Category Archives for "Finance"

Here’s an email I sent to a client of mine about the role of amortization in developing and financing a real estate portfolio “effortlessly” in a rinse and repeat/perpetual motion machine kind of way. See below. Chris, you are 100% right. No, actually, 1,000% right 😊 Here’s a case I looked at for clients of […]

[A version of this article first appeared in Ottawa Business Journal, https://www.obj.ca/bruce-firestone] When most people think about business models and modeling, they think it only applies to tech startups but turns out, they’re just as important in any industry including real estate. If I ask someone about real estate models, she or he will probably […]

[A version of this article first appeared in Ottawa Business Journal, https://www.obj.ca/article/op-ed-meet-steve-willis-city-halls-most-important-person] [Part 1, https://brucemfirestone.com/steve-willis-attempt-to-makeover-ottawa-part-1-of/] Interestingly,Mr. Willis recognizes that a one size fits all planning and infrastructure approach makes no sense. He promises that in the next OP (official plan) review (slated to be completed in 2021 or 2022), a more nuanced, fine-grained approach whereby […]

[Here’s an article I wrote in 2009 for a local Ottawa newspaper that is worthwhile re-reading today amidst talk of the Sens possibly packing up and heading to greener pastures (possibly Quebec City) due to attendance woes in the 2016/17 regular season and playoffs as well as subsequent years. I think a better idea would […]

I am often asked, “What are the keys to success?” I have developed some ideas about this over the years and, like any such list, mine is bound to be incomplete. Worse than that, many of these ideas about success are contradictory. Things that I learned from my Dad, Professor O. J. Firestone, like “Never […]

(This article first appeared in OBJ,  https://obj.ca/article/opinion-coach-houses-open-door-better-urban-planning-ottawa.) As OBJ readers may already know, the city of Ottawa recently changed its bylaws to permit construction of coach houses on many existing residential lots. This is part of a worldwide effort to densify and intensify existing urban areas to make them more interesting, more diverse, and more […]

[This article originally appeared on Spirepoint.ca] The number of mega wealthy people on this planet (a class that includes billionaires and millionaires, the latter, however, must have a net worth greater than $30 million USD to be included) is a tiny percentage of overall population—just 0.004% of adults qualify according to Wealth-X. This group controls […]

The Cap Rate Most real estate professionals do not use IRR, internal rate of return, calculations—they use cap (capitalization) rates to compare one project with another. The cap rate is an approximate assessment of ROI, return on investment, as all financial measures are anyway. But they are more approximate than the IRR is, in my […]

The Telfer School of Management’s professor Barbara Orser assisted by Luc Lalande has asked me to give one last lecture in 2016. I tried to make it both fun and informative. You can watch the video of the lecture below. It is also available on YouTube, https://youtu.be/GqqdLeT25us Here is the slidedeck I used, https://www.dropbox.com/s/jvo3187hnzr3397/firestone-legacy-lecture.pptx?dl=0 Here’s […]

There are many ways to value your real property— by completing a CMA, comparative market analysis, yourself or asking a realtor to do one for you, using the DFCA (direct comparison approach)—comparing what other similar properties have recently sold for in the same general area within the recent past (aka using “comps”) 2.       by using a cost approach—that is, determining the […]