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Vancouver office market riding out pandemic: CBRE

4 years ago

The office market in downtown Vancouver is so strong fundamentally, it is likely to pick up almost exactly where it left off as the British Columbia economy emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, says a report this week from CBRE.

Landmark Advisory Services is piggybacking on a move by a long-time client to jumpstart its expansion into facility and project management. The Montreal-based commercial tenant real estate advisory firm will consolidate, standardize and bundle facility and project management activities.

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Dino Chiesa, the chair of CreateTO – the agency managing $27 billion in City of Toronto real estate holdings – has stepped away from the board indefinitely to deal with the crisis at Sienna Senior Living Inc. (SIA-T), a private seniors home chain.

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Calgary city council gave near-unanimous approval Tuesday night to the first stage of the Green Line, solidifying plans for a new LRT running from 16th Avenue N. to Shepard in the southeast.

CMLS - Mortgage Commentary

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Commercial tenants in Alberta cannot be evicted if they don’t pay their rent due to COVID-19 between now and Aug. 31. Bill 23, the Commercial Tenancies Protection Act, was tabled in the legislative assembly on Tuesday.

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B.C.’s condo insurance market has left homeowners with an average cost increase of around 40 per cent over the past year while deductibles have skyrocketed, the B.C. Financial Services Authority has found.

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A draft master plan for the former Kapyong barracks proposes the long-vacant expanse of south Winnipeg land be revived as an integrated, mixed-use urban village. Treaty One Development Corporation released its proposed master plan for the 160 acres on Wednesday.

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Construction is expected to start this fall on the first hub dedicated to Indigenous people in Toronto — a five-building complex including a 35,000-square-foot centre for Anishnawbe Health Toronto (AHT) on the West Don Lands east of downtown.

Centurion REIT

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SmartStop Self Storage REIT, Inc., with approximately $1.6 billion of self-storage assets under management, has fully opened its 12th wholly owned location in the Greater Toronto Area. The ground-up, four-storey development is located at 69 Torbarrie Rd. in North York.

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As of June 16, WPT Industrial REIT (WIR-U-T) has received over 99% of contractual rents for April and May 2020 and over 98% of contractual rents for June. The REIT has yet to agree to any deferral of tenant rent related to COVID-19.

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Boardwalk Real Estate Investment Trust (BEI-UN-T) announced Calgary-based AI analytics company White Whale has chosen Boardwalk’s recently renovated office space at its O’Neil Tower Community in Calgary as its new 2,800-square-foot home.

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A sad, near-empty screen shows just two daily arriving flights at the Calgary International Airport’s international terminal. The airy concourse, opened less than four years ago to accommodate growing throngs of passenger traffic, is now almost completely devoid of people.

SVN - Affordable Housing

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Industry leaders are completely rethinking the concept of built spaces in the post-COVID-19 world. The four-part Lifescape, Untethered from Place series was presented by the Institute for Lifescape by Kasian Architecture, in association with the Urban Land Institute, Alberta.

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Global real estate investment manager Rockpoint Group has raised $5.8 billion for two of its U.S. funds – its Rockpoint Real Estate Fund VI and the lower-risk Rockpoint Growth and Income Real Estate Fund III (RGI III) fund.

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According to a survey released Monday, chief financial officers are targeting real estate expenses for further cost cuts heading into the second half of the year in the latest indication that the expansion of remote work is here to stay.

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Hong Kong’s commercial real estate market is expected to be hobbled by uncertainty surrounding the controversial security law, with transactions already growing at the slowest pace since the global financial crisis, analysts said.

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MAP: As the calendar switches to warmer tides, PadMapper is reporting rent throughout the country has been “faced with downward pressure” in a post-COVID world, and the apartment-hunting website says the trend “will only continue in the coming months.”

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More houses are selling in Toronto and surrounding Ontario cities without reaching the public marketplace. Some buyers are brave enough to purchase a house before they’ve set foot inside. Unique conditions are popping up in written offers.

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Canadian home prices rose in May, led by the Ottawa-Gatineau and Toronto markets, but underlying numbers reflected a slowing in the housing market following measures taken to help contain the coronavirus pandemic, data showed on Wednesday.

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The legal war between New York City and Airbnb has finally reached a truce. Airbnb will hand over information on some of its hosts each quarter and agree to drop its federal lawsuit against Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration.

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