. So before I tell you about myself, I do just want to congratulate you 100 episodes in an incredible achievement. I know you've been a Bastion of the industry over the last few years and we all enjoy listening to you. For those of you that can't see, which is all of you, we are sitting with three gold balloons showing you 100. So massive achievement. Well done. Thank you, sir. So yes, my second time in the podcast, I'd like to be here again. I didn't check my bio from the first one. So hopefully I'll be consistent, but originally grew up just outside Glasgow and Scotland. Did my degree in quality surveying there? Did my masters in construction management there? Then I went to Hong Kong in 1997. It was there for three years. I came to Toronto late 1999 working for, which is now altous, but in the day was earlier cost and something. We were a small group of alcoholics who also gave cost and vice. I was with altous until 2017, at which point I joined Altera developments. I am the president there now and I would describe as a probably a second tier developer. And that has been a negative. We're not as large as tribute or Daniels or try down, but I think we definitely punch above our weight. Nice. Nice. All right. Amanda, why don't you go next? Thanks Ben. I've thrilled to be on the show. Very exciting and with my co-guests, I'm Amanda Ireland. And I work at Osmington Girovski Development Corp. And we're a high rise residential developer. I'm the senior vice president of sales marketing and leasing and I have a varied background in development. I started with Millmoren Group in sales marketing, which was a family business. I worked with my father for many years, which was great. And then I jumped shit and joined some development groups to chase development and titles and planning. I have a master's and real estate development from Columbia University and wanted to be on the other side of the table. And been a tremendous opportunity really happy with the OGDC team and the projects we're going to bring for. Awesome. Awesome. Last up. Last but not least, Mr. Gus. So I am my guest, the Robless. I've been a tribute communities now for 21 years as of last week. So it's been a long ride. And when I was growing up, I always I kind of grew up in a bit of a rough neighborhood in the city. And I always said when I grew up, I want to be able to own my own home. We were able to do that as a family in my early 20s. And then I said when I grow up a little bit more, I want to help other people get into into their first home. So I think a lot of the pride that I take in this industry is being able to see. To see the results of our all of our hard work around this table and as an industry as a whole. So that's what keeps me going. But tribute has been around for 43 years. We do everything on the residential side. Lower eyes higher eyes both purpose built rental and condo, which I've coined the term not on purpose built rental. It's become because we're stuck with a few units that we tend to rent out these days. But we do that. We've done lower eyes for many, many years. We dabble a little bit in commercial if it's part of our community that we're developing. But otherwise we tend to stick to residential. But like I said, we've been around since 1983. It's been a wild ride and thank you for having me on the show. It's an honor. I've been you've done a lot for our industry and we've all learned a lot and being on show 100 means a lot with two great guests next to me. Awesome. Awesome. Well, let's get into it. Let's get into it. So as followers of the show will know, I typically pull, pull some articles that have been trending or have come on the market recently that are worth taking a read. I'm just going to get people's opinions on it. So I always, you know, as as Marlon very likes to say, but on my radio voice and I and I read these out. So here we go. Article one from Renx. Again, this is Canada's construction financing market finds its equilibrium. This was a spot actually a sponsor post from from Trez capital dated November 25th of 2025. Since the last real inflationary shock hit construction in 2022, when material costs jumped 15 to 20% year over year and trades commanded record premiums since then escalation has not only slowed is reversed in some markets. While the market continues to monitor for potential inflationary impacts from tariffs, data from Alta's group and writer Levit Bucknell showed national construction cost growth moderated to the mid single digits with several markets seeing quarter over quarter declines. Developers are taking advantage of that shift. Many are fixing 70% or more of hard costs, walking in pricing before shovels at the ground. Others are contemplating staging the fixing of hard costs with the exception with the expectation of realizing future cost savings. That discipline once seen as defensive is now enabling projects to proceed with tighter contingencies and more reliable and credible budgets. On new starts, cost overrun reserves are increasingly untouched and labor availability has improved as the backlog of mega projects. So Stuart, let me start with you for developers with projects on the on the cost of feasibility. What can they do for my construction, perspective to push their projects across the finish line any any easy tips anything you got? Well, I think unfortunately pushing them over the finish line probably starts a lot sooner than those that run the cusp. So there's kind of two parts to the question linking up to the article. So, you know, first of all the articles talking about how do you deal with your construction tenders and contracts. I mean, I think we don't have a strategy other than taking a one contract at a time, trying to do the best that we can. I do want to touch on the trades. I think they're an important part of this. You know, I think the trades pricing has definitely come down. I think we're conscious that we're taking advantage of some better pricing that. But I'm also conscious that the pendulum swings both ways. So we're trying to take advantage of the pricing in a respectful manner that's going to mean that we have good relationships coming out of this. So, you know, the trade relationships that we have are everything. And you're talking about the second part of the question mine was how do you prove that over the cusp. So relationships is key here. You know, I'm sitting around the table with three people who have had a relationship in different fashion. So all of you.
for a number of years. But it's the same. When you look through the relationships that we have with the banks or equity investor as the trades, the consultants, that's what's going to push us over the edge. Sure you can value your engineer, sure you can try and shave a few points off your costs. Maybe you can beat your consultants up a little bit. But what's going to get you to the finish line here is how you've treated people in the past, how you treat them in this market, and trying to build the best project together, just mentioned it early. It's exciting building homes for people. I love seeing people coming out of our buildings. I absolutely love it. So how do we keep doing that? More of the same. Focusing on improving, trying to get-- even if you're not saving money, trying to get more content per car, trying to build a better building, and making sure that your reputation that you've built over for me 30 years continues. Nice. Nice. So good. So here, the term cost certainty discuss kind of regularity. What does that mean to you? And how do you achieve it? So how I used to achieve it is, do it would make me achieve it. So do you want me to loan me any money? Unless we had 70% price fixed contracts, right? They had to be fixed. So the article says that their developers are thinking about locking in 70% these days. That's been happening for many, many years. I think what developers are actually thinking about doing now is the second part of it, where they said staging it. With the relief that we've seen, some people think there might be some more relief. So do we need to have 70%, 80% locked in, necessarily right away? Or can we make some better decisions later in the program? And we're thinking about that all the time. Stuart mentioned something really critically important, which is our relationships with our trades means a ton of mean work. We can't build it without them, right? So we are not necessarily trying to make them go broke and make them make a deal that they can't survive on. They have to be able to make a living just like we have to. But of course, we always have to look after our purchasers and try to deliver a product that people can afford. And that means we're going to be price sensitive. And so to answer your question in a nutshell, a little uncertainty is the more of the building that's under fixed price contracts, the more certainty I have as the CEO for it's review. But it's not perfect, right? We have change orders. We have, you know, when scope changes and things like that, delays, interest rate hikes and everything else that could happen to us. So you get as certain as you can and you try to deliver the best product you can. - Well, for sure. I mean, what do I got here for you? - My assumption is that OGDC is underwriting some or all their sites as