MURBs & The Housing Plot Twist No One Saw Coming

What do cheesy Jean-Claude Van Damme movies and Canada’s rental housing crisis have in common? Apparently, more than you’d think! In this episode of The Missing Middle, Sabrina Maddeaux and Mike Moffatt hop in their imaginary time machine to explore how a long-forgotten 1970s tax trick—MURBs—might make a comeback to boost rental housing today. Will this retro loophole help fix our sky-high rents, or just mess with the condo market even more? Grab your popcorn and find out how investors, multiplexes, and a bit of tax magic could change the housing game all over again.Chapters00:00 Introduction01:51 Investing in housing: a time travel scenario03:46 Why building apartments wasn’t a great investment 04:47 History of creating rental stock06:07 Understanding the MERB08:32 MURB tax deferrals 10:24 How MURB impacts condo construction11:53 MURB now vs 1970s13:19 The historical context of MERB and its implicationsResearch/links:Time Cop trailerThe Quiet Death of the Investor Condo? MURBs May Change the Game     Hosts: Sabrina Maddeaux https://x.com/SabrinaMaddeaux Mike Moffatt https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt https://bsky.app/profile/mikepmoffatt.bsky.socialProducer: Meredith Martin https://twitter.com/meredithmartin @meredithmartin.bsky.socialEditor: Sean Foreman@[email protected] podcast is funded by the Neptis Foundation https://neptis.org/Brought to you by the Missing Middle Initiative https://www.missingmiddleinitiative.ca/Hosted by Mike Moffatt & Cara Stern & Sabrina MaddeauxProduced by Meredith MartinFunded by the Neptis Foundation https://neptis.org/