SkyCity Centre Winnipeg | 45F | 575 Ft | 175.26 M | Cancelled

[OakbluffMB]

I think it looks fantastic. I booked an appointment for Saturday.

[Simplicity]

Fools and their money.

[bomberjet]

Hey. If there's something Fortress is great at, it's marketing. I, and I think everyone else here, would have no problem with this project going ahead.

[robertocarlos]

The fins are rather nice but for some reason I don't think they'll be added on in the end. They need an ALTernative.

[Riverman]

Podium looks a lot like Aura at College Park.

Originally Posted by Simplicity

Fools and their money.

Some know better, some don't.

[urbandreamer]

Yikes that's an ugly building.

[wags_in_the_peg]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

Yikes that's an ugly building.

disagree

[esquire]

It looks like the tower portion has come down a notch design-wise since the initial concepts (which you can still see on page one), but if anything the base looks better now and on the whole I think it's a very good looking tower.

[Finessing]

Why would people put a single red cent into this development when not even Fortress will?

When fees are taken into account, only 37 per cent of the cash raised through the bond offering will be devoted to the actual development, the analyst estimated, adding Fortress and Mady have not invested any of their own funds in the bond offering.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/skycity-bonds-speculative-260372621.html

I suppose I agree with the other posters...a fool and their money are soon parted.

[Biff]

I was at the event last night. I absolutely love the crown lighting and the ability to change colours. The podium amenity levels look pretty amazing too. The sales centre is very nice, something I don't believe Winnipeg has ever seen. I wish them luck as this would be a tremendous project for downtown........we know, we know simplicity - it will never fly, they are crooks etc, etc , etc.

[Simplicity]

^^ But the question is, is the model as nice as the Capital Pointe model?

Here's a quote from our good friend Ben Myers from June 2nd of this year - a time when anybody who wasn't a feckless shill already knew the bottom was falling out of the condo market:

A project this ambitious didn’t come without extensive research on the housing market conditions in the Winnipeg Census Metropolitan Area (CMA), the City of Winnipeg, and downtown Winnipeg. Either as an investor or an end-user, the data for Winnipeg is extremely positive.

You can read the whole article here.

Now, I'm not saying that Ben Myers is incompetent for using two and three year old data sets about starts while ignoring growing inventories to generate a convenient view of a housing market that was already displaying a 14%+ decline in both units sold and dollar volume in the condo market, I'm just saying that no housing analyst who works for a company whose incentives are tied only to the raising of capital and not actually constructing the units is a person who can call themselves legitimate.

It's a great scaled-model. It's an even better marketing plan. The difference is that Fortress' reputation precedes them and unchecked greed is a very difficult thing to hide from people. Nobody at Fortress actually believes they're building a basketball court and that's a problem for people who don't understand that they're never getting one.

[JamieDavid Exchange]

[buzzg]

Originally Posted by Simplicity

It's a great scaled-model. It's an even better marketing plan. The difference is that Fortress' reputation precedes them and unchecked greed is a very difficult thing to hide from people. Nobody at Fortress actually believes they're building a basketball court and that's a problem for people who don't understand that they're never getting one.

See but for 98% of Winnipeggers it doesn't. The people on here and in the development community know about them, but that's it. And that's exactly how they could get the money they wany – most ppl don't know their past and just see great marketing including sponsoring local events.

[bmyers]

Originally Posted by Simplicity

Now, I'm not saying that Ben Myers is incompetent.

Thank you!


Those that are interested in my latest report can download it here:

http://fortressrealdevelopments.com/news/the-market-manuscript-by-ben-myers-fall-2015/

I'll let people decide for themselves if they like my analysis and reporting.


More on SkyCity here: http://www.cjob.com/2015/09/15/84146/

and here: http://fortressrealdevelopments.com/news/skycity-downtown-winnipeg/

[OakbluffMB]

Thanks for posting the plans Cyro

I'm a big fan of the Broadway model, I think it looks south? Big balcony.