rental, like every other developer. What are you finding as the biggest cost savings for rental versus condominium? - Your assumptions correct, Ben. - Absolutely. We're looking at every site as rental. The biggest one is the obvious one, which is commissions, soft cost, broker commissions. It's the biggest cost savings we're seeing in comparison between performance. You know, in some ways actually, we're seeing an increase in hard cost slightly to make sure that we're, you know, if we're delivering a building that has similar GFA, you know, the level of spec is just a little bit higher because of the durability and reliability that we're going to look at, especially given that we want to make it a trophy asset at the end of the day. But commissions are definitely the biggest. We're still holding incentives in rental performance, but very different. - Yeah. - Very different. - And are you guys planning to hold these? Are you going to operate as a merchant developer, you think? - You know, I think it's going to depend on the project. Certain markets, certain projects. Right now we're thinking very flexibly because I think there's a lot of opportunities to come in the next market. - Yeah. - And being flexible and less rigid, I think, with that structure is going to be where the opportunities lie. - So let's go. All right. Number two, article number two here. This says, "Bave you village purpose built rental seeks to add height." This is from store reasons. This is a few months back though, March 28th of 2025. It says, "Tribute communities is seeking to add height to the baby village rental development after the site became part of the Viserian major transit station area." The GTA based developer first filed plans for 27 story building. Currently, the site is occupied by three story, 29 unit rental apart building from 1961 that was approved for demolition in July of 2022. If approved, the revised plan is proposed to deliver a 39 story building with a four in it, four and five story base building. So Gus, "How is tribute filling about the purpose of a rental market? Are you comfortable with a 39 story and 385 unit building?" No, that's just, this is slightly smaller than the second phase of your new Park Sites Square apartment. How are you feeling about a rental of that size in today's market? Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. And right now, it's tough to make any profile work, right? So condo, purpose built rental, they're both very tough. If we had, you know, playing Monday morning quarterback, if we had purchased this parcel of land today, we wouldn't pay what we paid for it when we bought it, right? So unfortunately, you got to bring your land price to a place where you can actually make a pro-former work. And you can't change what you bought it for. We've had this for several years, but you can bring your price down by adding density. I know it's counterintuitive to what some developers are doing and going for the smaller buildings and tightening them up. And then we're looking at that as well, where we can. But in certain projects, you just simply can't in its economics. And in this particular one, it is in the major transit area like you mentioned. And we're just literally bringing our zoning to conform with some of the other approvals in the area. And so that's what we're doing there. But in general, on purpose-built apartments, I think it's a great asset class. I know my boss is, believe heavily in it. And they think, you know, it's a place that a big part of our future will be playing in that space. And this building was acquired as a condominium initially. That's what we're hoping to build here. But we've entertained looking at it as a purpose-built apartment and might again in the future. But right now, we're a little bit of an waiting sea mold in this location. I think there's a lot of waiting seers out there. So that's right. [LAUGHTER] It is funny, Baby Village, how everything was supposed to be six stories 20 years ago. And now we're up to 39 stories and higher. So Stuart, every developer is forced hard for more density over the last decade. But from a construction efficiency and interest carry perspective, does Altair have an ideal building scale or height range? At what point do you start to hit a meaningful pain points or cost stepping changes as you go taller? This question I like a lot on the ship. I do smell a lot of time. But I mean, density is like communication. We don't necessarily need more density. We just need better density. And it's funny. But when I started doing this, 10 stories was a tall building. You're a tall building. You're a big deal. And then we started getting into Pushing for 20s, 25, 30. And then the city was always pushing back. It was always a real problem. But in fairness to the city, they finally figured out how to kill us. They've put a white flag up. And certainly, no, you go down the Yonge Street node. What do you want? 100 stories, no problem. Knock yourself out. See if you can do it. We're at that point now where you regularly see the approvals for 60, 70, 80 we have. What is one bluer? Is that 100s? One young is 100. And one young is definitely over 100 now. And we have zero interest in ever building our own. That's true. Zero. So I think when it comes to the ideal, I think we figured out we've got enough experience. I've worked on 500 projects. I've run the numbers for the brightest and best in the industry. So I think ideally for efficiency, it's probably about 40 to 50 stories. So 40 to 50, you're going to get standard building services. You're going to get elevators that are not constrained. You're going to get a core that works efficiently. You're probably going to get about 78% efficiency on your four plate, which is perfect. More than 78? Yeah, I think so. And I do sale of the one divided by GC8. OK. But GC8, OK. So more importantly, for me, I don't want to spend 15 years on my career building one builder. I get stuck to do. So you know, an eight year cycle is enough for me. We have investors that require certainty. And I think when you're going through this process, you want to do it in one cycle. Look at one blur. I worked on that many years ago. It's still on the construction. I can see from my office. These are vanity projects for me. If you're an insane billionaire and that short passion, and you want to deal with those, that's great. But I don't think these buildings stand up. If you look at the window wall system for a 40-story building, 45-story building is going to hold up just fine. Your list is probably noticed. They're educated. But these buildings do move. They have a sway in them. So when I think about that sway, you really don't want your pipes internally swaying. You don't want the caulking on the window wall, especially with our climber here in Canada, where you've got minus 25 and plus 40. You know, it's all going to be under pressure. So 40 to 50 is ideal. I think our building science, these can cope with it. Veritas is a real problem, I think, just on a human scale. Do you really want to live 100 stories up? It's fine. If you're the 100th guy, you get the bragging rights for being in the penthouse. that you want to be in the 84th floor and realize that you've. left your bag of milk in the barn, you have to go back down, there's two elevators. So, you know, for me, it's, I think we're good up to about 60 at that point. You're going to get structural dampers having to, you know, offset the swing and the cost gets controlled. But I think anything up to 60 is good for me. I think I've told the story before, but I was doing some work for Dream, before they were launching their form a project, and they just asked me to like, you know, just call some major, you know, some people that represented major projects across the world and just see what you can find out. Right? And now these people would call me back, except for the person that had my job in New York City. We got a did market research in New York City, and we had a nice little chat. He said of all these hundreds and 120 story buildings, New Yorkers live maximum on the 45th floor. Right? Everything that sells on that is, is to like some Russian oligarch. And because no one wants to be that high, because it just feels completely disconnected from the city. And it's just too far to travel on a regular basis. Right? So that's where the New Yorkers would live maximum on the 45th floor. And then all the rest was just commoditized, trading amongst billionaires. Right? It's bragging. Yeah. And being rented out by some, some, you know, the kind of person that was going to rent one of these units that works on Wall Street. Right? That's probably in a, one of the, what was the movie with? Leonardo DiCaprio, and he was like, yeah, those. All right, Amanda, I know you did a lot of work on 11 YV. And I saw that their rental replacement units recently went on sale. How is OGDC feeling about rental replacement? Are you avoiding sites with this requirement? How are you thinking about that in terms of, terms of your company? Yeah, great question. You know, not necessarily. I think it depends on the deal. You know, 11 Yorkville or 11 YV was a really interesting project with the rental replacement. Because I remember before the project went on sale, there was a lot of hesitancy