Artis REIT seeking sale of Alberta office towers

Artis REIT seeking sale of Alberta office towers

Artis Real Estate Investment Trust (AX.UN-T) is seeking to sell some or all of its Calgary office properties in what could be the first major commercial deal in the Canadian city since oil prices began plunging, according to sources. The landlord has retained Bank of Montreal and seeks to raise several hundred million dollars, two sources said.

Bloomberg

Empty Calgary parking stalls spark deals

As corporate Calgary tightens its belt to weather Alberta’s flagging economy, purveyors of downtown parking stalls are offering online deals or slashing prices for monthly spots that once boasted lengthy wait lists. Not long ago, finding a monthly stall in the core was next to impossible, with vacancy rates hovering under one per cent.

Calgary Herald

HonkMobile turns ‘black box’ into ‘cash box’ landlords

Toronto-based entrepreneur Michael Back watched the rise of Uber and had somewhat of an epiphany. Most of what was offered by the taxi and car-sharing app was already available: people were already able to call for a cab and pay for it with a credit card. It just wasn’t that easy, however. Uber put it all seamlessly on a smartphone.

Property Biz Canada

WPT Industrial finds new life with AIMCO deal

In May, the end looked near for WPT Industrial REIT (WIR-U-T). The board of the Toronto-based trust announced the creation of a special committee “to explore strategic alternatives,” an all-encompassing phrase many observers interpreted as a complete selloff of assets in bits and pieces or in one large transaction.

Property Biz Canada – Financial Post

Vancouver office sale could reach milestone

Vancouver could see its first billion-dollar real estate sale in 2016 as purchases of trophy properties push sales volume to a historic peak. The expected sale of the Bentall Centre office portfolio and the Royal Centre office and retail tower this year “will push overall dollar volume to previously unseen levels,” according to Avison Young. 

Business In Vancouver

Van. redevelopment signals demand for malls near transit

When Vanprop Investments Ltd. announced a plan to tear down Lansdowne Centre in Richmond and redevelop the site, its executives signalled a desire to follow the path of others who own malls near rapid transit. Vanprop wants to build what could be “a lot more” than 10 residential and office towers up to 15 storeys on a 50-acre footprint.

Business In Vancouver

Action needed on land shortage crisis: Developers

They’re not making any more land, a truism with real-life implications for an increasing number of players in the Lower Mainland’s development sector. “Fundamentally, we’ve run out of single-family land,” Peeter Wesik, president of Wesgroup Properties, told the Urban Development Institute’s (UDI) recent annual market forecast luncheon.

Business In Vancouver

Tech company setting up shop in Winnipeg

Bold Innovation Group (BIG) has become Manitoba’s fastest-growing tech company and they’ve done it all out of Ile-des-Chênes. Bold has become the lead app developer for Shopify, the Ottawa company with the largest e-commerce platform next to Amazon and eBay. This week, Bold is moving into a 26,000-square-foot building in Winnipeg with room for about 240 employees.

Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg starting to fill Target space

A big chunk of dead retail space has come back to life with last week’s opening of a new Walmart Supercentre in the former Target space in Winnipeg’s Southdale Shopping Centre. The Southdale Target was one of the first in the city to go dark after Target announced its foray into Canada had been a disaster.

Winnipeg Free Press

Is Office Depot the next RadioShack?

In early 1992, shares of Office Depot (ODP-Q) traded for more than $50 a share. That would be an all-time high. Fast forward 24 years – Office Depot stock is now trading for around $5 a share and is part of a group of distressed and “Stressed Out” stocks. The company has lost around 90 per cent of its value over the last 24 years. 

The Street

Could subway spur downtown Scarborough?

Jerry Chadwick has lived the suburban dream Scarborough was built to feed as Toronto sprawled east in the car-centred 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. Chadwick, a retired principal who now serves as a board trustee, is ambivalent about the prospects being painted for the city centre area, roughly the size of Toronto’s downtown, by city planners and politicians.

Toronto Star – Toronto Star

McDonald’s CEO’s need for speed

Steve Easterbrook was behind the counter at one of North America’s first two standalone McCafé restaurants, watching intently as line cooks prepared Egg McMuffins over a sizzling grill.  The CEO of McDonald’s Corp. (MCD-N) was clearly pleased: Unlike the years-long struggle in its U.S. unit, the Canadian division of McDonald’s has performed well in the past seven years.

Financial Post

Mohawk Medical REIT acquires Oshawa MOB

Mohawk Medical Properties REIT, a private real estate investment trust, has acquired a full service, medical office building in the City of Oshawa. The North Oshawa Medical Centre is 100% occupied by 100% medical tenancies. The building is home to the North Oshawa Medical Clinic as well as a pharmacy, laboratory, x-ray, physiotherapy and specialists.

Canada Newswire

Macy’s: To REIT or not to REIT?

The Macy’s (M-N) saga – replete with store closures, slumping revenue and shares, and pressure to maximize the value of its real estate – reminds us retailers sit at the uncomfortable juncture of boots and bricks: the products they are selling and the brick-and-mortar real estate from which they make those sales in the age of e-commerce.

Forbes

Negative interest rates could benefit J-REITs: CBRE

Negative interest rates in Japan could benefit the country’s REITs, according to CBRE. Hiroshi Okubo, head of research at CBRE Japan, said the Bank of Japan’s recent implementation of a negative interest rate policy could make J-REITs’ dividend yields more attractive. The financing environment for J-REITs will also improve, CBRE said.

