Peter Cresswell

The Toronto housing market is in the middle of a complete core meltdown at the moment with housing prices rising some 30% or more across the city year over year. That’s insane and clearly has nothing to do with the meager wage increases people may have recently seen. At the same time, the Ontario Liberals have been in power for what seems like forever at this point to most in Ontario. The leader, Kathleen Wynne, has an approval rating that is orders of magnitude less than Trump. Mostly that’s a reflection of Ontario’s desire for change at this point since Kathleen really hasn’t been leader of the party long enough to justify that kind of thrashing.

I went to An Evening with Vitalik which sounds a like a cheap 1990s porno or something if we’re being honest instead of what it really was; a basic series of speakers topped off with a rundown of what is crypto-economics given by Vitalik himself. The room was reasonably full - perhaps some 300 or so people were there. It was impossible not to notice the lack of women in the room. If there is a lack of women in technology and coding, there appears to be an extreme lack of women in the crypto/ethereum space. That’s a real shame.

I often find myself explaining incentives and rewards to people for some reason. This story from the classic work Punished By Rewards captures the essence well. It’s a story I keep at my fingertips. Very useful. An old joke captures this phenomenon as well as any study could. It is the story of an elderly man who endured the insults of a crowd of ten-year-olds each day as they passed his house on their way home from school. One afternoon, after listening to another round of jeers about how stupid and ugly and bald he was, the man came up with a plan. He met the children on his lawn the following Monday and announced that anyone who came back the next day and yelled rude comments about him would receive a dollar. Amazed and excited, they showed up even earlier on Tuesday, hollering epithets for all they were worth. True to his word, the old man ambled out and paid everyone. “Do the same tomorrow,” he told them, “and you’ll get twenty-five cents for your trouble.” The kids thought that was still pretty good and turned out again on Wednesday to taunt him. At the first catcall, he walked over with a roll of quarters and again paid off his hecklers. “From now on,” he announced, “I can give you only a penny for doing this.” The kids looked at each other in disbelief. “A penny?” they repeated scornfully. “Forget it!” And they never came back again.

The Toronto housing situation - the great, big bubble staring everyone in the face (or, at least, all those who aren’t paid to ignore it) is starting to show signs of its age. Predicting the exact moment of it’s potentially explosive demise is a fool’s game. But the symptoms are piling up. Here are just a few of them that have come to mind recently. The rich are nervous and frustrated One of my clients works in the health care space directly with well paid individuals. Mostly doctors. It’s not uncommon for conversations to turn to housing and what my client hears is mostly groans about a lack of affordable options and constantly being outbid in bidding wars.