with the team to say, okay, in an almost 700 unit building, is there going to be any hesitancy for condo buyers to, you know, sign on the dotted line with 81 rental replacement units in the building? So the first five or six floors of the building were rental replacement. And I think we had almost 36 of the original tenants who had committed to return. Wow. So quite a, you know, almost half, quite a large number. And we all live in New Yorkville, right? They've got quite a brand new building. Very happy to leave for a few years and come back at an adjusted rent from what they were paying originally. So, you know, a few people got some really sweet deals and are going to be happy to be back in that building. But, you know, I'm pleasantly surprised. I actually bought a unit in the building. And I recently put a tenant in and she's committed to staying and I raised her rent, jacked up her rent quite a lot from the, what, she was originally playing because I was, I went on a low floor. So she occupied early in the, the building wasn't finished yet. Okay. So, but she was there for a year, loves it and is happy to pay a couple hundred dollars more to stay. But in terms of the rental replacement, it really depends on the overall complexity of the deal. We try to take a very disciplined approach to our land basis to make sure that, you know, no matter what whether it's heritage or rental replacement or any environmental, any sort of complexity, we've got to handle on from day one. Yeah, that makes sense. All right. Let's go to our next article here and this says, and this one applies to two of you, which is interesting because when I invited you guys to the show, I didn't actually, I noticed you had a deal together. So, this is from Stories Day in August, the second of 2024, way back when. Golden 42 story condo proposed steps from baby village. So we're staying in the baby village area. It says a cool 42 story high rise proposed to bring 539 new residential units to the Sheppard and baby area. The building application submitted on behalf of Osmington, Jorosky Development Corporation and all terror group of companies in mid July is currently under review. If the proof that the development would be located just north of the baby avenue 401 ran providing motorists with an easiest game from the city. I don't know about that. A slender and attractive tower is proposed comprising 30,196 square meters of residential space. And what appears to be that almost gold metallic exterior designed by Walnut architects. The building would rise above a six story poem containing the main lobby space in the series of outdoor entity terraces along baby avenue frontage. All right. So this project has a six story podium. What are your thoughts on podiums from a construction perspective and aesthetic perspective, usefulness expect perspective, IE, you still go amenities there. Give us your two cents on podiums. I realize when I saw this question sent through to me that I am reasonably agnostic on podiums. I have never really given it much thought. And I think partly reason for that is that if you're working the downtown core, every building needs a podium. I've seen one or two exceptions, but it's just part of the city policy. But I know that I don't agree with that policy because if you go to New York, you mentioned that earlier, they don't all have podiums. I think a lot of them do, but a city needs diversity and to just have every building weirdly designed the same way as the other one doesn't make any sense to me. So people complain that they're all designed the same and they don't understand the planning as a big impact on it. I think I'm so used to it now that I don't even give it any thoughts. Just like, okay, there's your podium, there's your terror. Fine. So from a construction perspective, it's pinning the bars. It's difficult to put a hoist onto a building that has a podium because then you've got to put the air rigors on to reach it. It's expensive. I don't like what happens with podiums. When we built the Aseltel, we didn't have a podium. We just went straight up and it's lovely. Now I think our architects there were Shem Suckliffe, terrific architects, but I think they're seen as kind of architectural royalty by City Hall. I don't like the fact that they got the exception on others having in a site that makes sense. There's plenty of buildings out there that you can look at and I've been involved in one in particular and I will mention it, but I really don't like it. We just continued to hold thing up for 15 stories that would look fantastic. Instead, we have this ridiculous stepping in and just because that's what policy says. So I think more exceptions for architects that aren't seen as exceptionally elite architects would be good for the right subsite. But on a practical standpoint, they have their benefits. When you're laying out to your ground floor, which is obviously the base of your podium, you need a lot of space. You've got your lobby, your mail room, your parcel room, your CACF room, your garbage room, your loading room, any ramp of the access, which takes up a lot of the room for. The moving up through those other levels, it gets a little bit wasted space. So we have the bike storage, which I love, you know, nothing better than wasting an entire floor for bikes that don't get used and they're gathered dust. So you'll have your amenities, which is great. I have more space. But the units that you end up in the podium typically tend to be the bowling alley units less light. They're a bit longer, darker bedrooms. I don't like that. You end up with excess space that you're forced to put eat lockers on. So, you know, they're just what we have to live with, but I'm not a big fan in all cases. Yeah, there's a lot of bad floor plans that people get. They're usually angry about that they don't have to live in them. I just don't get mad. I'm angry about a floor plan. I don't have to live in it. So, anyways, I'm in. Early on in the high density transformation of Baby Village, developer Shane Baghi brought forward larger luxury units, but as the area evolved, most of the projects are kind of mid-market condos. In fact, there was a real kind of homogenization of product in the GTA high-rise market for the last 10 years, with not much variety from really from Hamilton to Newmarket to Aushua. Do you think the industry will become a little less cut and paste over the next decade with more unique offerings and different target markets? How do you think about the evolution of the industry in this kind of post investor landscape that we're in? Definitely. I think one size fits all approaches not going to fly in the next, the post investor world. Baby Village is an interesting example because there was larger units originally programmed there. I think they still perform very well, especially because the homogenization happened across the entire GTA, where we're seeing a lot of opportunities is in some markets that have underbuilt certain types of product or have ignored the right sizes for certain types of product. So spending a lot of time and energy diving into what's performing well in understanding certain set markets and then taking risks and chances, I think, is going to be part of the next iteration as well. Being a little brave to remove the golf simulator and not just slapping in a party room in a co-working space to say that you have them, there has to be a little more intentionality in how we're programming the amenities for the right sites, especially if you're building a portfolio of properties. I don't think you can put a bowling alley in everyone and think that it's going to be successful or attract the right tenants or the right crowd. We really need to be diving into more of the fundamentals and affordability is still a bit like the best amenity for most people. So that has to be top of mind in a lot of these discussions and conversations, especially as it relates to the world.