IPE Real Estate

Featured Column

Understanding cap rates in the apartment sector

Capitalization rates, or cap rates, are a way of estimating the general rate of return of an apartment building by buyers or sellers. The cap rate for an apartment transaction is calculated by dividing a building’s net operating income or NOI into the total value of the transaction or sale (Value = NOI/Cap Rate).

Read more

Quitting the corporate grind and working from home

Over the past decade, I built a very successful real estate development company, which at one point employed more than 30 people and had two offices in Vancouver. But after 10 years, I started looking for new challenges.

Read more

Market Trends and Research

Ontario farmland not shrinking: Fraser Institute

Ontario cropland is not disappearing because of urban sprawl, a newly released Fraser Institute study suggests, challenging a long-held assumption. Ontario’s level of food production has remained constant since 1951, despite exponential population growth, Prof. Glen Fox and colleague Yi Wang claim in the study for the right-leaning think-tank.

National Post – Toronto Sun

REOC Financial Reports

	REITs & REOCs – Fourth-quarter 2015 report
	RENX has prepared a table with a convenient list of the companies and a summary of links to their reports that will be updated quarterly. Fourth-quarter results are now arriving. Canadian REITs & REOCs – Fourth-quarter 2015 report

 

Real Estate Investment Trusts

RCS seeks clean break from REIT empire

RCS Capital Corp., the investment banking and capital markets division of Nicholas Schorsch’s once high-flying commercial real estate empire, has filed a prearranged plan of reorganization under Chapter 11 with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. The filing is part of RCS Capital’s previously announced plan to restructure its Cetera Financial Group into an independent broker-dealer business.

CoStar Group

The more things change . . .

Over the 15 years I have been the editor of REIT.com, the REIT industry has seen its total equity market capitalization soar from less than $140 billion to nearly $1 trillion. REITs have transitioned from a lesser-known alternative asset class to a core allocation in millions of American’s retirement and savings plans.

Reit.com

Retail

H.Y. Louie sells three IGA stores to Overwaitea

B.C.’s H.Y. Louie Co. Ltd. is shrinking operations by closing its wholesale division and selling several Marketplace IGA stores to Jim Pattison Group’s Overwaitea Food Group (OFG), which will fill the wholesale void. H.Y. Louie will continue to operate 28 IGA stores and plans to increase the number of stores in its new two-store Fresh St. Market chain.

Business In Vancouver

Sleep Country opens new Oakville store

Sleep Country announced the opening of a new store location in Oakville, Ont., at Burloak RioCan Centre. With the opening of the new Oakville location, Sleep Country now has 175 locations across Canada and 89 locations in Ontario. Sleep Country Canada also has 50 Dormez-vous stores in Quebec.

Canada Newswire

Couche-Tard completes Topaz acquisition

Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. (ATD.A-T) has closed the acquisition of Topaz Energy Group Ltd. in Ireland as announced in December. Topaz is the leading convenience and fuel retailer in Ireland, made up of 444 stations across the island of Ireland, including its recently acquired Esso station network. Of these stations, 158 are operated by Topaz and 286 by dealers.

Canada Newswire

Renovation and Restoration

Montreal Fire Department getting new digs

In one of the city’s latest real-estate moves, Montreal taxpayers will end up spending at least $10 million to turn a vacant building into new digs for the Montreal Fire Department. A chunk of the bill is $5.4 million to renovate the building, which has been vacant since the city bought it from a municipal contractor in 2011.

Montreal Gazette

Infrastructure

SNC-Lavalin selling interest in Malta airport

SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. (SNC-T) announced today it has reached an agreement to sell its indirect ownership interest in SNC-Lavalin (Malta) Limited to an affiliate of Flughafen Wien AG for cash consideration of approximately $96 million Cdn, pending the satisfaction of certain closing conditions by both parties and subject to working capital adjustments.

Canada Newswire

Metrolinx suffers major electric shock

Sometimes, the difference between success and failure can be measured in inches. Metrolinx has suddenly realized the historic train shed at Union Station will be centimetres short when GO service is eventually electrified. Electric trains need a bit more vertical space, adding 10s of millions to the cost of refurbishing the train shed.

Toronto Star

Hydro One’s latest acquisition marks shift

Hydro One Ltd. is tightening its grip on Ontario’s electricity transmission network, snapping up a century-old business in a deal that highlights the evolution of the province’s power system. Ontario’s largest electrical utility said Friday it would buy Great Lakes Power Transmission LP for $222-million in cash from Brookfield Infrastructure Partners LP.

Globe and Mail (Subscription required)

Sustainability

Steel containers do double duty as a mall

A second London shopping mall built with steel shipping containers is set to open. Boxpark Croydon is on schedule to open this summer, said Matthew McMillan, development director of Boxpark, which opened its first shipping container strip mall in Shoreditch in East London in 2011, pioneering the concept.

Daily Commercial News

Other

	RENX has surpassed 8,680 Twitter followers
	Follower LeBreton Re-Imagined is our vision for Ottawa’s LeBreton Flats development.
	Follow RENXca, the most comprehensive news feed on Twitter for Canadian real estate professionals.