Deny Sullivan
@denysullivan
I make charts. Blogs @ deny.substack.com Halifax
Toured some of Dieppe’s new developments today. Boomtown in low to mid-rise apartments
The CMHC trying to wiggle out of saying house prices need to fall by suggesting a much harder problem to solve (increasing economic growth) is peak bureaucratic unaccountability
The Press Block is 90% full (10% vacant) a year after opening. What's your take?
So a new apartment would essentially prepay ~15 years worth of water bills in an upfront levy, and pay the monthly fees too
Quintupling fees on new housing in a housing crisis? An extra $20k per unit to get water?
a truly confusing trend in Halifax rental vacancy, headed down slightly as most of the country moves up
To a rough approximation Nova Scotia builds no condos, they are all purpose built rentals
Odd then - that the cities with the highest fees are our most expensive, and aren't building as much. Must be poor luck, or a mystical global city dynamic. Or maybe raising the cost of entry to a market raises the floor price - including the price of every other lot in the area.
Nova Scotia population growth turns just barely negative Y/Y, down 0.02%
Most properties are paying less after inflation vs. 2019 (because the CAP + small rate cuts). Dont have the figures back then
Homelessness is a housing issue: -Toronto and Vancouver have the highest rates -Halifax rockets up as the housing market breaks post COVID -Calgary declines as oil bust keeps housing market weak
TLDR: Avoiding even a single WCS spread blowout is worth $20-30bn, so the province should just engineer the financial requirements to make it happen. AIMCo can be the vehicle for ~subsidy. Credit to @roryjohnston.bsky.social for the key chart
In an alternate Halifax where the city isn’t governed by austerity freaks, a plot of land this large and central is being bought and reimagined for the benefit of the public
The point of the Ocean service is to make cool maps in Via materials
Sometimes the front page of Deny's Substack looks really cool, check it out
This is totally fake right? There's no way this area is enabling 4 stories?
"Where's the business case" only applies to infrastructure I'm not in favour of
The Ocean revenues are covering ~28% of costs, which is actually a 12 year high, which tells you something about the weakness of this offering
Via rail numbers out, here's the future HSR corridor numbers, no growth in 2025
Also seems to be dissipating pretty quickly, Yardi has lease over lease increases down to 2% by the start of this year
What annoys me is that our policy wonks don't grapple at all with how to restore this magnet. It's like housing affordability is an ethereal feature, forever lost now.
Similar idea to what I wrote about last summer, Via's Ocean service is bad, and doesn't even try to serve the Maritimes actual population centers deny.substack.com/p/scrap-the-...
Nova Scotia is on a glide path to smacking anyone who moves and buys a place with a doubling in property tax, and there’s ~zero discussion from the province about not doing that