(40) Mid-rise Rental Development: Insights from Chris Spoke - Toronto Standard

In this episode of the Real Estate Development Insights podcast, Payam speaks with Chris Spoke, partner at Toronto Standard, a firm specializing in midrise rental infill in Toronto. The episode dives into Chris’s unconventional journey from a digital background to a real estate developer, his advocacy for midrise projects, the challenges and opportunities in this sector, and the importance of long-term ownership. They also discuss intriguing topics, including policy improvements, the benefits of midrise construction, and a unique approach to sourcing project sites. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in real estate development, especially those looking to understand the evolving landscape in Toronto.

• Challenges and Insights in Real Estate Development
• Mid-rise and Rental Infill Projects
• Micro vs. Macro Trends in Urban Development
• Why Six Stories Is the Sweet Spot for Toronto Real Estate Developmnet
• As-of-Right Zoning & Policy Barriers
• The Long-Term Ownership Model
• Operational Considerations for Long-Term Ownership
• Construction Efficiency & Prefab Insights
• Fixing Ontario’s Building Code

For more information, please refer to RealEstateDevelopmentInsights.com

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Transcript

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 0:01

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Real Estate Development Insights podcast, where we bring you ideas, experiences, and best practices from the real estate development industry. name is Payam nhi. I'm the president of Dental Project Management, a construction and project management firm that helps real estate developers Design and deliver successful project. My guest for this episode is a real estate developer. name is Chris Sp, and he's a partner at Toronto Standard, which specializes in Midrise Rental infill in Toronto. is. Pretty active. He does a lot of things, different things. And if you look him up, online, you're can see that he's involved in his own podcast, the Hawk Town, which I definitely suggest people check it out. He publishes a lot in Global Mail, the Hub, and pretty much anywhere that people talk about related issues on planning and policy. And also one of the founders of The Missing Middle Summit, which is a great event for those of you have who have not. Attended. I definitely suggest you do. the pleasure of attending their event this year and it was fantastic. And, yeah. In this episode we're gonna dive into Chris, his background, his future, hopefully his vision, and we go from there. As always, you can go to our website for all the relevant information on the podcast on Chris, what their company does, and please remember to subscribe to the show and even better tell others to follow us and we can grow the show together. Hey Chris, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 1:33

Thanks for having me. Doing well, keeping busy.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 1:35

for having me. Fantastic. Thanks for being here. you're an interesting character in the world of real estate development instead of Toronto, and I mean that in a very best positive way. You guys are pretty active. You are a different profile than what I'm used to dealing with when it comes to real estate development. I'm gonna ask you to take us back and give our audience a little bit of a. Unofficial intro on who Chris is, aside from everything that we can read and find on the website and online. Who's Chris?

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 2:07

I am a partner in, rental development firm here in Toronto called Toronto Standard. We focus on infill. Mid-rise, missing middle to mid-rise rental projects that we intend to hold for the long term. so that keeps me busy kind of day to day. But in addition to that, I do host and organize the Missing Middle conference where we talk a lot about policy. Permissions, particularly on the planning side, that have allowed for this kind of scale and typology of development to take place. And there's this emerging group of developers that are focusing and focusing in on this scale. And this conference is like an excuse for us to all gather, once a year and hang out and trade notes. other than that, I've been talking about housing policy, thinking about housing policy, writing about housing policy since at least 2015. and, that hasn't really slowed down.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 2:52

that's good. And yes, the event is great. 2015, when I was doing my homework for this podcast, I came across your life a little bit before 2015. You come from a digital background. You're not our typical from a construction or architect or investment type of person who walks into the development side. Why development?

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 3:12

Yeah, I think I come to development in an atypical way, or I had like a non-traditional path to get here. I started in just being interested in housing policy. and I was working, as you mentioned, in kind of various digital fields. I worked for digital agencies, I worked for startups. I had a couple of my own small startups, nothing. Kind of very notable. but around 20 15, 20 16, I started getting very interested in housing policy generally. around 2017, I actually created an organization to advocate for more. We could say liberal land use rules. It was like Toronto's first true Ymi group. Ybi meaning? yes. In my backyard. And through that process of advocacy on the policy side, I got more and more familiar with the industry and it became more and more interesting to me and through a series of. Random events ended up taking a job for a midscale developer here in the city called Event EU Group, and did that for a few years and then kinda left. I was doing some real estate deals side of my desk while I operated my own software agency called August. And and this business that we're running now is only two years old. so there are three partners, us three partners, we've been doing deals and building small projects. For longer than that, but never under a unified brand and never has a full-time focus. So that is actually relatively new.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 4:30

Okay. So before we dive too much deeper into this mix, was there an aha moment? Did you have an aha moment when you switched roles from an ad and from an advocacy perspective and someone who's interested to someone who is now knee deep and has skin in the game, was there an aha moment that you're like, oh, I didn't know this was gonna happen, or, I wish I had known this one thing before we got started?

