Easton’s Group plans first hotel in T.O. Distillery District

RENX  Commercial  •  Hotels and Resorts  •  Toronto / GTA

Easton’s Group of Hotels will build Canada’s first Curio by Hilton in the last remaining heritage building to be repurposed in Toronto’s The Distillery Historic District. The building was purchased by Easton’s Group from Guelph, Ont.-based Fusion Homes.

Avison Young to put robots to work collecting CRE data

RENX  Commercial  •  Technology  •  International

Commercial real estate services firm Avison Young has partnered with automation software company UiPath to deploy robotic processes for some of its mundane, time-intensive data collection tasks.

Parkland Corp. to acquire M&M Food Market for $322M

Commercial  •  Globe and Mail (Sub. required)  •  Canadian Grocer  •  Retail Insider

Parkland Corporation has reached a deal to acquire M&M Food Market for $322 million. Parkland – a convenience store operator and fuel retailer – gains M&M’s national network of more than 300 M&M stores, over 2,000 M&M Express locations and nearly 500 specialty frozen products.

Summit acquires final 50% of Guelph industrial bldgs.

Commercial  •  Canada Newswire  •  RENX  •  RENX

Summit Industrial Income REIT  (SMU-UN-T) announced it has acquired the remaining 50% ownership of two recently constructed properties in the Hanlon Creek Business Park in Guelph totalling 441,921 square feet of leasable area from Cooper Construction Limited for approximately $54.9 million.

StorageVault to acquire two properties for $46M

Commercial  •  Globe Newswire  •  RENX

StorageVault Canada Inc. (SVI-X) has agreed to acquire assets in Toronto and Winnipeg from two vendor groups for an aggregate purchase price of $46.05 million. One of the acquisitions is for $45 million in a related-party acquisition with Access Self Storage Inc.

Real World of Real Estate › Podcast: The new condominium market with Baker Real Estate

Gerald Tostowaryk:

Skyline sells five B.C. apt. buildings for $44.75M

Residential  •  Castanet

Guelph-based Skyline Apartment REIT has sold four buildings in Kelowna and one in Penticton to Nanaimo-based All Island Equity REIT for $44.75 million. The buildings consist of a combined 212 rental units and represent All Island’s first major investment in the Okanagan.

Broccolini acquires Cornwall Business Park land

Commercial  •  Ottawa Business Journal  •  RENX

Montreal-based developer Broccolini Real Estate Group has acquired 80 acres of fully serviced land at Cornwall Business Park for $4 million. In total, Cornwall council last week approved the sale of 158 acres of land in the business park for $7.5 million.

Concord Pacific loses appeal in $1.1B Van. property fight

Residential, Commercial  •  Vancouver Sun  •  CBC  •  Business In Vancouver

B.C.’s Court of Appeals has ruled against developer Concord Pacific in its contentious legal battle with Singapore-based Oei Hong Leong over the development of former Vancouver Expo lands (also known as the Plaza of Nations).

The Saskatchewan Edge › Saskatoon industrial market far exceeds my 2021 prediction

Barry Stuart: Managing Partner and Senior Sales Associate , ICR Commercial Real Estate

‘Ottawa’s office space is going to evolve’: AY

Commercial  •  Ottawa Business Journal  •  RENX  •  RENX

For all those who believe Ottawa’s office towers are destined to become nothing but hollowed-out shells as the city emerges from the pandemic, Avison Young’s Mike Church has a pile of documents he’d like to show you.

Inflation rate rises to 4.8 per cent, highest since 1991

Commercial  •  Globe and Mail (Sub. required)  •  Financial Post  •  Financial Post

Statistics Canada says the annual pace of inflation climbed in December to its highest rate since 1991. The consumer price index in December was up 4.8 per cent year-over-year. The reading compared with a year-over-year increase of 4.7 per cent in November.

Microsoft buys Activision Blizzard, Quebec studio

Commercial  •  Globe and Mail (Sub. required)  •  La Presse  •  Les Affaires

Microsoft (MSFT-Q) is paying $68.7 billion US for Activision Blizzard (ATVI-Q), the maker of Candy Crush and Call of Duty. Microsoft, which already owns the Montreal branch of Bethesda and the independent studio Compulsion Games, adds Quebec City-based Beenox’ studio.

Bridge Industrial, PSP Investments form $550M U.S. JV

Commercial  •  CP Executive  •  Business Wire  •  IPE Real Assets

Bridge Industrial and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board, one of Canada’s largest pension funds, are expanding their partnership with a new joint venture to invest at least $550 million and possibly as much as $1.1 billion in U.S. industrial assets.

Demand for retail pad sites intensifying in U.S.

Commercial  •  Wealth Management

Demand for retail pad sites is at an all-time high, driven primarily by fast-food and quick-service restaurants looking to add more drive-through locations and tenants looking to relocate from small-shop inline space in larger U.S. centres.

U.K. inflation hits near 30-year high

Residential, Commercial  •  Globe and Mail (Sub. required)

British inflation rose faster than expected to a near 30-year high in December, putting pressure on the Bank of England  to raise interest rates again. The annual rate of consumer price inflation increased to 5.4% from November’s 5.1%, the highest since March 1992.

Home prices climb 0.8 per cent in December: Teranet

Residential  •  Globe and Mail

Canadian home price gains accelerated in December, rising 0.8% from November as buyers scrambled to act before anticipated rate hikes, and resale supply remained constrained, the Teranet-National Bank Composite House Price Index shows.

Suburbanization moves on to next level in B.C.

Residential  •  Vancouver Sun

The exodus of remote-working Vancouverites to the outer suburb of Chilliwack — and the loss of the small-town charm — convinced Leigh Iie to flee the Lower Mainland and head 300 kms north to Chase on the shores of Little Shuswap Lake.

Could Singapore’s 30% investment homes tax work in GTA?

Residential  •  Toronto Star

Singapore boosted its Additional Buyers Stamp Duty so the more homes you buy, the more you pay. Permanent residents will be charged 25 per cent for their second homes and 30 per cent for subsequent home purchases, up from 15 per cent.

Multi-level ‘iceberg’ basements next luxury trend

Residential  •  Maclean’s

So far, major Canadian cities have no rules governing iceberg houses – which feature multi-level basements to make houses much bigger than rules permitted – and several of these huge caves already exist under homes in Vancouver and Toronto.