Christina Iacoucci, BGO’s newly named head of Canada and Canadian chief investment officer, wants to make it better known that the real estate firm is a leading third-party property manager in Canada.

About 40 per cent of the 64 million square feet of real estate assets BGO has under management in Canada is related to third-party mandates, “which I think is a lesser-known fact to a lot of people.”

BGO has launched BGO Properties, a new branding strategy for its property management division to help people understand the firm provides the service, Iacoucci told RENX in an exclusive interview about her expanded role with the firm.

“We were very well known in the Canadian marketplace for doing property management (and) leasing development, but I think the part that was less understood was that people just believe that that was for our own accounts.”

Iacoucci's priorities for BGO

Boosting awareness of its property management division is just one of the areas on which Iacoucci plans to focus in her new position.

BGO has had a head of Canada before, but Iacoucci says her position is new in that it combines the head of Canada and chief investment officer roles. She became Canadian chief investment officer in 2021.

She has three decades of experience in the industry, most of it at BGO, its predecessor BentallKennedy and parent firm SunLife. Her experience in the company spans over 20 years in a series of increasingly senior roles. 

Iacoucci has also been involved in numerous industry associations including as a director and 2023 president of NAIOP in the Greater Toronto Area.

Iacoucci will continue to lead BGO’s Canadian investment management business with expanded responsibility for the firm’s property management and leasing services businesses.

She also plans to draw upon what she calls the strengths and advantages of BGO’s vertically integrated platform which includes investment management and advisory services, asset management, real estate development and construction management, leasing, operations and financial management, property management and ESG strategy.

The head of Canada role “is really meant to seamlessly integrate these various disciplines across our platform,” which Iacoucci calls “our secret sauce.”

With more than 1,000 employees across Canada, BGO’s boots on the ground provide “instant intelligence on what's happening in the markets and really enables us to stay ahead of the curve on the changing dynamics that we see in the real estate market.”

BGO's investment management platform

Iacoucci also plans to broaden and strengthen BGO’s investment management platform by growing its number of JV partnerships, its debt solutions business and its recently launched value-add strategy.

BGO will increase JV partnerships “that we feel are scalable” and “in niche areas where bringing together the best in class in any given specialty would help advance what we're doing for our clients.”

There are opportunities in the value-add space in Canada, “especially if you have dry powder today,” she says.

“We're seeing this very large imbalance between the shallow buyer pool and highly motivated sellers and pockets of distress.”  

BGO sees opportunities in older residential properties that are not institutionally owned and that require capital, and in non-institutionally owned inner-city industrial buildings with below-market rents, she says.  

In addition, Iacoucci aims to develop BGO’s talent base and next generation of leadership. She says most of the company’s leadership is intentionally homegrown so that organizational knowledge can be kept in-house.

The goal is to have “an engaged, diverse workforce that can flourish in an environment which encourages people to bring their true selves to work.”

Iacoucci says BGO has about 25 million square feet in its development pipeline in Canada, and “some great assets right now under development,” including the just-completed and fully leased 32-storey B6 office building at 1090 W. Pender St. in Vancouver.

She’s also bullish about the Fifth Line Business Park, a nearly one-million-square-foot industrial project in the Greater Toronto Area town of Milton, for which leasing is underway.

“We built one of the assets fully net zero in that complex and the other assets net zero ready and those are just coming online now,” she says.

“We're very excited about our ability to bring something like that to the market and test what the reaction is to a fully net-zero building versus a net-zero-ready building.”

Iacoucci looks ahead to 2024

Canada’s industrial real estate market will continue to be strong this year, but income growth will slow, Iacoucci predicts.

She notes that all the industrial construction underway still represents less than three per cent of the total inventory.

“There’s still an imbalance there, so I do think it will continue to be an area of strength for the Canadian market.”

While the office sector remains one of the weakest real estate asset classes, “I would say that we're definitely continuing to see this bifurcation between best-in-class and everything else.

“People want to be in buildings that are highly accessible, that have all of the ESG factors that they're interested in. Those assets will continue to have a place in people’s portfolios and will continue to sustain over the longer term.”

However, older B- and C-class suburban assets will continue to struggle, she says.

Canada’s housing crisis will endure, she says, as the country’s lengthy permitting process “means it’s going to take us a very long time to actually correct the situation.”

Iacoucci says many of BGO’s Canadian clients “continue to be eager to grow” their multifamily portfolios and have increased their exposure to the asset class “pretty significantly over the past couple of years.”

“That’s an area we’re going to continue to focus on for current clients and we’re seeing clients even outside of Canada interested in that strategy as well.”

Iacoucci says the prospect of lower interest rates this year should increase real estate activity and help make it easier to price assets.

However, “it’s not really going to change our approach and strategies,” she says. “We were anticipating that (lower interest rates) would be coming and we’ve had dry powder and clients who are interested in continuing to invest.”