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 4:55

it's mostly been positive. the reason for the pivot was there were a few reasons. One, I just got tired of the advocacy game and of working with not-for-profits, the whole not-for-profit scene. I think in many ways. Could be both, helpful at the margins, but also very insular and toxic even. it was just not like where I wanted to spend my career. and then, you talk about something for long enough and at some point you actually want to do it. You don't wanna just be a talker. the idea of talking about the need for more housing is great. but I wanted to actually contribute to that to actually build more housing. Obviously when you start a business, there's a lot more. Risk, there's a lot more involvement, as a real estate developer, I often mention to people who are interested in starting a start, starting a life as a real estate developer that, what really sets a real estate developer apart from someone who has a job at a real estate development company or who works for like a consulting or architecture firm or something like that, is your ability to raise money and to guarantee debt. And these are two things that like don't come naturally to me and there's like a certain risk tolerance that is required. those are things that are now very much a part of my day-to-day life and considerations that, just weren't before I was in this business.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 6:01

So if you were gonna go back and give yourself a couple pointers after now, couple years of doing this, what have you learned on the those key skills? Do you wanna share with our audience here?

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 6:13

I think, no real secrets, right? Like I think you just have to do it. You have to deliver on projects. You have to build a reputation as someone who knows how to buy well, how to manage an entitlement process well, how to build well. And if you do that, consistently, for a long enough time period, there, there are dollars out there that are looking to park themselves. in our case, in rental projects for the long term, they just wanna make sure that the developer knows what they're doing. And I think some of that you could demonstrate through your knowledge, and experience, but some of that you have to demonstrate over time through a track record. I don't think there's a way to really shortcut it. even now, I mentioned that our business is quite young. This is something that we're gonna be working on, for a very long time. And my sense is. We spend more time actively fundraising as an example on deals today than I hope to be doing in five years from now.'cause hopefully five years from now we have a better network, we have a better reputation, we have more of a track record, and that side of the business comes together a little bit more quickly and we could spend more time actually developing real estate,

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 7:11

and that's a fair statement in all fairness, it's a long game. It's a reputation game. It's a very risky game, if you

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 7:17

Yeah.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 7:18

yeah, it's hard to win trust And, John C. Maxwell in one of his books says, that trust, has made the team trust. It stands for time. And

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 7:26

Yeah.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 7:27

that you need to keep the, you need, you get, need to get the reps in and spend the time there. And now maybe the 10,000 hour rule applies here, maybe it doesn't, but definitely a track record at the time. know how, does help. let's dive in a little bit deeper. Why, midrise and rental infill I am and have been, and probably will be for as long as we're doing this. An advocate for the midrise section for the infill projects. But it's, it's never less amusing or it's very informative for me to hear other people's reasons for having the same passion. So why Midrise?

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 8:03

Yeah, it's interesting. we started with a preference for rental as a tenure, and I think this really comes from like a long-term orientation and our optimism for Toronto as a city. we're bullish on Toronto. We think that over time people will continue to want to move here, that employers will continue to want to locate here and that the city looks even better, 50 years from now than it did 50 years ago, or certainly today. So if you think about a city that you love, that you think has a bright future, one way to bet on it is to build real estate and to own real estate for the long term in that place. so that's what attracted us to rental. the Midrise scale always felt comfortable to us because, we come from having built a number of smaller scale, two, three, four-story multiplexes on our own. And then I come from a background of having rezoned and entitled High-Rise buildings. And this mid-rise scale for us feels like a natural. Progression, from what we were doing on our own, but still at a scale that is both meaningful. and interesting enough to build a business around, but also like lower absorption risk, lower, in many cases planning risk than like high rise projects. So we liked the scale, we liked the tenure, and then it just so happens this is really coincidental that when we started this business, that was really the only scale and tenure that worked economically because of the state of the condo market. So the timing in some senses was very good.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 9:23

Okay. that's a fair point, and I want to try and play the devil's advocate here for a second. Okay.

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 9:28

Yeah.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 9:28

I've been, trying to talk to this city officials and we've had meetings and we've had conversations about different avenues, different policies, and I'm sure you have a lot to say about that, The way I look at it is that, like you said, there's the whole movement on the missing middle or called the multiplex part of the missing middle. That happened recently, which has been great and I'm very supportive of that. It met a very real need in the society and also it met, a section of the industry who was primed and ready and capable of dealing with that and making it work and making it viable project, and we've seen that happen. I know of people who are. on their 10th project or sixth project. And there are a couple of leaders in the industry that probably are there on 25th project,

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 10:15

Yeah.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 10:15

think, all know. And then you step away from that, from the multiplexes basically. and then you go a little bit higher. You go through the, call it, I wanna say the four to six story.

