Canada’s CRE sector on record pace: AY

Canada’s CRE sector on record pace: AY

The commercial real estate sector in Canada remains awash in capital and heading toward a possible record-breaking year as a growing number of investors continue to buy assets. According to Avison Young’s Fall 2017 North America and Europe Commercial Real Estate Investment Review, released Tuesday, investment in the Canadian commercial real estate sector is buoyed by a relatively healthy economy that is the envy of the G7 countries.

Property Biz Canada – Financial Post

Hamilton port wants a role in changing city

The Port of Hamilton has evolved and diversified into the largest port in Ontario, and the province’s most important export gateway for Ontario-grown grain. Far from seeing a decline, more than $300 million in new investment has come to the port lands in the past eight years. The port’s 630 acres is virtually sold out while we look for new industrial lands on which to expand.

CBC

Peer-to-peer leasing disrupts real estate brokers, landlords

Peer-to-peer real estate services that take brokerages and landlords out of the leasing equation are one of the biggest issues facing building owners these days. Regus, WeWork and LiquidSpace are examples of companies that provide flexible office rentals, co-working spaces, meeting rooms and services and fill a gap in the marketplace that more traditional landlords haven’t really catered to.

Property Biz Canada

Victoria developer spearheads harbour industrial makeover

It was a dark and stormy morning when a handful of journalists and the head of Sotheby’s International Realty Canada boarded a Helijet flight in November 2006 for the launch of Bayview, a 20-acre master-planned development in the Songhees district on Victoria’s Inner Harbour. The gala launched the venture of Calgary developer Ken Mariash.

Business In Vancouver

Building boom throws wrench into Victoria Harbour marina

The slow pace of building the Victoria International Marina on the Songhees waterfront is frustrating for the project’s chief executive officer, who is citing the lack of building trades and other issues for delays. Craig Norris of Community Marine Concepts said he is disappointed the $35-million marina has yet to host its first vessel and acknowledges there has been little progress in the marina’s construction since late July.

Victoria Times Colonist

Breaking the suburban mould with ‘Downtown Markham’

Touring Remington Group’s “Downtown Markham” in 2014, the Marriott hotel and Signature Condominium complex across the street at Enterprise Boulevard and Birchmount Road, was still a trio of cranes and a smattering of naked concrete columns. Now, behind a banner reading “the PLACE TO LIVE,” there’s evidence of habitation vis-à-vis lamps and chair-backs.

Globe and Mail

Kitchener’s Lot42 transforms steel mill into ‘global flex campus’

An events and office space which has transformed what used to be a heavy industrial site is about to open in Kitchener, Ont. Lot42 is a multi-purpose events facility on the site of a former steel mill. It’s nearing the end of a 10-month conversion which its owners say is creating a “global flex campus.”

Property Biz Canada

Ottawa offering millions to developer for brownfield clean-up

Ottawa city staff are proposing to offer a developer more than $9 million in incentives to build a multi-use building with three residential towers across from the future Bayview Station light rail station. TIP Albert GP Inc. owns the property at 900 Albert St. at the corner of Albert and City Centre Avenue, and is proposing a building that would have 1,632 residential units as well as retail and office space.

CBC – Ottawa Citizen

Ottawa turns to Winnipeg to study flood planning, protection

Researchers have looked to Winnipeg’s flood-resistant planning codes as Ottawa crafts a national standard for building new neighbourhoods. “For Canada as a whole, the average rainfall has increased by about 18 per cent per year, over the course of the last 113 years,” said Blair Feltmate, head of the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation.

Winnipeg Free Press

Montreal unprepared to predict, manage floods: Report

Although spring floods are expected to be more frequent, the Montreal region is too uncoordinated to properly prepare for them concludes a report by the Montreal Metropolitan Community (MMC). The water levels observed at the height of this spring’s flood were far above the predicted levels  and this was caused by faulty data, the report noted.

CBC

More than $2 billion in capital projects unfunded: TTC

The TTC has more than $2 billion worth of unfunded projects in its long-term capital plan, and the agency warns if a solution isn’t soon found, the cash crunch will affect service. According to a new report on the TTC’s 10-year capital budget, over the next decade the transit agency needs to spend $9.24 billion on work that includes state-of-good-repair maintenance, infrastructure upgrades and new vehicles.

Toronto Star

Toronto to Montreal in 39 minutes?

A futuristic tube system that would sling passengers from Toronto to Montreal via Ottawa in 39 minutes has been chosen as the strongest Canadian contender to put what is for now a technological theory into practice. A “hyperloop” uses electric propulsion to move magnetically levitated pods through low-pressure tubes, eliminating air resistance and friction, and enabling the pods to travel at a velocity approaching the speed of sound.

CBC – Winnipeg Free Press

Arts hub 401 Richmond to get a reprieve on property taxes

Where on the emotional spectrum do relief and elation meet? On Tuesday it was at 401 Richmond, the much-loved arts and culture haven at the centre of a property tax snafu for almost a year. The provincial government announced Tuesday morning it’s willing to work with the city to create a brand-new tax class for buildings like 401, which rents out studio spaces at well below market rates.

