(Joint with Jens von Bergmann and cross-posted at MountainMath)

It can be really useful to count things, but sometimes numbers end up causing confusion and misunderstanding rather than helping. Often this has to do with how the number is presented and attached to claims. Other times it has to do with problematic procedures used to obtain the number. Here we want to explore these problems more in detail concerning a claim that “Canada lost 322,000 affordable homes” between 2011 and 2016. This stat is generally made in reference to “private” rentals, and is contrasted to the number of non-market units built between 2011 and 2016, pegged at 60k units.

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(Joint with Jens von Bergmann and cross-posted at MountainMath)

Every now and then the topic of the GDP share of the “Real Estate Industry” comes up, often linked to the suggestion that an economy has become too dependent upon real estate. But this usually involves a fundamental misreading of the data. As people who pay attention know, the NAICS sector [53] “Real Estate Industry” of the expenditure based GDP produced by StatCan is mostly just rent and imputed rent.

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