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 10:27

Yeah.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 10:28

is part of the whole major street initiatives that is happening recently. and then that you go through the avenues six to 11 stories. You, that's your typical midrise and the high like taller mid rises, which is above that. I want to focus on the four, six stories because. I think that's one of the places that is very necessary. but at the same time, me being involved in the construction costs and the development costs and the performance, I'm scared of it. I talk to

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 11:01

Sure.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 11:01

I'm like, these numbers to make work on a 4, 6, 6 story, it's very hard. Like I'm wondering what you feel. How do you think about that?

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 11:10

Yeah, I think, four and five is very hard because at four stories you're kicking into a different part of the building code Part three, which comes with its own set of construction requirements, including, most notably, maybe most expensively, a sprinkler sprinkling requirement. at five stories. There's no way around an elevator. and typically to overcome these escalation to construction costs that come with triggering new. Building code requirements, you need to make it up through density, through additional units and leaseable area. Six stories. I quite six stories you could still build in Ontario as stick frame. so we have a friend, Gabriel Fe, an architect who's designing for Sierra communities here in the junction. Our offices is in the junction and he's designing a six story rental building, 33 units that'll be fully stick frame, including. Stick frame shafts for the elevator and scissor stairs, which is quite, for Toronto, quite unique. and obviously much less expensive than concrete or steel. like we, we like going up to three stories in some scenarios because you're staying to part nine of the building code. If we're going above three stories, we probably want to jump straight to six. We have built some four stories in the past, but I think four and five, it really has to be the right site that you could purchase at the right price to make sense. And we do, for what it's worth, we do have a site that we're now building to four stories, and this one works well because we've got the site at a great price. It's one minute walk from a subway station. Part four stories. You typically have to introduce an elevator. but if you have two level third story units where it's like the third and fourth story, you have an internal staircase, you could get away with no elevator. So you could still make it work. I think five stories maybe is like a bit of a dead zone for multi-unit residential.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 12:47

and to your point, most of the time, if you were to start a project right now and pick up land, and mind you, these days the land prices have gone down a little bit. But at the end of the day, getting around the requirements that you need to get on, basically on a, a multifamily building. Mul multi-well building. If you think about the. and requirements, the image requirements and multiple different things that kick in, at least in my experience, has been very hard to, or make it very expensive for the pro, for the performer to work on that scale. And I guess the threshold of six, which I agree, if you're not gonna do three, go all the way to six. And it's probably a better bet, to deal with the six. And, I think the caveat to that is also don't go to seven

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 14:20

Yeah.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 14:21

Based on the current building called Demand, you go from six to seven. All of a sudden, a whole bunch of different things apply to you, which increase the cost of

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 14:27

Yeah.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 14:28

increase your fire ratings and requirements, which frankly, on a small infield site, there's very unlikely. It's very unlikely that you would pick up enough. New rentable or sellable space to balance off the, what you basically have to put up with, right? So

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 14:43

Yeah.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 14:43

suggestion to our clients have been, okay, you three, six, and eight and above is probably what to look at. do you agree with that?

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 14:52

I think that's generally right, and I think that you did flag another interesting threshold, which is for electricity service. So as soon as you're moving from an A 400 amp service to a 600 amp service, and usually what that means practically is going from like a pole mounted transformer. Connection to a pad mounted transformer or a vaulted transformer on your property, that's a major jump. to go, as soon as you trigger 600 amp and you have to place a transformer somewhere on your property, you have to have, in our estimation, probably a unit count above 40. So that's another one of these thresholds. But yeah, generally agree with what you're saying.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 15:27

Yeah. and I know I actually heard you talk about, the fact that I think on one of your projects, you had previously mentioned that you guys could have gone to 10 units and you didn't, you stated six, just not to have to deal with that. Did I get that right?

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 15:40

We've done a few things, so on, on some projects, we'll go to 10, even though we could fit in more because we don't want to trigger site plan control on some projects. We could go to eight or nine and we'll stop at six because we want to take advantage of the DC exemption. It's really like a silly and maybe even a crazy way to underwrite deals, but it really is a consequence of policy and the way policy is designed in Ontario, certainly in Toronto. You do have these major benefit clips at these different thresholds, and I think there's probably a smarter way to do that. it doesn't make sense, for example, that if you build a seven unit multiplex, you pay seven development charges. And if you build six units, you pay zero. that doesn't make any sense. Maybe on the seventh you should pay one or something like that. Nevertheless, this is the game. This is the board as it's laid. so we, we play with the rules that are available to us.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 16:27

and to, to top of what you said is that, like the old wisdom in development has been the more, the better, get more intensity, just build more, build higher. And, but I think that is, that, that rule generat it is not necessarily, does not necessarily apply. mid-rise scale because like you said, there are instances where you're gonna have, actually, your marginal improvement is gonna be depreciating, so it's not worth it. Like cost

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 16:51

Yeah.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 16:52

adding another unit, causing of adding another floor. It's actually detrimental. So you mentioned policy. Let's talk about policy. you were to pick one policy today that, you were talking to our chief planner, let's say Thorn these days, and let's say Jason, there's one policy that we think if he. Think about it, you change it, you modify it. It'll really help us catapult this section of the market. What would be that policy?