rental. I think the homogenization of product with condos very much took a copycat approach. I think there's going to be some of that. Our industry loves to watch and see what other people are doing. I think anybody who takes a risk or takes a leap in the beginning and is successful, we'll see copycat opportunities after that. For sure. Yeah. We had a good chat with on the last podcast, the last guest podcast that they had with Jane Renwick and she was talking about how she wants to reduce the amount of amenities to get the affordability down and to get condo fees down so she can maintain a profitable or rental unit. Whereas we had Sarah Sigo who does a lot of surveys on rental and fines found how many tenants really love the amenities in their building. I was really attracted to them. So it's an interesting dynamic of trying to find the right amount of amenities to drive people to your building but not so many that you need $5.50 rents to justify the project. I'm hearing me at one of their or signature rental towers, the F1 simulator has not been working. So that was disappointing to hear. Yeah. I think the scale is a big part on that, Ben. I think highly-manitized buildings work at scale but you don't need the prescribed amenity per square foot from the city on a small project because it kills it. And that's where there's more opportunities for affordability. And that's one thing people say, I don't want to develop disability small boutique projects that we love. There's lots of things that the planning department is loading on top of you that is negatively impacting your performance. Mr. Stewart, go for it, go for it now. We want to hear it. I mean these small projects, sorry, can jump in. I actually feel back to the boys' glasses. I'm not sure if it's the bad question. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, Stewart. I'm here to this too. Just can jump in. I'm sure he's got to be at you. Let me tie the SN2 podcast, Tuck 98, which if you haven't listened to, you should. I was off in the dog last night, listening to Ben rant on. I wasn't sure if he'd had a few drinks or no, but he's not drinking any more, right? Actually, the best podcast that I listened to in a while. So one of the things that comes up all the time, you know, they're talking heads on LinkedIn, talking about the DCs, and listen, I've been part of industry programs where we're trying to lobby governments to change policies. The DCs and HST were the other ones, but you know, I mentioned to Ben before we come to the podcast, this is what I would like to talk about for five minutes. So that's my apologies. I was just indulging for a second. These smaller projects and large projects, they're all burdened by excess policy in my opinion. And, you know, it's a costly sell and they work through the good times and the bad. You know, I've seen the layering on of these calls and the resultant costs. So, again, ignoring those obvious ones, this is the stuff that's killing us. So, bathtubing we've had for seven, eight years now, right? So, you know, to what does that mean? Bathroom, you say, means making it's completely watertight underground. That has added millions to everyone's performer. And, you know, I understand the process, but shout out to Mike Diaz, all at grounded, who's successful lobby to get this removed. Bath tubbing will be getting removed shortly. So, good for us. I know. So, probably everyone around here was, what a policy being reversed. That doesn't happen anyway. Of course, there's millions and millions of millions. Toronto Green Standards has added insane amount of money to our project. So, my favourite is the Green Roof. Does anyone ever driven north of the city? Have you ever noticed that there's several trillion acres of Green Space? So, why am I spending 200,000 to do a Green Roof that's the size of a quarter of a tennis court? Is it really making any difference to the old two in the world? Anyway, Bike Parking we've ranted on about. I am just about to. So, they invent this Bike Park and Ration like, yeah, we want to get people on the streets. But, if you're going to bike lane now, it's fully gravel and broken glass. And if you're there to take a bike on a bike lane that's everywhere, you're going to get killed by a guy in Uber Eatsman Electric Lake doing 45km/h. So, again, I mean, we know one policy has to fit with the other. So, you know, sort out who's in the bike lanes before you make us all build Bike Parking. But, you go in the Bike Park and it's all empty, it's covered in dust. So, what is the response to that? Then they start charging this cash and lieu to remove the Bike Parking. So, create a policy, then remove the policy, then charge his money for not having to tear to the policy. Sounds like a bit of a cash grab. 1553 for every Bike Parking you remove. Mental. It just reminds me of when, you know, this is going back 10, 15 years when you still had a requirement for like an 80% parking ratio, but you had to give every 10 and every purchase you're in your condo building a buy them a subway pass. That's the best thing. Now, I think why do you sell this 80% parking ratio and you have to pay for a Metro pass when half these people drive to their job and then they're selling them on the black market for 25 bucks a piece. I remember, Patty, you came up to me and we built me up a leaf square, like a drug deal, like, "Hey, my Metro Parking." He had like a 50-year-old who was walking away. He was given the money to 80 when he met. That project, when it sold, it was the first project to sell two bedrooms or two bedrooms on the corners with the only units that had parking. There were 14 units of floor and only 40 units of floor had parking. It's had a new standard in the South Corp because it was the first project and they were selling for $50 a foot higher than everybody else. So it was a big, big risk at the time, but nobody nobody bought. Yeah. And we're now down to, you know, many of the projects have 4%, 5% parking breaks. Yeah, that's right. It's kind of unbelievable. What we, what's happened in 15 years from 80, 90% to 5? No parking. Yeah, lots of building. Yeah, so what does that tell you? Maybe policy isn't always correct? Yeah. We built our CMI started in 2009 with zero parking. That was the first time. That was the first time I was trying to make sure I could hate it. I shut out to Steve DeVole for getting that one done. No idea how he shut that. But I don't have no idea how we did that either, but Steve DeVole works magic sometimes. And it hasn't hurt us. We sold out very quick, built it and people love living there. So it was like right on top of the subway. No, you're like 300 units, right? 318. 318. Yeah, because I remember someone asking, is it possible to truly can sell these units? And I was like, well, look at one floor. It has 500 units and it sold 300 of them without parking and 200 with parking. So like in one building, how 300 units with no parking, right? Exactly. Exactly. I don't know about that little heritage preservation. Is that doing a race? Yeah. It looks a little weird. Which brings me nicely back to the list. Yeah. We're back to three days and then I'm done. Honestly, they met policies that have layered on these costs that take in condos from $150 square foot to when I got here to 1650 before we had the peak of the market. These are all the things added to the T.O. Core policy. Remember that? The Office Replacement. Heritage is a black box. Heritage is very subjective. My opinion. I had an argument with a lady in heritage. Last year I'd just go back from a trip to Edinburgh and Edinburgh's proper heritage and I'm like, well, I'd be saving this in nonsense and it was pretty offensive comment at the time. But the point is you can't argue with it. Computer says, no, this is the policy and what we say goes and it's not always correct. Street staging is another one when I moved to Ulterra 9 years ago. My budget for Street Session was $300,000 for a downtown project. It is now 1.5 million. That's how much it's going up. It's bananas. Then you've got urban design. The podiums, the land transfer text, the Ministry of Environment. I've seen projects where they spent almost a million dollars on testing soils coming out of the ground. And my argument to that would be, is he ever been to Leslie Spit to Omitomson Park? He's just made of bricks and crap that they took out of some project and just dumped into the lake. So why am I spending a million dollars on testing? Then you've got short term water discharge fees, 267 a meter cube. Offside sewer upgrades. Tari on now has Hickra. We've got rental replacement. You touched on wind testing, including zoning appraisals at the city. But they all had time and money and consultants and expense onto the policies and the zoning code. And that's why it's so expensive to hold in the city. Look, a bigger consultant budget is as a line out of my uniform of these days. When I started, there's no one near that size. You maybe need a half a dozen consultants. Maybe a dozen. Now you need 37 different ones. I was going to single to the bird species and everything needs a consultant report. You need a consultant report to manage the consultants. So it's crazy what's happening. I do find it's crazy stealing like horse three reports for like sites to have no trees and no one near a force. Go do report. Train pastations the worst. Sorry, I hijacked that. I got a choice. Oh, good. Oh, good. So let's let's want to another article here. So this is from uh ULI Toronto's view of emerging trends in real estate, 2026, inching from her coverage to reinvention. This is on the ULI website. This is from December 4th of 2025. This Canadian real estate is entering a reinvention era. the industry's interactions with energy technology and healthcare, how we fuel care and can
