Our Lockdown Reading List
Canada’s housing roller coaster is rarely out of the news, giving urban planners, academics, and analysts a lot to write about.
From the impact of homelessness, arguments pitching insufficient supply vs. unnecessary demand, rock-bottom interest rates, to rapidly increasing returns on rental investments - housing is a hot topic.
Here we bring together a reading list that may point to the future of our cities and how urban designers will create cities that make us a happier more connected community.
1. Brave New Home: Our Future in Smarter, Simpler, Happier Housing
This is an intelligent and provocative look at how the Hollywoodized ‘American Dream’, adopted by Canadians, focused on a detached house with a yard, white picket fence, and a two-car garage has divided communities and overstretched families financially. The book then explores new trends in housing that can help us live better.
Diana Lind is a writer and urban policy specialist.
2. Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design
"Happy City is not only readable but stimulating. It raises issues most of us have avoided for too long. Do we live in neighbourhoods that make us happy? That is not a silly question. Montgomery encourages us to ask it without embarrassment, and to think intelligently about the answer." --The New York Times
Happy City offers a new way to examine city life, showing us how small changes can radically improve our quality of life. Montgomery has written a fascinating book about what today's cities do well and how tomorrow's cities can do even better.
3. Financial Freedom With Real Estate
Making money in real estate is nothing new. This book is a fresh look at how to easily get rich quick by investing in real estate. In our opinion, it ignores some risks but many of the key principles are sound.
The book provides a step-by-step guide into getting into your first real estate investment, 6 essential formulas you need to master to make money, and an easy-to-follow checklist you can use when choosing an investment property.
4. Find It, Fix It, Flip It
Who doesn’t like shows like Love it or List it and Property Brothers? This book is for people who actually want to tackle a full renovation. You may intend to sell, but you may just decide to keep your improved home.
Drawing from more than twenty-four years of experience finding, fixing, and flipping homes for profit, Williams shares secrets and insights to help give you an advantage.
This book covers everything from buying a house with very little equity to organizing your eventual real estate investment dream team.
6. The Wealthy Renter: How to Choose Housing That Will Make You Rich
We don’t have an agenda here, we’re trying to provide balanced information. The Wealthy Renter offers a different perspective than we are accustomed to hearing from the real estate industry.
This book is a clear, fact-based, and straightforward analysis of the biggest financial decision most people will ever make — how to solve their housing. The book aims to help readers make better housing decisions that will improve their lives.
7. When the Bubble Bursts: Surviving the Canadian Real Estate Crash
Since 2015, Hilliard MacBeth has argued that Canada is in the midst of an unprecedented real estate bubble and that there will soon be a crash in house prices that could trigger a financial crisis.
In hindsight, Mr. MacBeth’s urgent message to protect your wealth from the coming crash seems overblown. However, his analysis does uncover some troubling trends in Canadian real estate that leave the country uniquely exposed to greater risks than other countries.
Drawing on dozens of interviews with Canadians, this second edition also tackles the economic conditions and regulatory rules that allowed such a dangerous situation to develop in Canada. Over the last two decades, Canadians’ conviction that real estate is a ‘riskless investment’ while tripling their collective financial debt has led to acute market vulnerabilities and risk.
MacBeth may go down in Canadian history as the modern equivalent of “Chicken Little” or “Nostradamus”. Time will tell.