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 17:19

Yeah, so naturally I could think of a hundred things, but if I have to land on one, it would probably be. something that to their credit is already in progress, but it's not completed. All projects at this scale should be, should be as of right, they should not require a zoning, bylaw amendment process. Maybe in some cases it makes sense to have like a committee of adjustments process for minor variances. but the idea that you have to go through a lengthy and expensive and frankly, political zoning, bylaw amendment process for a mid-rise building could often be a total killer. now I said that the community planning is working towards this, so we have the major streets policy, as you mentioned, which is effectively as of right for six stories on major streets. We have the avenues policy, which are being updated for new avenues. The next work stream in that effort will be to update the official plan, and the third work stream will be to update the zoning bylaws so that these are as of right. This to me was obvious, 15 years ago, we should have done it then, but better late than never. So I would say take this work that's already in progress and just get it done, next week,

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 18:18

just push it through. Just push it

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 18:20

just push it through.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 18:21

let's switch gears a little bit. I know. on your website, on Toronto Standard, you talk about the whole mid-rise section like we explored so far, but you also have an interest in high-rise, it seems like it, that high-rise, interest kind of is mixed with the MTSA, with the major transit station areas, which has been very popular for the past, I don't know, year at this point. Walk us through that. Why, how does that shift of mentality works and how does that looking at a project, work and is, how is it different?

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 18:52

Yeah, so we do have one high rise site that we're currently taking through a zoning bylaw amendment process, and actually an OLT appeal. 39 stories, 490 units, 358,000 square feet of GFA. This is in south of Toboco. we stumbled into this deal. Almost serendipitously. So we had assembled three lots for a mid-rise project on that, on the on, which is half of the current development site. And we had submitted his zoning bylaw amendment application for an 11 story mid-rise. And we quite liked that scale. It was squarely within where we wanted to be. but this also happened, we closed on the land, I think one month before the first rate hike through this kind of like rate hike cycle we had coming out of COVID. and after a few of those rate hikes, our project was just completely underwater. It was, we had just paid too much for the land, for the density that was being proposed. so to dig ourselves out of that hole, knowing that we were within a protected major transit station area, that we had close proximity to the Long Branch Coast Station, we thought that if we could increase our law area, we could probably fit. A high-rise building and a high-rise building would be supported by planning. through a series of like negotiations and outreach, we bought a plaza which was located to the west of our property. It effectively doubled our law area and allowed us give us enough of the separation distances you typically need round towers to submit an application for a tall tower. And we went through the process, worked very closely with city staff, had a positive, planning report, recommending approval. but ultimately, I think for mostly political reasons, a decision was deferred. so we just appealed and now we're going through an appeal process.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 20:21

Do you see any major? Difference in the way you look at a high rise building versus a high, in mid-rise infill project.

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 20:28

Yeah. Yeah. to start, we have a completely different consultant team. the consultant team handles a lot more of the development management. So our architect, for example, studio JCI was a great architect, but also a great project manager where they do a lot more of the stick handling. All your materials are like more polished, more refined, probably more than you need, but you wanna put together, a good package and your best foot forward when you are proposing a high density tall tower like this. when we're going through a similar process for a mid-rise building, our design costs, our soft costs are, a fraction of what they are for a tall building. So that's the first thing. We're al also underwriting mid-rise, much more. Conservatively in the sense that we're doing a lot more research on pretty much every line item in our proforma and validating it. Whereas we know there's some margin of error, there's some room for more contingency on tall or high-rise buildings. So on mid-rise you just have, a slimmer margin of error. So like. All the way down to like your 16 divisions of construction costs. You have a, have to have, pretty high confidence that you're estimating your costs. when you're forming your proforma and ultimately landing on a residual land value and paying for land. So every, everything is tighter and, and requires I think, more diligence on the mid-rise side.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 21:40

And I want to, I wanna just, can. Continue the same train of thought because I think it's important for our listeners if they're new to the game of development and they're thinking about these, multiplexes and, missing middle types of projects, that with the same logic, the smaller you get, lower the margins. The, the more diligent you need to be. It's actually not the other way around. If you're picking up a site that only could potentially afford a hundred thousand dollars in, mar in, in contingencies, much harder from my perspective, to the decision, make the right decision throughout the process compared to something that you might have two and a half million dollars of contingency on the job. mind you, yes, on the bigger jobs there are many more things that can go wrong, but you typically, in my experience, at least, you have the time. You can plan for it. And, you, most of the time you have the wherewithal, the team that is behind it has the wherewithal of pulling it together if the time comes. I don't know if you have any different experience on that.

