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CBRE’s Morassutti talks about housing affordability

5 years ago

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CBRE Limited vice-chairman Paul Morassutti focused much of his address to a large audience at the Land & Development Conference on the issue of affordable housing.

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Add Montreal’s Fiera Capital Corporation (FSZ-T) to the list of players who want a piece of the action if a baseball stadium ever gets built at the Peel Basin, says chairman and chief executive officer Jean-Guy Desjardins.

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High demand and a lack of new product are helping transform historic Victoria buildings into contemporary new office space. “The main drivers for the office market in Greater Victoria remain the technology and government sectors,” said BOMA’s Elyse Norgaard Kituri.

Calgary-based Strategic Group began reviewing its Alberta office assets in 2015 to find aging structures ripe for conversion to residential. On June 1, its first building to receive a complete refit – e11even in downtown Edmonton – will have its first rental occupancy.

Romspen Commercial Lender

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The first phase of downtown Edmonton’s ICE District is nearly complete — with the J.W. Marriot Hotel slated to open in August and nearly 700 condo units ready by the fall while a nearby empty building sits out of place.

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City hall will need to drum up $4.5 billion to push forward on all the major capital projects proposed for Winnipeg in the next decade – a fact which would require astronomical debt, water and sewer rate spikes, and property tax hikes.

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A tractor-trailer packed with industrial drills is pulling out of one of the parking lots of Boart Longyear’s industrial facility in southeast Calgary. The global drilling services and drilling equipment company is moving to Saskatoon — where taxes are cheaper.

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The Registrar of Mortgage Brokers has issued a cease-and-desist order against an unregistered mortgage broker linked to over $500 million in mortgage loans from 2009 to 2018. Jay Chaudhary is accused of using registered brokers and real estate agents to arrange the mortgages.

Legacy Business District

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Building intentions in Nanaimo, B.C., this year have already outpaced the total value of 2018 as developers plan hundreds of millions of dollars worth of residential and commercial projects.

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Proposed changes to the City of Regina’s zoning bylaw would see new gyms and martial arts studios not being allowed in industrial areas. Existing facilities of the prohibited types could be grandfathered in, but would not be allowed to expand.

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Wal-Mart Canada (WMT-N) has unveiled the latest evolution in its 13-year-old Supercentre format at Stock Yard Village, a state-of-the-art “Urban Supercentre” that blends its e-commerce and bricks-and-mortar business.

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There’s not much connecting face masks to fried-egg moulds to boxes of Pocky. But under the trendy umbrella of Japanese design, just about anything sells — cheapl y— at the brightly lit, colour-coded Oomomo store in Toronto.

Community Trust

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A new national office property report from Yardi Matrix illustrates brisk absorption of new supply is driving increases in asking rents and keeping the vacancy rate steady. Nineteen of the 25 markets covered in the report saw gains in asking rents.

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Brookfield Asset Management’s (BAM-A-T) New York-based real estate unit is seeking to raise US$1 billion for a fund that would take advantage of generous new tax breaks available to investors in low-income U.S. communities, according to sources.

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After going after tax evaders in the overheated real-estate markets of British Columbia and Ontario, Canada Revenue Agency audits have added more than $1 billion to government coffers. The agency recovered $604.5 million from Ontario and $422.6 million from B.C. in four years.

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A plot of Employment Lands in southwest Etobicoke is the subject of a dormant rezoning application that has sprung back to life in recent weeks. Enlisting Giannone Petricone Associates as designers, Antorista Investments proposes two residential towers.

Canadian Apartment Investment Conference

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New analysis from RateSupermarket.ca shows that only those in the top income bracket can afford to buy homes in many of Canada’s major cities. A recent study from Zoocasa places the benchmark prices for Toronto at $873,100 and Vancouver at $1,441,000.

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Real estate is full of narratives, and one particularly interesting one has been to describe mid-rise as “luxury” product, because of its typically higher costs per square foot, coupled with what is typically a larger square-footage per unit as well.

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On Wednesday, CentreCourt unveiled the new mural on the south facade of Grid Condos, a 50-storey tower at Dundas and Jarvis in Toronto. The mural was painted by renowned artist Phillip Cote and the piece is entitled “The Original Family.”

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A downturn in the residential real estate market could jeopardize some of the purpose-built and below-market rental units awaiting construction in the city of Coquitlam. Coun. Dennis Marsden said many rental units are provided through density incentives.

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