In This Issue
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Business Updates - 2025 Year In Review
Around this time last year I wrote a short retrospective and set some goals for 2025. It’s interesting to go back and see how things went. If I had to sum it up, I’d say that 2025 was an interregnum, a time of interruption or pause.
I certainly felt this in my business, and it makes a lot of sense when you look at the macro picture. In 2025 we saw the continued collapse of housing starts in Toronto, a very mixed picture on costs (with some hard cost reductions particularly for larger builders, while soft costs remain stubbornly high), and some demand weakness driven by shifts in immigration flows.
At the same time, the future outlook feels much better. We see the steady absorption of existing supply, some promising policy reforms at the margin, and the upcoming return of positive population growth. I remain very bullish on Toronto’s future, particularly in 2027 and beyond.
But I think 2026 will be another transition year.
How I Spent The Year
Advisory/Development Work. In 2025 I continued to spend around half my time doing advisory work, but the nature of this work shifted a lot. I continued to work for lenders, but more of my time has been focused on private rental development and affordable housing deals. It’s good to see real projects advancing!
Capital Raising. In 2024 I spent a lot of time building out an investor list for my distressed lending platform. In 2025 I spent more time doing project-specific raises. This was probably my favorite activity last year. Capital raising was not a core part of my job earlier in my development career, so I have had to learn new skills and see things from a different perspective.
When I started in development, for example, most of my focus was on design and construction. My job was to deliver projects on time and under budget. I remember having a very different perspective on risk and budgeting compared to how my acquisitions/investment teams approached new deals. They had intense pressure to reduce budgets and be aggressive on market projections to make deals pencil. This made my job harder and seemed very risky to me (and still does). But I do have a stronger appreciation for the incentive structures that lead to this, and what it takes to get deals done in a tough market.
Nonetheless, my own personal philosophy on underwriting continues to be conservative in baseline assumptions, to de-emphasize IRR, and to show upside through sensitivities. It won’t be right for every investor, and that’s OK with me.
Restructuring & Workouts. Imprint has become a go-to resource for lenders and developers seeking to reposition existing projects. These relationships took time to build, and it was good to see them bear fruit over the last year. What does this typically look like? Here are some examples:
A developer wants to convert their project from condominium to rental, and has spent the last year revising the drawings and trying to secure debt and equity financing. They hired a broker, who ultimately wasn’t able to raise the required equity or find a partner who can guarantee the construction loan. The land lender wants out, and introduces Imprint as a potential partner. We can join the project team as rental co-GP, help raise capital to take out the land loan, and come up with a strategy for resolving guarantee/covenant issues.
A well-capitalized developer has the cash and the covenant to build their rental project, but they don’t have a track record of completing projects at this scale for CMHC financing. Imprint can provide rental expertise, help bring the right builder/CM partners, and give CMHC greater comfort in the developer’s ability to execute.
A court-ordered sale or power-of-sale listing yields an asset price that puts one of the secured creditors at risk. The creditors ask Imprint to put forward a new business plan with a builder partner, and fund the capital required to bring a project through construction, giving secured creditors a path to recovery.
A lender has a small project with an inexperienced developer. The borrower has stopped making interest payments, but the lender wants to avoid the cost of receivership because they know the current land value may be less than the outstanding debt. Through forbearance or by supporting a credit bid, Imprint can provide execution horsepower and capital to advance the project to construction.
The Year Ahead
Two goals from last year didn’t land. First, I wanted to triple my revenue, which required a couple of partner-led projects to move toward construction. Unfortunately, the market deteriorated and those projects stalled, so I didn’t quite hit that target. I also wanted to start building my team. When the fee stream from these projects became less certain, I decided to hold off on hiring.
What did work: much broader and deeper investor relationships, and a much stronger sense of lender needs. In 2025 the balance of new business resulted less from outbound business development, to inbound inquiries from trusted clients and partners. This frees up a lot of time to focus on execution.
For 2026 my goals are similar, but the plan is maybe a bit tighter:
Grow revenue by 2x but with fewer, higher-value mandates.
Keep two full-scope development management engagements live at any time.
I don’t think these will necessarily be easy, because 2026 will continue to present challenging market conditions, but it’s how I will be prioritizing opportunities and structuring my time.
Reading List
Can Branded Real Estate Work? by Brad Hargreaves at Thesis Driven. I’ve always been a brand-skeptic when it comes to multifamily housing. Brad does a better job than I ever could of explaining why it’s so difficult to do well. I generally argue that for rental apartments, the property manager’s brand is much more important than the builder’s.
Inclusionary Zoning, by Michael Wiebe on Building Abundance. It has important implications for unfunded IZ programs, such as Toronto’s. The author finds that if an IZ program doesn’t provide a well-calibrated offset in exchange for mandatory affordable housing, it functions as a tax across the entire market, killing marginal projects and increasing rents generally.
That’s a wrap
I write this newsletter because I like to connect with smart people who are doing interesting things. Reach out by replying to this email or commenting below.
Thank you for reading. I wish you a prosperous new year.
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