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 22:37

I, I totally agree. the way I think about it is often on very large projects, you're much more exposed to, like macro trends. If there's a major change in immigration policy, if there's a major change in interest rates, you really feel it because this is, on, in our case, like 490 units, it could really make a difference. if you're just trying to lease up 30 units. These, you only need 30 people to want to rent a unit, versus 490. So I think it's a little. More sheltered from macro trends, but it's a lot more vulnerable to these kind of micro conditions. You mentioned. If we are within some separation distance of a high voltage power line and we have to relocate it, it's the same cost. Whether we're building 40 stories or four stories, and obviously a 40 story proforma is much better able to absorb that unforeseen expense, so to totally agree with that.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 23:22

And, with that said, you opened another can of worms that, unfortunately there's a lot of. It that with an urban infill project, there's almost a 50% chance, depending on which side of the street you're picking up, the parcel land that you will end up in the proximity of, the high voltage wires or some

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 23:39

Yeah.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 23:40

or wire, which will prevent you from working. And I highly encourage anyone who's looking after at a news site. To check the proximity to the wires, to the pole and be careful about drawn hydros, especially drawn hydros. Updated the guidelines, which they shifted the requirements from three meters to five meters a couple years ago. Very quietly, very under the radar, and caught a whole bunch of people by surprise, unfortunately. Let's talk about long-term ownership. You, as your investment thesis. You have, being a long-term owner operator seems to me as part of your mission or vision

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 24:13

right.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 24:14

why?

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 24:16

Again, I think it comes down to our optimism for the city as a whole. We think that, Putting down roots, and betting on Toronto's future prospects is like a good bet, in the process. It's not a passive bet. We're also improving these streets and improving these neighborhoods through our development efforts. the idea is that we kind of benefit from that over the long term. even when the mar condo market is, more normal than it is today. typically like a condo proforma looks better, on year one of occupancy than a rental proforma does. But the further out you project, and this really comes down to the alignment with your, equity partners. The further out you project the better rental looks. And I don't think it's a coincidence that Toronto's richest families, almost across the board, are families that have owned rental in Toronto for a very long time. so that's quite attractive to us.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 25:03

And, when you're looking at it from that lens, are there any specific decisions that you're making considering that, like you said, you plan to hold this for the next 25 50, maybe more than that years to

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 25:16

Yeah.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 25:16

Are there any. Specific flags, checklist items on your list that say, you know what? We need to make that sure that we get that, those five things, If so, can you share what those five things are?

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 25:28

Yeah, I think we're thinking a lot more, maybe than, than like maybe a shorter term oriented developer on. The long-term operations of the building, like the functional operations of the building. things as simple as how are you gonna manage move-ins? How are you gonna manage move outs? How are you gonna manage renovations of units on turnover? we spend a lot of time thinking about that. We spend a lot of time thinking about the performance of the equipment and materials that go into our construction. This is not something where we're just gonna hand it off to a new owner and be fully cashed out. This is all, these are all things that ultimately we're gonna have to deal with when equipment has to be replaced or when materials start to fail. So we do spend a lot of time thinking about those things. And then, maybe the other thing is, is location, often we're trying to get into as good a location as possible, but sometimes that means trying to be a little bit ahead of the curve so that we can still get land at a price that makes sense for our performers. What are neighborhoods that are gonna look much better in three, five? Seven, 10 years than they do today. and that, that's not always the same neighborhoods that are like peaking today. yeah, I think that's a part of it. Once we get more units into management, there's probably also a way in which we'll manage our tenants. that'll be different than someone who's just. Leasing up hit and looking to sell at stabilization. everything is done with a lens, obviously, to making the development project work on its own, but also have the building perform well over time.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 26:46

that's a good point. And for, people who are more, more interested in learning more about this topic, I suggest. They listened to our episode with our mutual friend, Brendan Whitit, he di we, he explored this ideas in more details and he knows a lot about that topic. I wanna switch gears a little bit. I was doing my, as part of my homework, I was going through your website and you have a very interesting page on your website,

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 27:12

Sure.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 27:12

you know what I'm referring to, but, I haven't seen that part page on other developers' websites, so I'm going to read. The title, and I'm gonna ask you to walk us through the steps there, because I think it's, first of all, it's, interesting because it's so clear. I love

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 27:27

Yeah.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 27:28

simple, it's clear, you know what you're doing and it shows there, but I do want you to walk us through that. So on the Toronto Standard website, it says, send us sites and earn big, we're actively looking to acquire sites for midrise rental development, introduce us to a seller and earn big, and then you're listing your requirements for what you're looking for. It literally

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 27:49

Yeah.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 27:50

what we are looking for no less than 60 feet up front edge. We're open to assemblies on major streets. There's a map link that you can use. And another interesting part is that no further west than KIPP link no further east than Woodbine and no further north than St. Cla. It's very specific, which I love. It makes it simple I'm sure you, I know I do sometimes. I'm sure you get more of these sites sent to you, which just totally outta your ballpark. Walk us through that. What came about, how did that came about? How did that page and the logic, the criteria, what, where did that come from?