[Simplicity]

Originally Posted by buzzg

See but for 98% of Winnipeggers it doesn't. The people on here and in the development community know about them, but that's it. And that's exactly how they could get the money they wany – most ppl don't know their past and just see great marketing including sponsoring local events.

I think it would be different if we were looking at an end-user model, but this isn't that. This is a straight up assignment/push model. The market targeted is pre-construction condos at a 'discount' as an investment for those holding to move the units at a profit once the building has been pre-sold at a great enough rate.

So, in terms that would make sense to those generally holding simpler investments like mutual funds, a basketball court or grocery store or any other promise would be tantamount to a mutual fund prospectus claiming that its largest holdings were blue-chip large cap stocks, only for you to purchase and the fund salesmen telling you that maybe they weren't; maybe a small percentage is but for the most part it's risky small cap stocks that have difficulties raising capital and hold weak cash positions. It's virtually the same thing. Except that you can't bait and switch in the mutual fund game like that because those investments are regulated. The syndicated mortgage game isn't and that's why you can, with total impunity, promise the moon and the stars and deliver none of it.

[Simplicity]

Originally Posted by bmyers

Thank you!


Those that are interested in my latest report can download it here:

http://fortressrealdevelopments.com/news/the-market-manuscript-by-ben-myers-fall-2015/

I'll let people decide for themselves if they like my analysis and reporting.


More on SkyCity here: http://www.cjob.com/2015/09/15/84146/


and here: http://fortressrealdevelopments.com/news/skycity-downtown-winnipeg/

I got this far, had a good laugh, and didn't carry on:

Why are the majority of builders and developers in Canada bullish on the housing market? The report shows the percent of homebuilders that are still looking for new sites.

I don't know, Ben. Could you possibly imagine a reason why those for whom building homes is their business could possibly a) have a vested interest in the success of the housing markets, and; b) still be looking to buy bare land for the purposes of carrying on that business?

Buying land is not indicative of bullishness. It's a commodity to a home-builder. If they have to, they will sit on it for 40 years until they can see their value from it. It doesn't tell us anything about today's housing market because you can't just simply produce more of it when the market is to your liking.

[Cyro]

^ I was curious, could you please supply any links, published, blogs anything really,- (SSP) explaining your analysis of the housing market, projections for the future etc.?

Posters could compare your analysis to others in the same field? I understand if this makes you uncomfortable and is not necessary if you are unable to do so.

Thanks

[Cyro]

Originally Posted by OakbluffMB

Thanks for posting the plans Cyro

I'm a big fan of the Broadway model, I think it looks south? Big balcony.

I believe that was JamieDavid Exchange adding the floor plan images.

[Simplicity]

Originally Posted by Cyro

^ I was curious, could you please supply any links, published, blogs anything really,- (SSP) explaining your analysis of the housing market, projections for the future etc.?

Posters could compare your analysis to others in the same field? I understand if this makes you uncomfortable and is not necessary if you are unable to do so.

Thanks

Not without outing myself, no. I supply clients with analysis all the time. If any of them read here - and I have reason to believe some of them do - it would become pretty apparent. And I do provide some here and there on an ad-hoc basis in a pretty simplistic form so it can easily be understood. I believe if you go back to a couple months after I joined I had indicated on many occasions that the inflated number of starts in the multi-family (condo) market was not indicative of a vastly improving market. I had mentioned they were more likely to be added to inventory causing a significant spike in available units leading to material price decreases. And that's happening whether somebody wants to hide it in the form of incentives or upgrades or just straight up discounting the units. So I would say I did well enough on that call to have ensured a client or a poor shmuck hanging onto a pre-construction condo unit wasn't burned.

And that's really all that's necessary. We can look to decreasing immigration or a slower overall economy or myriad other economic data to make the finer points, but Occam's Razor generally prevails at a macroscopic level. You don't need my analysis for that. You can watch the MLS and CMHC data sets on a month to month basis and draw very similar conclusions.