To give readers a deeper look at our investment approach, Jason will provide insights we’ve learned from our active involvement in operating Cymbria’s private businesses. It’s a collection of pieces that include commentaries from Cymbria Annuals and other thoughts throughout the year.
Jason’s corner can be accessed from the dropdown menu under the Insights tab or from the Cymbria homepage.
S&P 500 Index vs. MSCI World ex- USA Index growth attribution
S&P 600 Index vs MSCI US Index – relative trailing P/E
Russell 2000 ETF flows
S&P 500 Index vs. discretionary sector – historical relative performance
OECD country income disparity
Crude energy index vs. S&P 500 Index
High-yield bonds vs. leverage loans – maturities
Mortgage rates
Toronto condo starts
Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area – Number of completed and unsold condo apartments
Canada vs. U.S. REITs - capitalization
Tajdin is one of thousands of Canadians who have been caught in the fallout of the country’s collapsing condo market. Many are middle-class buyers who fell victim to the relentless real estate hype machine. They were told that big-city condos were a surefire place to park their money—and they were the biggest losers when the floor dropped out of the market. Since peaking in 2022, condo values in Toronto have plunged by 16.5 per cent and in Vancouver by nine per cent. Those averages mask the much larger losses experienced by would-be investors like Tajdin. Now, many buyers are on the hook for mortgages they can’t secure. Others own condos they can no longer sell, sinking deeper into the red every month as their carrying costs exceed what they can charge in rent. And a growing number are finding themselves on the wrong end of legal action as developers seek to recoup losses by taking legal action against buyers who back out of presale agreements.
Those developers, meanwhile, are unable to sell enough pre-construction units to finance new buildings. Many are entering receivership, postponing new construction and exacerbating an already painful housing shortage. Some are sitting on thousands of completed but seemingly unsellable units, built first and foremost as financial assets rather than functional housing.
The implosion has been most acute in Toronto and Vancouver where, over the past two decades, the condo boom reshaped skylines and transformed the very idea of housing. It was in these cities that condos evolved into something both more and less than homes: the ultimate financial asset, favoured first by rich investors and later by middle-class Canadians who plowed increasingly enormous amounts of personal wealth into them.
Real estate, especially in Canada’s most expensive cities, has for decades been considered a sure bet. For a long time, it was: since the 1990s, Canadian housing prices have gone steadily up, with only the briefest interruptions, even as naysayers and market pessimists came and went. Buyers became more deeply leveraged, and debt loads grew, but so did windfall profits and eye-popping flips.
And so for years, more and more investors piled in, building their nest eggs in the sky. When the market nosedived, it was those same investors who shouldered the worst of the collapse, exposing the fundamental flaws in our housing system: rampant speculation, the pursuit of short-term profit over long-term sustainability, and a laissez-faire attitude from policymakers who allowed everything to spiral out of control.
This week’s fun finds
What It’s Like to Fly Bark Air, the First-in-Class Airline for Dogs (and Their People)
Bark Air launched in May 2024 as an offshoot of Bark; that publicly traded corporation that began its life as BarkBox, a subscription service for treats and toys that has since expanded into nearly all parameters of canine life. Really, pretty much all: They are slowly introducing a dedicated concierge arm of the company, Bark Air president Mike Novotny told me on a call this July, that will offer everything from road-trip itineraries and (truly) pet-friendly hotel recommendations to groomer advice and grief counselors. (Intriguing off-record plans are also afoot to partner with upscale hotels and travel agencies to help provide pet-friendly experiences and itineraries for guests on the go.)
Given that, post-pandemic, more and more people have been unleashed from regular office requirements—and have, in turn, chosen to prioritize both personal travel and the pets they now spend most of their time with—an airline that catered specifically to dog-doting global nomads felt like a hole Bark was built to fill. Their customer base was a demographic for whom the overhead compartment or the terrors of the cargo hold—where dogs have not infrequently, and as recently as 2023, died in transit—wasn’t going to cut it. Last year Bark founder and CEO Matt Meeker made a video of himself flying in a large dog crate between South Florida and New York to prove the misery of such conditions. “This really does suck,” he says as his crate is loaded into the belly of the plane. Later, in the dark of the cargo hold, jostled by turbulence: “No seat belts, no airbags—I don’t know why any person would choose to do this to their dog. It’s an absolute horror show back here.” Now, for around $6,000 and up one way, they don’t have to.
The price tag, which is almost the same per route as a seat on a shared private-jet charter like Aero, is about as low as it can be while keeping the operation afloat: The planes are chartered by Bark, not owned by them, and each seats an average of 10 or so guests. Each ticket is for one human and one dog, and it flies a limited schedule (i.e., four round trips from Van Nuys to Teterboro and back a month) between private airports in Los Angeles and San Francisco to New York, and from New York to London, Lisbon, Paris, and Madrid. (They will also, perhaps most notably, help you with all of the required paperwork for international travel with a pet—avoiding quarantine!—as part of their services.) Unlike other semiprivate charters, there are absolutely no size or breed limitations for dogs. Also, unlike other flight providers, everyone you speak to just really loves dogs.
Once I booked our flights, I was contacted by a concierge who asked about Hugo: his personality traits, his likes and dislikes, his vaccination records, his play style, his preferred music, and whether he likes the car windows up or down on the ride to the airport—which, in one of the many brilliant moments of minimizing pain points for the pet-toting traveler, they will also arrange. On travel day, we were picked up by a chauffeur (sign reading “Hugo,” radio playing the Beach Boys) and arrived at the treat-filled terminal in Van Nuys for check-in, where it was immediately clear where to go based on the wagging tails.
Inside the terminal a certified dog trainer kept an eye out, observing the attitudes and interactions of all the four-legged passengers in order to decide where they should be situated on the plane (dogs that show signs of overexcitement or aggression are separated, for example) and foster a seamless travel experience. “I take this flight twice a year, to take my dog to our place in Long Island and back,” one of my fellow passengers, an older gentleman with a small poodly type dog tells me, “and it’s the best, because everyone is so nice.” He waved his hands expansively. “You know, it’s all dog people.” I do know: There’s a certain camaraderie among the openly canine obsessed. You can really relax when you’re not worried your dog might rub up against someone who doesn’t want it or, ahem, drool on their leg while they’re eating their chicken Caesar wrap on board (not that Hugo or I know anything about such behavior).
Prior to boarding, passengers are given Bark Puppy Passports, preprinted with their dogs’ photos, and a handwritten ticket that has the order in which they will board the plane. We formed a merry parade of wiggling tails across the tarmac, pausing for a photo opportunity by the plane’s steps before a quick climb on board. All dogs are harnessed and seat-belted to their owners’ chairs for takeoff and landing, but if there is a nervous or snappy pup on board, one of the Bark concierges tells me, they have an array of fixes: calming treats, noise-cancelling ear muffs, a snoodlike pullover called a happy hoodie, and, in more extreme cases, gentle muzzles. Several of my fellow travelers (a mix of summer vacationers and those making more long-term relocations to the East Coast and beyond) confess that they have doped their dogs with a sedative, and we all discuss the merits of Gabapentin (lighter) versus the far more effective Trazodone. (Hugo, by nature mellow to a fault, has not taken any drugs, but happily accepts some melatonin calming chews during takeoff, likely because they are meat flavored.) A drugged shih-tzu-looking mix stares hazily into the middle distance between his owner and my seats for the next five hours straight, including for a photo opp in which he is adorned with a small blue captain’s hat.