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 28:28

Yeah, I mean our general sense is we have a pretty good model we think, on how to develop at this scale a good construction system that we're refining over time. That, but that is pretty dialed in for building at this scale. And now the question is, when you're building 40, 50 units at a time rather than 400, 500, like the high rise guys used to do, how do you get to a scale across all your projects for a total unit count? that is meaningful. if we build. 10, 40 unit projects, that's as much as one 400 unit project, of course. But that means a lot more on the acquisition side, the underwriting side, the debt, the fundraising, and so on. So this is really an effort to get more inbound deal flow. and it's both targeted to agents but also to non-agent. people just know people who have lots that might be looking to sell, but even for agents, it helps to your point, Allows them to filter down a little bit into our way of thinking. What we often see is agents know, as an example, that there is a minimum frontage requirement to build a midrise building of a meaningful scale. And they also know that our. Budgets are quite low. We're quite price sensitive. So what they'll do is they'll send us these like really wide lots in North Otoko or Scarborough, which doesn't work for us because we're not getting the rents we need in those areas. We're typically building with no parking. Those are not walkable neighborhoods. So this is just to help them filter a little bit so that when they do send us stuff that could run it by this checklist, to see if it fits. and I should say. Within all those points, there is some nuance, like we're willing to do exceptions outside of those criteria. But as a general guideline, I think it's been quite helpful.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 29:59

And, I guess so you just answered what I was gonna ask. You have had success with this page and,

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 30:04

I. Yeah. I should say, I don't know, actually, maybe not, because everything we've bought so far, we've sourced ourselves. we've had people send us stuff and we've kicked the tires on it. And ultimately where these things fall apart is when we underwrite our price and the price doesn't meet the expectation of the seller. No, we haven't gotten to the point, as an example where we've paid out a commission, but everything we've bought through agents, and obviously we've paid commission to agents. So this is just a way to try to get more, more inflow. so my sense is we're gonna keep that up forever and maybe I'll add even more granularity to our requirements, as a way for people to put themselves in our shoes and look at sites the way that we look at sites.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 30:43

that's good. And, on a note about the commissions, I see that you say you get paid via certified check, wire transfer, or back full of cash when we close.

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 30:53

That's right.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 30:53

a picture of that bag of cash if you ever end up doing that would be an interesting thing to see.

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 31:00

We'll pay Bitcoin, we'll pay what, whatever they prefer.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 31:03

yeah, we've had, I don't wanna divulge too much information, but we, we've had to pay people with different methods throughout the years for different purposes. And, yeah, let's just leave it at that. You have, you have, you talk quite publicly about many different things and many different things upon development on your podcast, on the webinars, on the seminars and events. one of the things that I know I struggle with sometimes is how much do you share? How much do you not share?'cause at the end of the day, there are some certain, I don't wanna say trade secrets, but there are certain information which is sensitive to the projects. How do you draw line? And it's more of a question for myself, how do you draw a line.

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 31:44

I think we, and I probably share more than the average developer, for a few reasons. And there's and there are sensitivities, but different flavors of sensitivity. one sensitivity is developers seeing each other as being in the same business and ultimately in competition with one another. I don't. I don't really see that at this scale, 40 to 60 units. I think the market could absorb many buildings at that scale. I don't really see developers as being directly competitive. Maybe if we end up both bidding on the same lot. But that has never, happened yet. in fact, we host a monthly breakfast for Toronto mid-rise developers with active projects where it's 8, 10, 12 of us depending on the month, just trading notes on what we're learning. And I think that's quite healthy. And helpful. the way I put it is like our competition, really is the city, is our ability to navigate through city processes, in a timely manner and a cost effective manner. and to the extent that we could, you. Group together and, lobby for certain things together. I think it just gives us more weight in our advocacy efforts. another flavor of sensitivity is political sensitivity. So when you have a project that is about to get to some milestone where you have, like a community of adjustments hearing with public participation or a community consultation meeting with public participation, especially if you're in your ward with a counselor who is more. Predispose to oppose development that support it. I think in those cases, often we do keep our cards close to our chest for some time. Like we probably won't jump the gun on announcing our plans for a given parcel until we really have to. I don't think you gain many points by, letting the local residents association. Organize earlier, their opposition to your project. So those things like, on, on certain projects, we won't reveal addresses as an example until a little bit further. We're a little bit further along. but as far as trade secrets, I don't know. we're pretty much an open book. we've learned from a lot of people. We have developers give us tours of their sites and show us how they build and we do the same.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 33:40

I love that, by the way. And I can tell you that one of the reasons we started doing this podcast a while ago and before that the midrise ca blog was exactly what you said. At the end of the day, I'm a big believer that there's enough to go around for. pretty much everyone who wants to, get involved in the development phase. Yes, at

