Issue #39: The One Margin to Rule Them All

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This week finds me openly nursing a man-crush on an Australian real estate tech entrepreneur while also realizing our Ontario friends have discovered there is a western Canadian real estate market 🙃.

Have you seen what Mitch Hale is doing with Prop Data IQ? The man has built what my spreadsheet dreams are made of—a feasibility and acquisition platform that's grown 89% since February, with 1,774 users running over 3,200 feasibility studies. While I'm still trying to convince AutoCAD to stop crashing when I open two drawings simultaneously, this wizard is having AI generate "optimum dwelling sizes" and "likely financing types."

I want to be the Canadian Mitch Hale so badly it hurts. My vision: create the residential land version for Canada, where developers can analyze land development sites in minutes instead of months. Just imagine—no more Excel files named "FINAL_FINAL_v7_ACTUALLY_FINAL_USE_THIS_ONE.xlsx" cluttering your desktop.

Is this mid-life crisis territory? Possibly. But it's healthier than buying a sports car.

Meanwhile, have you noticed the tectonic shift in Canadian real estate coverage? According to the recent RENX article, Alberta and B.C. are suddenly "leading Canada's next wave of real estate development and investment." After three decades of Toronto convinced it was the center of the Canadian universe, apparently someone finally checked a map and realized there's a whole country west of Mississauga.

You can practically hear the collective gasp from Bay Street: "What do you mean people are moving to places with... checks notes... affordability and jobs?" The article confirms what we've known forever—that Calgary and Edmonton provide "a faster, more efficient pathway for real estate development" compared to "over-regulated and slow-moving markets like Toronto."

Translation: permits take months instead of geological epochs. Revolutionary concept.

Next thing you know, they'll discover the Rocky Mountains and declare them "Canada's newest natural feature."

Vertical Integration Is Coming

SCENE: A Tim Hortons parking lot, southeast Calgary. Tuesday, 7:30 AM.

I'm leaning against my truck, sipping that delicious Tim Hortons coffee, when I spot Jim trudging across the parking lot. His truck has more construction dust than paint at this point.

Jim's been building houses in Alberta since the '80s. He's the kind of guy who still carries rolled-up blueprints in his back seat and answers texts three days late because "that's what voicemails are for." His company builds about 25 custom homes a year - solid craftsmanship, decent margins, loyal customers.

JIM: (nodding toward my cup) "Double-double today?"

ME: "Only black, Jim. Tastes too good to dilute it."

JIM: (leaning against my truck) "You hearing about all these big guys again? Buying up entire sections of land. No lots on the market anymore unless you want to pay retail and kiss someone's ring."

ME: "That's because they own the land now. And the truss producer. And probably your HVAC guy too."

JIM: (snorts) "Used to be you just built houses. Now you gotta own a cement plant and a software company just to keep your margins?"

Then he hits me with the line I've heard a dozen times this year:

JIM: "That sounds like some Ontario nonsense."

I can't help but laugh. In Alberta, there's no greater insult than comparing something to Ontario. But he's not wrong about the pattern.

Alberta’s Independent Builder Era Is Ending

For decades, Alberta operated more like the U.S. homebuilding market:

• Developers serviced and sold lots.

• Builders picked and chose inventory.

• Everyone stayed in their lane.

You'd build 20 homes a year, make a decent margin, and go fishing in Mexico every winter. That model worked in a land-rich, low-cost, fast-approval world.

But now?

• Land prices are rising faster than my blood pressure at municipal council meetings.

• Lot inventory is shrinking like my patience with permit delays.

• Trades are either overbooked or underqualified.

• Margins are disappearing faster than drywallers on a long weekend Friday at 2 PM.

Meanwhile, the ‘national’ builders—Mattamy, Anthem, Brookfield, (not to mention our local Truman, who is as big as some of the Nationals) and their corporate cousins—have been quietly importing the Ontario/BC model. Vertical integration. Factory efficiencies. Land control.