Toronto Star

Houston faces huge hurdle to recovery after Harvey

A month after Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas, there is still a simple way to tell if a particular street flooded in Houston. Just look at the front lawns. Debris rose as the water receded and residents returned to gut their ruined homes, disgorging the contents curbside. There is so much to remove the region is months away from clearing it all.

The Guardian – The Atlantic

U.S. nears second-longest expansion since WWII: Ten-X

The economic cycle’s longevity is starting to have an impact on the way commercial real estate investors are thinking, Ten-X’s chief economist and EVP Peter Muoio, Ph.D, tells GlobeSt.com. In fact, he believes we are close to being in the second-longest expansion since World War II. Muoio will be speaking at the annual Trigild Lender Conference in San Diego Oct. 18-20.

GlobeSt.com

Market Trends and Research

Well-to-do investors plow cash into Canadian farmland

Farmland has proved to be an appealing portfolio diversifier over the years. “When we get calls from investors, they are looking for diversification and stability,” says Joelle Faulkner, chief executive officer of Area One Farms, a Toronto-based private equity firm. “A pretty significant number of them have run their own business and understand the value of having a local partner.”

Globe and Mail

Kelowna’s CRE market is booming

Kelowna’s home market has made plenty of headlines, but the city’s commercial real estate market has been no slouch either, with office vacancy rates dropping steadily from last year. “I have been in this business since 2009 and I have never seen it this busy,” Royal LePage Realty’s Steve Laursen said.

Global News

Real Estate Companies

Nordik proposed new hotel for Chelsea

With just weeks to go before a civic election, municipal councillors in Chelsea, Que., have a tough choice to make about a proposed hotel. Nordik Group, which owns the popular Nordik Spa-Nature, plans to build a hotel with 60 rooms on the site. But the company’s preferred design would require council to allow a bigger, taller building than is permitted under the existing regulations.

CBC

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Legal Corner

FINTRAC to ‘review’ B.C. casino money laundering

A buried 2016 report that flagged potential money laundering at Richmond’s River Rock Casino Resort is attracting the attention of Canada’s financial intelligence unit. Details were only made public this week of the report from an accounting firm’s probe of suspicious cash transactions at gaming facilities across B.C. FINTRAC (Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre) has said it “is reviewing the report.”

CBC

Restaurants and Eateries

Freshii scales back ambitious growth plan

Analysts slashed target prices for Freshii Inc. (FRII-T) stock Tuesday after the company announced it will not fulfill its own ambitious expansion plans, and reduced its sales and earnings outlooks to the end of fiscal 2019. Freshii’s revisions come less than a year after its initial public offering in January, saying it will open 60 fewer new stores than expected in 2017. 

Toronto Star – Financial Post – Bloomberg

New Development

Regina to allow construction of religious venues in industrial area

Regina city council has changed its policy on where religious facilities can be built, allowing the Muslim community to establish a new mosque in an industrial area. Council approved the change to allow religious facilities in Tuxedo Park at its regular meeting Tuesday night.

CBC

Infrastructure

SaskPower defers development of hydroelectric project

SaskPower is deferring plans to build a $630-million hydroelectric project in Saskatchewan’s northernmost reaches due to a decline in the projected demand for power in the region. The Tazi Twe project was, at one point, expected to be completed in 2017 but construction has not started. SaskPower said this summer that it was conducting an economic assessment of the proposed project.

Saskatoon StarPhoenix

SNC Lavalin could capitalize on Highway 407’s value

SNC-Lavalin Group Inc.’s stake in a Southern Ontario toll road remains a “cash cow” for the company and will be a key component of its future growth and dividends over the next decade, according to analysts. “407 continues to be a value-generating monster for SNC,” wrote National Bank Financial analyst Maxim Sytchev earlier this month.

Financial Post

Human Resources

Oilsands work camps have been home for 10s of thousands

Andrew Farris was fresh from university and seeking adventure when he showed up at Alberta’s oilsands to test his brawn and stamina as a labourer working in a region cut off from the hum of urban life. The work camps he stayed in were like hotels with extensive dinner menus and private rooms, far from his father’s descriptions of cramped logging camps in the 1960s with “20 guys in a room.”

Calgary Herald

Manulife Real Estate names Lam managing director

Manulife Real Estate, part of Manulife Financial Corp, appointed Kenny Lam as managing director, head of Asia real estate investments, effective immediately. Lam will source and execute acquisitions in Asia and help expand Manulife Real Estate’s acquisition platform into new markets.

Reuters – finews.asia

Technology

Equifax CEO out amid fallout from data breach

Equifax CEO Richard Smith has retired effective immediately, as the credit reporting agency tries to clean up the mess left by a damaging data breach that exposed highly sensitive information about 143 million Americans, as well as 100,000 Canadians and 400,000 in the United Kingdom. His departure, announced Tuesday, follows those of two other high-ranking executives after Equifax’s disclosure hackers exploited a software flaw.

CBC – Toronto Star – Bloomberg – TheStreet.com

Eight ways to keep virtual reality personal in real estate

Virtual reality (VR) is shaping up to the be the end-all, be-all technology for real estate agents. It allows them to showcase a property to a prospective buyer without physically being there, giving them a play-by-play of the location. With VR expected to be an $80 billion market by 2025, according to a report by Goldman Sachs, there is much certainty that this technology is here to stay.

Forbes

Other

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