are reshaping the sector as partnerships across these industries unlock new value sources and drive the next wave of growth. Innovative construction methods are central to accelerating supply, particularly prefabricated in modular housing, and especially at financing and policy adapt. Although distressed driven transactions particularly, ones involving land and development assets, have increasingly meaningfully, a deal activity is broadening beyond these constraint segments. Fueling cautious optimism are creative deal structures such as performance-based land pricing and vendor take back financing, TV's, new sources of capital including private reads, family offices, infrastructure funds, and private debt. And a narrowing gap between buyer and seller expectations, so Gus, how much time are you spending on just looking at different technologies for low rise and high rise in housing? Is that a major focus of true meaning? We're always trying to stay on top of things and see what's out there, what's emerging. On the high-rise side, you know, another shadow, but Phil Bello does a great job on trying to figure out what the rest of the world is doing. So he'll often go to, he was just in Europe and seeing how they do things differently and try to learn some things personally when I'm looking at our sites. I don't see a lot of structural type changes we've been doing it the same way. I mean, there might be some minor changes on the high-rise side, but on the finished product side, there's a ton of technologies that have come out, you don't need a key anymore, parcel organizers, stack parking systems that allow you to have parking when you probably couldn't fit a ramp in there. There's things like that that I'm seeing, but not so much significant change or monumental change that I've seen yet, but we've studied a bunch of it that might start to change the game a little bit. On the lower right side, we are doing more modular now. It's shaving 68 weeks on a house and time is money these days, so if you can finish the home sooner and get paid sooner and pay off your servicing land loan and construction loan, two months sooner on a performer with 400 or 500 houses in the community, it's a big deal. So we're starting to do more and more on the modular side and pre-fab and, yeah, so that's what Tribute's doing in our look on that stuff. That's interesting. But maybe getting some of these homes finished sooner might be bad at some of these sites of yours, if you're having any trouble with closing of any of these sites. I was afraid. We were talking to Sasha about some of the sites that you guys had together and he was dancing around the issue a little bit, but I figured I'd hit you with it just out of the blue. I think it's not foreign to what we're all dealing with now, but yeah, we've had some problem closings. We've been nothing crazy, though, to be honest, that we've been doing the best we can to help work with people and find solutions for them to close the best so we can. That's our priority. We want them to close. We don't want to take that back that house and have Al make me move into it. We want them to do the right thing. We didn't quit. We just got the general strategy. That's a great place. Getting made one shelter. That's our number one focus is always get the purchaser in the home. We made a commitment to build it for them. We hope and expect that they'll live up to their commitment, which was to buy the home. We've seen an uptick in issues for sure over the last couple of years compared to the roaring days that we all seem nice. How has the current market force all tear to reinvent itself? Are you looking to diversify out of high rise residential? No. Our reinvention is more subtle. I think, you know, I'm not going to say that she's doing all her projects rental. I think that is what we are doing as well. Our reinvention is simply one from Condo to rental, which isn't the same type of exciting. But we have the advantage that we've been working on a rental project with create the old for longer than the late to care to the next six years. You were there. You did the market study, Ben. Thank you. But you know, we were kind of ahead of this thought curve from Condo to rental earlier than most so for me, it's really putting ourselves in the position of ownership put ourselves in the position of tenants. You know, and I wouldn't suggest that we didn't have these processes when we were condos you want the best for your condo owners. We all strive to do the best project we can and the best project means that we get more business more projects more brokers coming back to back. So I think now I spend much more time mentally on how this building is going to interact with human beings when I walk in however my first impressions do I like the lobby or does it feel like a Howard Johnson? When I go through the amenities like does it make sense does it does it feel vibrant, you know, the material is that I'm interacting with or they, you know, they pleasing us this someone's home. It's not just a spreadsheet where people are trying to get an investment. We are building homes for people. So, you know, I think about the long term maintenance. I think about how the garbage is going to work, who's going to pick it up. I think about, you know, do we have a janitor closet on every floor? Do we need one? How are we going to clean the floors? Is it going to be carpet? Is it going to be vinyl? Do we need a little robots for that? It's honestly, we've had the most wonderful period of trying to figure out how we can make these buildings better. And yeah, it's been really good. But I will say that when the condo market returns, I am 100% confident that today's condo slash mental builders will be building better buildings because we're, I wouldn't say that that I think I'll tell you I did a great job. I think we get a lot positive feedback, but the industry as a whole got a little bit lazy. And I think we're going to do better when we return to condos. I think people have a lot of time to think about how they want to change things and how they want to do things differently because I think this is going to be a little bit longer of a pause in the condo market than people thought initially. And like I said, I think that we're going to be delivering much smaller buildings over the next five to seven years, especially in the condo space, maybe only 100, 200,000 square feet of GFA versus, you know, the 60, 70, 80 story buildings. I'm not sure we would get another 60, 70, 80 story building for another decade. You know, that's kind of my prediction and then location will be key. You know, for a while, we were doing the field of dreams right if you build it, they come and people are lying around the block and and that was the thing, but back in the old days, it was all about location location location. And I think that'll matter more, matter more going forward as well. Yeah, I mean, I, I feel bad. I mean, I've done underwritten so many projects and there's times I've said to, well, I'll just say I've said to Harley at banker. I was like, I feel bad for the investor is going to buy this because they are going to lose money. This is terrible. But, but hey, here's a pricey great move to X insert X bedroom community that you're going to buy a condominium man that there's almost no demand for in the rental market, but hey, there's always someone moving down that might want a rental. So the music, but you want to talk about land a little bit. So that's this that article from from you all I talked about performance based land pricing. And so what type of creative structures are you seeing, proposed by vendors or developers these days to close kind of the value gap or what are you seeing Amanda? You know, I think we're seeing a lot of creativity. But not closing the gap. I think there's a lot of a lot of analysis being done a lot of creative structures being thrown out in terms of potential opportunity, but I think there's still some analysis paralysis in the world just because of the market and the I would call it anomalous conditions we've sort of lived through through the last 18 months. You know, the record condo completions hitting at a time when we've also had record purposeful rental completions and in a perfect world, they would be, you know, singing the high notes that we would all need to see to underwrite great rental buildings on a performance. So I think with the dust settling from that looking to the opportunity to try to close that value gap with people who understand the fundamentals is really the first step. You know, otherwise it's looking to other creative solutions. I think that policy does need to step in here in order to deliver a solution to the industry at all levels because I think that we're not able to close the gap with the creativity. And there's a lot of creativity in the industry, but we're not seeing the gap closing enough yet. I think 2026 I was reading somewhere it's going to be the year of partnerships. You know, I think we're going to see a lot of partnerships and a lot of people teaming up in order to solve problems and make sure that anything gets across the finish line. And I think that's a good thing for our industry. I think it's going to bring more diligence and more rigor to the lens that we all take to look at a project and make sure that what we see on paper, we all believe we'll come out, you know, even better at the end of the day. Are you having any kind of like what I would call the inexperienced developers coming knocking on your door saying, when you little help here, when you little capital like save us. Well, there's said there's a lot of that out there right now. I think I think anybody who, you know, watched the last 10 years in the GTA in real estate thought, OK, I can be a developer, put my developer head on. But, you know, the uphill battle between the city and now with the market is, I mean, not all those people are going to survive. Yeah, it's, I mentioned it in previous podcast, but I'm seeing the percentage of distressed, land sales as a percentage of total land sales hit it's hit a high note.