And like it or not, it's working.

Why Vertical Integration Works (Even In The Wild West)

There's a dirty little secret behind the success of vertically integrated builders:

They only need one margin.

If you're a traditional builder like Jim, you buy a lot from a developer (who needs a 20% margin), pay a supplier (who needs 15%), and hire trades (who've tacked on another 20% since COVID). Then you hope there's still enough meat left on the bone to make your model pencil.

But if you're vertically integrated?

• You make money on the land, not just the house.

• You own the trades.

• You control the customer journey from "I might want to buy a house someday" to "Here are your keys."

And because you're not slicing up margin between five companies, you can be more affordable and more profitable at the same time. It's like being both the butcher and the steakhouse.

The Ontario guys learned this years ago. They didn't vertically integrate because it was fun or because they wanted to create corporate empires. They did it because it was necessary to survive in a land-constrained market with brutal approval timelines.

Alberta's now reaching that same tipping point.

So Why Is This Happening Now?

Let's connect the dots:

1. Land pricing & vendor expectations are up. The days of $100K serviced lots are gone, like my hairline in my twenties. Builders without land are getting boxed out—or stuck overpaying retail while watching their margins evaporate.

2. Affordability pressure is real. You can't just pass costs to the buyer forever. At some point, they can't qualify for the mortgage. You have to reduce inputs, not just increase prices. That means owning more of the stack—or partnering with those who do.

3. Prefab and modular are finally having a moment. But you can't implement those efficiencies unless you control the product and lot layout from day one. That requires land control and standardization—exactly what independent builders typically lack. And to quote my mentor on pre-fab: “this shit just doesn’t work…its been tried and tested 100 times”.

4. The Liberal housing plan is rewiring the board. It's all about streamlining permits, unlocking public land, and incentivizing factory-built homes. Who's set up to win those projects? Vertically integrated players with scale and capital.

5. Competition is national now. Alberta isn't a regional sandbox anymore. Big builders are hunting for yield, and Alberta still looks cheap compared to Toronto or Vancouver—for now. That window is closing.

Back To The Parking Lot

JIM: (finishing his coffee) "So what—you're telling me I should start a land company and vertically integrate my way to a 5% net margin? At my age?"

ME: "I'm telling you the guys who already did that are going to be hard to stop. Because they've got the One Margin. And they can afford to outbid you on dirt, out-wait you on approvals, and out-market you on product."

Jim takes a long sip of coffee and stares toward the Ring Road.

JIM: "Should've bought that junkyard in 2004."

ME: "You and every other builder in the province."

JIM: "So what do guys like me do now? Sell out? Retire? Become a framing sub for Mattamy?"

ME: "You've got options. You can partner up with land players. Focus on niche product that the big guys don't want to touch. Target infill where your local knowledge matters more. But standing still isn't one of the options."

JIM: "You know what's crazy? My dad built houses in the '60s without owning a single lot. Just called up and ordered them like pizza. 'I'll take three 50-footers in Glenbrook, please.'"

ME: "Different world, Jim. Different world."

THE LESSONS:

1. The future of Alberta homebuilding is land-first. If you don't control the dirt, someone else controls your margins. That's not a trend—it's math.

2. Vertical integration isn't a fad—it's a survival strategy. Especially in markets with rising land costs, shrinking trades, and growing affordability pressure.

3. The magic isn't in the margins—it's in the margin stacking. When one company owns the land, the build, and the brand, they only need one profit center to thrive.

4. You don't need to own everything. But you do need a plan. Partner up, think long-term, and stop waiting for lots to magically appear on MLS.

Because in the next cycle? Builders without land will be building someone else's dreams. And in Alberta, them's fightin' words.

Each week, I test tools, AI prompts, and experiments so you don’t have to.
From zoning hacks to time-saving workflows, here’s one tech-powered insight to help you move faster, think clearer, and waste less money.