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 33:58

Yeah.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 33:58

moments in time. You might be competing with each other for parcel land, but that's probably one every, if you spread it over time, it's probably about a second every year or something. but the benefits of sharing experiences and having the dialogue and. Playing together. Basically it's enormous and especially I think what one thing that's very important to note here is that especially with these new changes on the planning side that is coming or happening or has happened and more to come and they say thousands of parcels of land in Sierra Toronto alone and not, and this is not the end of it, thousands of them are gonna be unlocked for these types of projects, for these mid rises, for these urban and fills. Honestly, I would be surprised if we run out of land to develop in city of Toronto, like we have so many parcels that can be good projects and. For context, since the time that the MIDRISE guidelines came to, being about, I think at this point, about 15 years ago, in City of Toronto to date, as far as I know, like we've had only 150, 180 projects completed. To date and there's been like overall maybe around 450 different applications, everything including the missing, middle and everything else. So numbers are just not conducive enough for you to be too much concerned about competition. like you said, we don't wanna too much, trade secrets. what are some of the industry trends? That you see. We talked about the population, we talked about planning. Do you see any trends in the day-to-day operation of the buildings or technology anything else? Anything that you see? You know what? This is interesting. I don't know, like AI seems to be the topic of the day every day we go, everywhere we go these days, still on the fence. I don't know where we sit with it, but is there anything that comes to mind that you're thinking about?

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 35:52

I often try to think about, rather than new kind of secrets, what are some old secrets that we've just forgotten? we're not doing anything that's crazy new. even like the way that we're building, often it's with prefabricated components like precast concrete floors, precast concrete shafts, panelized, cold form steel wall panels, like these are all 60, 80 and in some cases a hundred year old technologies. some of the materials have improved over that time, but we're not talking about anything that's all that new and what's enabled it more prefabrication in Toronto more than anything is we've had a recent update to our midrise design guidelines. That have allowed for simpler boxier buildings without these kind of like step backs at every floor that were required in the old mid-rise design guidelines. And this is not like a new way of building. Yeah. the wedding cakes, this is really just re permitting a form of mid-rise development and construction. That was always, the go-to. if you travel around, older North American cities, like all buildings are boxes, we're getting a little bit closer to get, to getting back to buildings as boxes. So on the construction side, nothing crazy. I will say maybe one thing that's a little bit new. Is just the availability of high quality Chinese materials. so you think about like flooring, fixtures, even windows, some mechanical equipment. The reputation in the industry when I first got involved, let's say 10 years ago, was that China was cheap, but it was also cheaply built. It was low price, but also low quality. What's happened as far as I can tell over the last 10 years, and there's a lot of variance. So it really matters on who your supplier is. China now builds some of the highest quality materials and fixers and windows and everything else at a lower price. and your ability to navigate that kind of that market is often like a real edge that you could have in construction. and this is not something that I'm coming up with originally, like most developers in Toronto. are trying to source their kitchens or whatever from China and getting like really high quality stuff. I think that the, again, getting stuff from China's not new, but getting high quality stuff from China is a little bit new. on the building's operation side, we actually like default to lower tech things. as an example, unit entry, Access. Like often you'll have these kinda like smart touch pads and so on, facial recognition software and all this stuff. I still like keys. I like things that don't require bo batteries to be swapped out, by property management once a year. we're thinking, as you mentioned, long-term with our buildings. Often that means like reducing the potential points of failure. And often technology does introduce a new point of failure if it's not been vetted and filtered, over time. so I don't think we're doing anything crazy new there. We, we are often when we're de designing our indoor amenity space defaulting to coworking spaces, which again, might not have been something people did five plus years ago. Now post COVID, more people have hybrid working arrangements, where I think that does make a lot of sense. but more than anything, we're trying to like dial in the fundamentals, as smartly as possible. And often that means doing things the way that people have been doing it for a long way. and in some rare instances, look for new things. And this is, this is coming from. A software background. I'm very interested in technology generally. I also think that sometimes you could take on too much risk in a 40 year asset if you go for the shiny new bobble before it's been properly vetted.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 38:56

Yeah, and I agree. I totally agree with you on the technology side of things. We have talked on this podcast I think a couple times before about using new technology in construction and, sometimes we're, as construction people were accused of being behind and being laggard, if you may, on the technology curve. But, which I have to admit, I was in that camp for a long time and at some point I changed my mind because I realized that of the decisions we make have very long. time, long term and,

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 39:27

Yeah.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 39:27

long time effects, which can go wrong, will probably will go wrong, and you will just end up paying for it 5, 10, 15 years down the road, such as some of these, called untested on, technologies that you just mentioned. And,

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 39:44

Yeah.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 39:44

just be careful with the technologies that you pick, especially the new ones. There's a good reason. The old stuff still works. I am, I have been involved in multiple innovative projects with new systems. I'm not, I have nothing particularly against that. But at the same time, you want to use it, just be careful that it might, you might need to replace it five years down the road because that facial recognition system or that RFID pad or something got updated and now it's

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 40:11

Yeah,

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 40:12

and you have to retrofit the building for it. we have a role play section at the end

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 40:17

sure.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 40:19

Or toward the end of the podcast, and I know you have a lot of, opinions, if you may, policy. We talked about the planning at the municipal level, so I won't ask you to talk there, but say we could give you one question to pitch to Federal, let's say Mark Garney or. Provincial doc forward for five minutes to help them improve the situation, help them facilitate, help them get us out of the hole that we are in right now. Does anything come to mind?