So our lenders that are finally, uh, reaching the end of their rope and saying, yeah, I guess we're going to accept this $0.40 in the dollar offer, right? So I'm not sure what's what's going to happen with land values, but they are on their way down. But on that negative note, I'll read another article here. And it's from Insolvency Insider, which is everyone's favorite source of bad news. Uh, and this is from November of, of 2025. This Karen Stevens secures partial receivership over a Mancery group entities. This Karen Stevens mortgage capital has obtained a receivership order over four companies within the Mancery group. The four consenting entities each own or support large scale residential development projects in Wibby and Aishwa finance through an aggregate of 79.18 million in advances provided by Karen Stevens. These projects include the 17.5 acre garden street project, the 4.2 acre, folks don't town's project, the 14.5 acre Wibby Meadows project and the Brooklyn and my own town's project. The lenders Evans describes a common pattern of stall deproves failed sales effort eroded interest reserves multiple NSF events. I actually know what NSF stands for, but missed monthly payments and unsuccessful refinancing attempts that left all facilities and the vault. So, so it got these situations ever coming kind of all too common over the last year is tribute looking to take advantage of some of these opportunities and buy lands for pennies on the dollar or you can tend to stand pat and kind of move forward with the properties you already all. Uh, firstly NSF is non-sufficient funds for the rest of the year. It's a dual strategy. I mean, we are very mindful of the endless whole and we don't know when things will turn around and we want to make some prudent decisions and and a knock-o-crazy Blurringer blains out, right? So like a kid in a toy store and saying let's just buy everything here and play monopoly now because there's some good deals out there. We're definitely not doing that, but where there is a good opportunity, a deal structure, I think you mentioned it, a deal structure is paramount. If it's a good deal structure or a really good acquisition price, we're not going to say no, we still meet every Wednesday we have an acquisition committee and Mike Ainem heads that up for us at Tribute and does a great job trying to unearth properties that would otherwise not be unearthed. We don't do as well in the public tendering process and things like that where everybody's involved. We love the off-market spaces where we play into that primarily. But we won't say no to a good deal, but we are being very diligent these days. Yeah. And do you have like something like Karen Stevens say, just come to you and say, hey, we haven't put this out publicly yet, but we'd love for you to find us a solution. Is that any of that stuff coming by your tail? Well, it happens. It definitely happens where lenders we have good relationships with will pick our brain at times and sometimes could play matchmaker and say, these people are in trouble and they have a vested interest to help the project out. A lot of the times though, they're in trouble because it was a bad buy. And it was one of the reasons that the projects fail that you were listing off. One of them you didn't mention was aggressive for a format to begin with. So if it's tough, if it wasn't working for them, just bringing some more capital and prolonging the problem doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to work just because we're there, right? We're going to do things differently, of course, but we don't want to be a parachute for somebody. We want it to be a good opportunity for both people and we'll look at those. But otherwise, yeah, really will we jump in? I mean, any public tendering process, you're almost always paying. There's always one person that's paying above the market, right? So it's like you won. So you basically were willing to pay higher than anyone else, right? So it's almost never that that everyone is above market. And as you see, always a few people above market, I mean, I still see sales come through and want to pay that today, right? Like, you know, like I'm not going to get into numbers, but you know, it seems like if you're paying more than 60 bucks per buildable square vote for a high-rise site, anywhere. It's almost anywhere. Then you're probably paying too much. So, all right, let's, what else we got here? Oh, I do have a question for a man to hear based on that one. So, and we'll bring your father into this here. I says, so I've heard a few interesting stories about the 1990s real estate market from your dad. The new condo market was pretty weak from, obviously, from 1990 to 1998. Do you think the down cycle lasts that long this time around? Can you let us in on some of the kind of long-term discussions happening at your office on what the market looks like when it's coming back, like some of your long-term planning at OGDC? Yeah, great, great question. This brought me right back to my dinner table at like age, you know, eight, because I lived and breathed it the first time, just from a different perspective. But I remember, you know, 19% interest rates and, you know, 100 trying to hold on to sales and thinking that it was going to last six months. And I remember he said, we actually had a little sort of preview into it with, in 2028, with the, or 2027, 2028 sort of environment with the credit crisis of us. When that hit, he was like, okay, we got to start cutting staff right away. Wow. Because he was like, okay, I don't want to go back to the 80s and 90s. And the fact that it ended up lasting six months and we let go, we hired back plus, you know, within six months. And it was definitely in living memory. And, you know, I grew up with those types of stories. I want to make sure that, you know, even with my optimistic sales and marketing had on, I always take an underwriting perspective in any of the, sort of numbers that we're putting forward because a lot of our projects are very large. And we want to make sure that we're achieving our goals. So how are we dealing with this today at OGDC? The number one thing is I don't think that this is going to be over in 2026. Yeah. I don't think that we're going to see a condo launch or any sort of ban or headline this year that's going to say market recovery. I think there's going to be a roller coaster, you know, a lot of speed bumps along the way. The biggest threat to consumer confidence in our market in the last 15 years has actually been the headlines, not necessarily the fundamentals. You know, it started with international buyers, you know, the vilifying, you know, the fact that people thought that 80% of projects were going to, you know, out of country purchasers and non-local residents, which was not true. You went in the sales office and there was Asian people in there, so I must be 80% foreign buyers. Yeah. You know, I think taking a conservative approach today and saying, okay, there's probably not going to be rent for all this year. In fact, there may be negative rep growth this year. And so delaying escalation to a place where, you know, logically it makes sense, given deliveries, seeing through and watching some of the absorption in today's market. It's not necessarily, you know, as a margin. There's pockets of opportunity that I'm seeing even today, given given the strength of certain set markets and taking nons from that and that recovery will not be linear across the city. You know, there's going to be, there's going to be time to absorb, there needs to be time to absorb the current inventory in the market from the condo completion in the last 18 months. Yeah. For sure. I mean, it's going to be quite, quite the overhang for a few years and in 2026 is going to be another record year for completion. So it should be interesting. But hey, so let's go on. Let's go on to the next one. We're quickly running out of time. But this is the year Toronto's condo boom with us. Yeah. Again, another nice positive article from Toronto today, December 29th or 2025. It says the construction collapse is just about unbuilt buildings. The slowdown is also causing problems for Toronto's finances. The city expects to collect just 137 million in development charges charge revenue by the end of the year. A 74% drop from the historical average over the last 10 years. The lack of funds will likely require the city to defer, reprioritize or cancel planned capital projects needed to support growth. According to a recent report from the city's chief financial officer, construction employment in Toronto has fallen by 34,600 jobs since late 2023, according to the altiscrued report. This April the unemployment rate in the sector hit 10%. Experience construction workers are either leaving the residential construction industry or moving to other places according to Nanhouse game. So Gus, how is tribute handling staffing right now? Have you had to pair down or you just when people leave? You're not replacing them. How are you handling this bump in the industry? To be honest, it's more of the latter. We, if people are leaving and there isn't a need for that role anymore, we can pull up our socks and I'll do a little bit more. We're trying to not replace if we don't have to. The one thing I'll say about Alan Steven is that they've been very much a family business for a long time. I think we have grown and we've grown pretty big in my 21 years there. They've always maintained a family style and that means they care about everything. And so they've never come out even now with three years of this that we've been living in. They've never come out and many of my peers have already made some significant cuts. They haven't come out and said, you know, 20% have to be cut by this date or 15%. They just expect all of us on the senior team to make some good decisions. And we make them wherever we can. And I know in my group we've had several that have left for different reasons and retired. We've had a few of those and we just do a little bit more and get through this tough time for them because they've always had our back and, you know, haven't done that. But having said that has.