Last week in Issue #38: Urban Honey and the Spreadsheet of Doom I started on this whole idea of using AI not just for Googling stuff, but as your actual operating system. Like an invisible second brain that picks up your slack where your first brain drops the ball.

Truth is, we've all got mental glitches. Mine? I hear "SWM issue" and suddenly I'm mentally designing a detention pond while everyone else has moved on to talking about the damn catering budget. Maybe yours is forgetting names two seconds after you hear them, or completely zoning out whenever spreadsheets appear on screen.

You either gotta figure out these weaknesses yourself or, hell, just ask an AI to diagnose your professional defects. (Pro tip: if you do the latter, make sure you're sitting down and have a stiff drink nearby.)

Anyway, here's a real-life example of how this whole "AI as your backup brain" thing is saving my ass in meetings...

The AI That Saves Me From My Own Brain (So I Don't Derail the Whole Meeting)

When someone even mentions a land development problem in a meeting—just casually, like they're ordering a coffee—my brain hijacks the entire conversation and goes full CSI: Subdivision Edition.

Planning Consultant: "We might have some SWM issues on Parcel B."

Me (internally): Stormwater management? Let me mentally run fourteen drainage scenarios, pull the topo from memory, overlay the geotech we did last summer, maybe flip the slope grading, check the soil permeability, calculate runoff coefficients—

Five minutes later...

Planning Consultant: "...and that brings us to the marketing launch timeline."

Me: "Sorry, quick question about that SWM thing from earlier—is it pre-development flow or post-development capacity? I just need to know if we can add another detention pond without triggering a DRA reassessment."

Everyone: blank stares

Evan (my 20-year-old son and summer intern, not even looking up from his phone): "Dad, that was slide 3. We're on slide 14 now. Also, you've been mumbling about infiltration rates for 90 seconds."

I wish I could say this was a one-time thing. But this is me in every meeting. My brain treats casual problems like personal challenges to my development manhood.

I've tried Fathom. I've tried Gemini. Granola. All great for post-meeting wrap-ups when I'm trying to figure out what the hell just happened. But I don't need help after I've missed half the call. I need a real-time mental rescue before I start asking follow-up questions about problems no one remembers mentioning because they've moved on with their lives.

Enter: Hedy

Hedy is an AI meeting assistant that actually helps during the meeting. Not after. Not tomorrow morning. Right now.

It listens, tracks the discussion, and gives you bite-sized summaries and on-the-spot prompts to get you back in the game—without having to awkwardly ask Chad later, "Wait... did we actually decide anything in that meeting or was it just people talking over each other for an hour?"

It's especially handy in remote meetings, where you can keep Hedy open in a separate browser window and look like you're just being very, very thoughtful instead of completely lost in the sauce.

And if you're in person? Just pull out your phone, glance down and—boom—instant recap. Everyone thinks you're "checking your calendar." Really, you're checking your own cognitive black box. No one needs to know you mentally left the meeting ten minutes ago to model out Parcel B like it's the final round of SimCity.

Planning Consultant: "Greg, any thoughts on the launch timeline given everything we've discussed?"

Me: frantically glances at Hedy

Hedy on my phone: "Current topic: Marketing launch timeline. Group leaning toward September. Concerns raised about permit delays (slide 7) and finishing landscaping before frost (slide 12)."

Me: "Well, considering the permit timeline we discussed and the landscaping constraints with our early frost dates, I think we should build in a two-week buffer into the September target. Better to announce a delay once than twice."

Everyone: nodding approvingly

Me: wiping forehead sweat while smiling confidently

The real miracle? No one suspected I was mentally redesigning the entire stormwater management system for the last 20 minutes. Not even Chad, who has a built-in BS detector specifically calibrated to my frequency.

Here are an excerpt from recent meetings:

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Do you need a development co-pilot? After 30 years in the trenches, I help developers avoid expensive mistakes through strategy sessions, deal analysis, and road mapping.

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See you next Friday.

- Greg