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 40:51

A lot comes to mind. So again, just as with my municipal answer, I'll try to, stick to one thing for all these guys. I've got dozens, if not, hundreds of ideas. what I might ask Mark Carney for, is to have, he's been copying a lot of pure Polys policy proposals, and I think that's mostly a good thing. The one that he hasn't yet copied is this idea that. Somebody sells a business in Canada, they should be able to defer paying capital gains as long as they reinvest proceeds into another business, including, including the business of real estate development in the United States. They have this, tax treatment called the 10 10 31 exchange, where if you sell a piece of property, a real estate building. As long as you reinvest it, you could defer capital gains. And what that does in practice is one is it unlocks assets. You have a lot of people who own plazas, apartment buildings, parking lots in Toronto who have no reason to operate it and aren't really interested in operating it, but they don't wanna sell it because they don't wanna be hit with that capital gains tax. If they're able to defer it, they might sell it and roll the proceeds into a new project. Those underused sites would come into development. And then of course, the proceeds of those sales could be reinvested on the equity side. And equity is always a constraint in real estate development. So that would be my pitch to Mark Carney. Doug Ford. Probably I have more ideas for Doug Ford than either the federal government or the municipal government because the provincial government has all the levers and all the power. but again, if we had to zero in on one, it would be a modernizing process of the Ontario Building Code. including for things like single means of egress to higher heights, at minimum six stories to European, standard elevators, which are smaller and much more affordable. I think we're going way too far on some of these energy efficiency and accessibility requirements that often act against the interest of energy efficiency and accessibility because they kill the viability of projects altogether. so I think the building code. Has escaped a lot of political scrutiny'cause people think of it as just a purely technical document that does not incur any trade-offs. But as we know working in development, there are always trade-offs. You can make the building code as safe and accessible and as energy efficient as you want, but if I can't build any buildings. There will be no buildings that comply with this, perfect code. So I think there's a lot you could do to modernize it and pair it back and often just aligning it with other jurisdictions around the world, including European jurisdictions that are much better at building housing than we are back.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 43:12

and amen. The building code comment, which is I think very important one, has to do with the fact that developments don't happen just on the

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 43:21

I.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 43:21

side. Developments happen in a ecosystem. If you

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 43:25

Yeah.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 43:25

there are thousand items that a developer needs to get right for the project to work. Probably a handful of them has to do with the planning, which is very important. Don't get me wrong. It has to do with the policy, but as long as your building code is there to hinder you with the, with all the. I wanna say outdated per se requirements or as stringent, too much stringent, items that we've talked about on this podcast. We've had Conrad Specker here. We talked about the single staircase. we had jack keys. We talked about the height of the building and fire requirements. And, I know both of them are very actively working, but at this, at the same time, I know that pretty much the whole discussion about the fire rating, and sorry, the fire escape and the two stat access. Seems like it's not gonna go anywhere until 2030, which is, in my

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 44:16

Yeah.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 44:17

very late for such a big change to enable a very high number of smaller projects to become viable. I know c is trying to put together an alternative solution library that could help to process and say, okay, we've already done it once. Go figure out how did we do it there. based on what I'm hearing on the streets, it's still far from being practical. If you may. So I think that's a very important note. And on the 10 31, note you made there on a tax code, it's very true. Like this is one of the things that I'm an immigrant to Canada. I came here about 10 years ago and before coming to Canada, I used to study real estate. I'm like, how does real estate work? And it took me a while to realize that doesn't exist in Canada. and then that's a very interesting part of the, US real estate con concept and strategies that. They many people take advantage of frankly, it's, I'm surprised that it's not here. So I'm happy you brought it up. is there anything that I haven't asked you that you think our audience should know about

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 45:18

Yeah, maybe the only thing I'll say is like another plug for the missing middle summit, as you mentioned, the number of sites that are becoming viable for development. Just because the planning, permissions are improving, is large and growing, and I think there is more room, maybe more than ever for. Developers to enter the market from atypical or non-traditional backgrounds like general contractors getting into developing their first multiplex, and then working their way up to this mid-rise scale. I think that is more accessible than it has been in the recent past. and if anybody's interested in learning more about that, I think the missing middle summit is probably a good place to, to meet a lot of others in a similar boat.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 45:53

The next one is in May of 26,

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 45:55

Yeah, so we actually just locked in the date today. It'll be May 13th, 2026, so missing middle summit.com is where people could stay on top of that, but it should be a good one.

payam-_1_10-08-2025_140230 46:05

Fantastic. Thank you very much for being here, Chris. I appreciate your time. I appreciate your, transparency and willingness to share what you're going through. Hopefully we can do this episode in a year or two again and learn more from what you've gone through and, you review your successes at that point. Thank you very

squadcaster-a402_1_10-08-2025_140235 46:21

Absolutely happy to. Thanks for having me.