that as a little bit of a shameless plug here, I did lose a director of finance that I do have to replace. So if anybody's listening out there, that's a good director of finance. Yeah. Stuart put us out. I'll see you tomorrow. Rich, well, LinkedIn. Up is I'm hiring your sponsor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I bear. I'll help you. I'll help you find out. That's right. So Amanda, with the city saying a 74% decline in DC revenue, do you think they'll make any change it to the fees they collective? In order to jumpstart the industry or keep the party line of not wanting to give handouts to developers? Or do you think they'll shift the burden to the poor taxpayers of Toronto? How do you think that they'll handle this major shortfall in DC revenue? Oh, I do not have a crystal ball as to how that city thinks Ben. I don't know. I'm not sure about this one. I think it's very unlikely that they're going to reduce anything. But something has to be done. Because it can't continue. The revenue will dry up. Yeah. It's funny how many people say, well, we need the infrastructure. We need those dollars. It's like, well, if you don't build anything, zero times whatever your charge is is still zero. So you're not going to collect or collect anything unless you make these developments more feasible. So, my advice. Well, I mean, there is a simple solution. I mean, if developers and trades are laying off staff, I mean, if the revenue isn't coming in to say, oh, still have to run a business. Maybe they have to lay off a few staff as well. I mean, I know a lot of people have said, oh, good people, but we all have to stick to our budgets. That's how it works. Yeah. I just got a call on my phone from the mayor saying that I should tune into a budget meeting. So it's interesting use of Toronto funds. Thanks for taking it to Robo call me. So, um, so, I'm sort of in the, in the, in the, in kind of the topic of, of jobs. Um, you know, there seems to be a lot of talk about jobs being replaced by AI. So what about construction jobs? Are there any jobs that AI threatens in the construction industry? Yeah, I think AI threatens jobs a lot of the place. But it's, it's not going to be, it's not going to be one day we've got a job and the next we won't. So for me, AI right now, you know, it's, it's a little bit scary. But for me, all it's doing is leveling the playing field to where I was 25 years ago. So I don't, you guys, I have, you know, I can't even get to my emails. The documents I do have, you look at your legal agreements. They, you know, they're huge. They're bloated. They're, they're so fat. Five years ago, I would ask somebody, my legal team, to take a document, summarize it into 10 pages and tell me the calendar days, the dollars that are required. They'll seize. I can now stick those documents at the AI and ask them for a two-page URL and what exactly should I be doing and when? And you'll get a pretty good summary back. So I think for me, right now, it's really just trying to manage the workload a little bit better. In terms of construction, you know, for those of us that are involved in construction, is it going to change? I think the actual thinking isn't particularly going to change. But I'll tell you a story when we were building and we're still building Celeste Condemann and George and Richmond. So when we were doing the facade retention, we were doing micro-piles. So I've dragged by and I just pulled over to have a look. So there's this massive bank blog, 6.5. It was like you, but, but wider. Big, fishy red beard. He's holding this machine, he's directing where the micro-piles are going to go. I mean, the guy was like, "Rail, a brave heart." And then it just starts and it's spinning out all this clay, water and the guy's just getting drenched. He's head to toe and mud. And I just start going, "How is AI going to replace this ship?" It's not going to happen. So but it's the same for the guys that are fixing steel, you know, on the 34th floor and burning sunshine and minus 10. You know, we're fairly so blood out industry, we don't change that quickly. So I think on the ground, there's not going to change anything. The things that are going to change are going to be in, you know, design, the creative side, the renderings that Amanda uses for sales. You know, I hope to see some changes, you know, probably on the accounting side, probably on the legal side. But I'm hoping it's just going to make things a little bit easier as opposed to just wholesale job reductions. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I said it a few times. Is I want AI to be able to combine my expertise and your expertise for the construction side and mine from the market side, you're from the sale side, you know, someone else's from the accounting side, someone from the just the use space and the health space. And so we can design the absolute perfect buildings for those areas with so much data based on usage of certain sweet types, usage of amenities at the building. So we're, you know, complete efficiency of every single floor plan and every single floor play in the end of building because I mean, I still get architectural drawings and I look at them like, come on, come on architects, come on, man. There was no perfect design. I mean, there's probably 800,000 apartments in condos in the city of Toronto, right? And you've made that point. If you don't like it, don't live there. Move on to the next review, build part of your project without parking 15 years ago. See, you need parking. Okay, next project. It's okay. Like, building and they will come is true. You know, and I think we talk about AI and what it's going to do. How is it going to navigate City Hall? How is it going to navigate people not calling you back? How is it going to navigate? You know, side or departments. It will take us so far, but it will take us a little bit. It's going to be an interesting next 20 years in the industry. I mean, the only problem with it now is that my reports used to be 60 pages. And now they're 110 pages because AI allows me to just do so much more. And now I think I just need to put that much more into my reports. So they're getting a little bit bloated. I just want you to have a second AI to reduce the report. Yeah. Now take it back. The 60s. Yeah. We have using anything. I can't help myself. I never want my client to say, Ben, did you not think of this? I thought I have everything in there. So I'm not sure if that's a humble brag or what that was. All right. So I always ask this question at the end of the question part of it because I always comes up with some interesting things. And it's what's keeping up with me. What's grinding your gears? Anything that's happening in the industry that's maybe not getting talked about enough? What do you got? Something on your mind? Gus, did you want to say anything about it? I'm just saying, it's not going to be a sexy answer. I just think the overall, just overall role we're in right now is tough all around. So I think for us, it's hard for people to make decisions that will help us stimulate our business when they have so much noise in their life. Right. So I just don't, I can't figure out a way on how all of this is going to dissipate and we're going to be back to some good times. It's going to happen and no one knows when. But that's what keeps me up in my head is just, it's just, it's what everybody's going through. It's hard to make a decision about $1.5 million dollar house from every time you open up your phone. It's another person getting killed here and it's getting kidnapped and the country's being overtaken. And it's like, Sarah here and not Tara there. And so I got employment rates going up and immigration going down and yeah, it can be some scary times to make the biggest financial decision of your life, right? It doesn't, doesn't help the social media is just kept pumping in full the negative news, right? So anyways, we got anything a little more positive about that? Yeah, mine's way more positive. Okay. I was going to grind your gears past and second echo the challenge of my fellow castors from Jane and Sarah and Jasmine's visit and challenge you to make sure that you always have a female guest as part of your, your panel. Nice. Nice. And I will say that broadcast 99, I had a female schedule, but unfortunately she had to reschedule. So we had an all male podcast for 99. Well, and by the time this comes out, you've already heard you hopefully have all already listened to that one. But I'm continually challenging myself to reach out to new people that I don't know and any help from you. I will find lots of introductions. We'll be greatly appreciated. So Stuart, I know you got some grinding your gears, some you're keeping up. No, I just want to follow up on that. That's point of it. Always inviting me. Yeah, females are, I think, should have been more Scottish people. I've been always been distinct likes since the last day when I was on. Maybe you heard it. Yeah. I've heard you on the show. I do get Brady from Finn again. Yeah, for sure. Or is he with all this? No, Finn again. If it all goes, we're the first time. Okay. So you're Brady? I'll follow up on the gassies point because I'm not smart enough to come up with my own. What is moving at a rapid rate of knocks right now? You know, it's exhausting turning on the news right now. But all this well-pass, I do believe that's the case. I know it seems a bit crazy right now. I think all I say at Altera is just keep making the right decisions every day, try to ignore the news. We cannot control those variables. We cannot control what's going on.
