August 9 2017

Kitchener Waterloo Real Estate News Update

August 9 2017. In today’s news: Asian restaurant franchises, tech sector’s impact on local office markets, prices down, honk for parking, Cambridge data hub network, toxic nations, beijing blogger, little pantry, harmony one more time again, and Blackberry

Holy Crab

With the high number of immigrants, tourists and international students from Asia flooding into Vancouver, the market has become ripe as the landing spot for another type of import: overseas restaurant franchises. “No, you can’t have fries with that.”

Home construction picks up in July

The annual pace of urban home construction increased by 5.5 per cent to 206,122 units, driven by a rise in multiple urban starts — generally apartment buildings, townhouses and condominiums — while single, detached home starts slowed

Is that your lunch?

Toronto is North America’s fastest growing technology market, according to CBRE’s fifth annual Scoring Tech Talent Report, which shows Canada’s largest metropolis moving up six spots to number six out of 50 cities. Kitchener-Waterloo, Montreal and Halifax are other Canadian cities where the tech sector is having a positive impact on local office markets.

Number of transactions down. Prices not so much.

Toronto cooled in terms of sales quite abruptly, on par with 2008-2009 recession but you don’t see much of a decline in prices. That takes time if it happens at all.

Honk if you’re parking

Waterloo has partnered with Honk Mobile to allow people to pay for extra parking time using an app on their phone. Starting in September visitors to uptown Waterloo can pay through the app after their free two hours expires.

Cambridge on the data hub network

The City of Cambridge is among eight of the world’s megacities, including Los Angeles and Dubai, that have linked in a global network allowing cities to share knowledge and ideas on how to grow and develop, while improving quality of life for residents. Whoa.

Measuring for toxicity

According to this map, the five least-toxic countries are found in Africa. And the most toxic are in the Middle East.

Beijing showing growing pains

A Chinese blogger’s essay about the fake lives of Beijing’s residents is causing a lot of soul searching in China. Naturally, the essay was banned.

Little but lots

Personally, I think the sharing economy is great idea. Why not give away and trade your old books? Why not share idle resources like cars, rakes and bedrooms? I’m just not a big fan of the clutter that little libraries create. And now this – little pantries.

Tracks are done. Where are the trains?

The King Street underpass at Victoria Street is open to vehicles.

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Harmony in conflict.

I ate there once. It wasn’t really very good. Reddit agrees.

Buying Blackberry

“The day BlackBerry became a true software company was the day that I became interested in investing in the company. This is a great opportunity for investors looking to own one of Canada’s most well-known tech companies.”