our partners to the south are doing, we cannot control what the superpork powers are doing, we cannot control tariffs. All we can do is to turn it into the right thing every day and at some point there will be brighter lights ahead of us or green shoots, whatever you want to call it. So I try not to panic too much, I try not to get absorbed in the news and just stick to the fundamentals doing what we're doing, which is trying to provide great housing, great real estate for the good people of Toronto. Yeah, like so, like so. So that's a great, great spot to end off the traditional questions of the show, but as you know, everyone loves the rapid fire section of the show. You guys are obviously avid listeners of the show, you know, sponsor, you know, followers of Tuck, Tuck, my niece, I guess we could call you. So the rapid fire, you know, give you some quick questions, get some quick answers. You can say yes, you can say no, you don't have to justify any of your your responses. So we're just trying to come straight at you. All right, Gus, you ready? Let's go. All right. Do you think Bill should be giving out awards for best suite design during the fancy rendering marketing phase or when the suites are actually built? When they're actually built. So if I need a lawyer to draft a cost sharing agreement, who would you recommend? Arthur Shapiro. There's Shapiro. Shout out to Arthur. Over the last three years, how many homes have you had to take back because the buyer couldn't close? No comment. I forgot I even wrote that one for yourself. I hit you twice with that. It's not very nice. Okay, what do you think is stranger? Someone living in a bungalow with a stair step machine or a person that always parks right in front of the gym, but then goes and walks in the treadmill. Both are pretty strange. Sorry, pretty slow. Sorry, these are. Yeah. Okay. There has been case law in the past that found owners of property libel for injury, sustained by uninvited guests to the property, even as extreme as burglars in property. Is Canadian law too well? Oh man, 1 million percent. When you bring your team out to a habitat for humanity build, do you actually do any work or do you sit around sipping diet pepsi and barket orders? I've got proof. I do work. Swing some hours. Yeah. I'll prove video footage. I'll send you later. Nice. Nice. We will put it on the patreon.com/techboxes. Okay. Do you think the City of Toronto's anti-renaviction bylaw will actually help tenants or is it just virtue signaling? The latter. All right. Good ending. All right. Amanda, you're up next. All right. Do you expect outside broker commissions to go down with a marker, Rich? Yes. Yes. Okay. Does the Ontario line change your respective development site map of Toronto yet or has the Eglinton Cross Town situation made you more cautious? Both future transit. I love the Ontario line. I'm so excited both the Ontario. You're here. You're here. Okay. Okay. We both have three children. Is four too many? Yes. And as one of seven? Yes. Wow. I didn't realize yet six business sisters. Wow. I'm the oldest. Good. Interesting. I learned something. Something new. Are these large development sites like Regent Park should the buildings be mixed income or should there be separate market and affordable apartments? So they'd be separated like separate doors. What do you think? No separate doors. No separate doors. No port doors. Okay. What do you think the impact of a 15% increase in property taxes would have on the lives of GTA homeowners? Negative because they have less money or net pauses due to municipality using that money to improve services public realms and infrastructure. A million percent negative. Negative? Negative. No no no tax increases. No tax increases. Okay. Okay. Most large skill apartments are putting in co-working spaces. Do you think they'll still be there in 20 years or will they be repurposed? I think if they're designed properly, they're going to be fine. Okay. Because everybody has a laptop and likes to sit down and work in some fashion. But I think you know where they don't work is when you have one harvest table and you're calling it co-working. Yeah. Gotcha. Last one. Have you ever been to Ireland? Yes. Twice. Nice. Before you jump on my questions. I'm no linguist. I did not like any of their persons. When I came the first time, I think the question was, do you enjoy cheese? Yes. Yeah, they were even so close. Yeah. No, I think we had an event at the rapid fire at your first time around. This is something that maybe came around episode 10. The event she's plattered. All right. Okay. As a developer that recently built a hotel, are there too many Airbnb's in Toronto right now? No. I think we have a fairly balanced market. Okay. And in fact, if you look at the the price for hotels in Toronto is extremely high. So I think there's probably not enough Airbnb's actually. I just don't want them in our building. But yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I want, are you more likely to do with unsold standing inventory in your buildings? Is it all at the market rate? Rent them out or keep them vacant till the market returns? Very on point question. And I think that this discussion was happening in many offices. So I think we're looking at a very strategy of, you know, selling them. We're probably selling to a week right now on inventory, which is good. We're looking at some inventory loans. We're looking at some bulk sales. Right now we're not looking to rent out because you have to pay the HST as soon as you rent it out. So it's kind of counterintuitive for the rent you're going to get. But yeah, we're kind of looking to hedge our bets on all of them. Okay. Should we have ever allowed assignments? Again, I'm not too bothered about assignments one way or the other. I mean, I think it probably, now you've asked the question, got us to the point where at things got a bit frothy and then the market got, uh, became a bit of a trading commodity. So yeah, and I think we probably should not have allowed them. But again, people have to make money and that was the business they were in. So not too bothered. No context question here. Jennifer Aniston or Angelina Jolie? Jennifer Aniston. What is the most misunderstood line item in a pro format in your view? Oh, that's very strong. Most misunderstood line. Well, mine are all extremely clear. So very clear. What is misunderstood? Anyone? Anyone? Any misunderstood items? Like jump out? Go on. Yeah, I know. I mean, I understand them, but you'd have to ask somebody it doesn't understand. To go on. Let's. And then I'm exploring to just say contingency. If we say that answer, is that okay? Sales and marketing. Do land sale brokers send to the emails? Do you notice it's funny? Because I mean, they don't. But it's funny. When they were selling lines, pre-down turn, you know, you maybe get one or two a week. Now it's like 14 days. But listen, it's tough. To touch on, I think you asked Gussie question earlier about you know, by taking advantage of the market. If anyone's listening and they have a couple of billion dollars that they would like to invest, please call me tomorrow. I would love to take advantage of every single one of those emails that someone said. I think this is where fortunes are made. So yeah, keep sending those emails. Brokers. Last one. Do you still hold a grudge? Means Margaret Atwood? Not as much, but yeah, I'm still fairly better. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is really inside baseball if you're not someone that's involved heavily in the greater Toronto area, development space, but Margaret Atwood, NNB. Well, she wouldn't give me my football back. I'm going to kick it over into her car. Yeah. How often did you kick your football over? Like once a week? Well, guys, that was a great podcast. I love having you on. But before we go, I've just got to get your deeds. If someone wants to get a hold of tribute communities, I want to get some guests. So you ought to plug your CP24 appearances. Yeah, tribute communities. www.myattribute.ca myself. I'm sort of anti-social media. We're probably not smart in our business. All I have is LinkedIn. So yeah, but you're active. You have a newsletter. I had a question, but we didn't quite make it to that on the air. We had a newsletter. But you write fairly regularly. I'm active on it. Yeah. I just don't have all the other ones X and Facebook and whatever else is out there these days. Yeah. I just post a I slap on my Instagram now. Amanda occasionally likes my photos. So that's pretty awesome. Still on Instagram. I don't know any old yams. All right. I'm mad. Oh, CP24. When does that come on? Thursdays. Yeah. They move around the times all the time. So I'm not sure I haven't done it in almost a year now. Oh, but it's still Thursdays. And it's on repeat a few times a week. Okay, gotcha. Alright, man, sorry. Yeah, for info on the
OGDC you can find us at OGDC.ca and I'm a LinkedIn around. - And around. - All right, perfect. And I know you guys host or you're involved in the Women's Meetup group. - Yeah, there's a Women in Real Estate Development event. So if anyone wants to invite to that event, Ben, you should come in order to recruit future podcast listeners or guests. - Thanks. - We meet about quarterly. - Quarterly, okay. Cool, cool. - If Stuart and I had that never met. - I think so. - Let's just do it, where do they? - Oh, you're going, man. I like it. - We're all so happy. - Where do they find you? You're doing the Graham, you're doing the TikTok. - You know my specs. - Well, everyone else, I'm on LinkedIn. I do Trunk, Post, I've a now and then. I'm on Instagram, Stuart Robes, and Altara. And if you want to get hold of me, please contact me at
[email protected]. - Nice. - My name is actually Info. - I think it's just, you don't want the span that comes with the crazy, you know, the tech podcast, someone that's got to one hour, 30 minutes into the show. - They want to come and span you. But no, that's great. That's great. I appreciate it. - Well, episode 100 is coming soon. - Where's my huge achievement? - Yeah, just promised to bring us back for episode of 1000. - In one house. Well, let's go for two. - Let's do it. - We'll start. - All right. That's a wrap. - Hi everyone, Ben Myers here again. I wanted to tell you that I started a Patreon page for the Toronto Under Construction Podcast. So please go to a Patreon, p-a-t-r-e-o-n.com/tuckpodcast. Register. I'm gonna post some videos on there. I'm gonna talk a little bit about the show. If you want to have a paid subscription, I would really appreciate that. This show is free, but, you know, it is not free to produce. So I'd love if you enjoy this show and you'd like to see me do more shows, you'd like to see me post more videos on Patreon. I really would appreciate it if you would have a paid subscription. If not, sign up for a free account and take a look at some of the content that I'm posting over there. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Toronto Under Construction Podcast. So please come and give your comments at patreon.com/tuckpodcast. Thank you. (upbeat music)
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