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Pandemic barely dents booming Victoria apartment sector

3 years ago

Despite the pandemic-induced drop in students and out-of-towners, B.C.’s second-largest city is enjoying a residential rental market boom. Victoria’s rental housing is one of its biggest success stories of the last year, said panelists at the Vancouver Real Estate Forum.

American company Zonda has acquired Vancouver-based Urban Analytics to take advantage of each other’s strengths and expand geographically. “There are so many synergies here that it really made sense to do something together,” said Urban Analytics Michael Ferreira.

SmartStop Self Storage REIT has acquired one of the newest and largest self-storage facilities in the Greater Toronto Area with its purchase of 450 Iroquois Shore Rd. in Oakville.

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Fan Yang, the Aoyuan International general manager overseeing the five-building, 1,800-unit M2M condo project at the former Newtonbrook Plaza site in North York, says the development addresses a major “gap” in housing in Toronto — a shortage of family-oriented units.

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Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s pandemic budget includes an extension of wage and rent subsidies through to September, $100 billion of new stimulus money for housing, transit and green technology, and sets the stage for a national $10-a-day child-care program.

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The B.C. government is investing $2 billion in a low-interest loan program for builders of affordable housing.  Housing Minister David Eby said Thursday the financing will be offered to private developers and community groups through the province’s HousingHub program, a division of B.C. Housing.

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Loblaw Cos. Ltd.’s (L-T) board chose to scale back the benefits to its executives from the sales boom, while Canadian Tire Corp. Ltd. (CTC-T) allowed its plan to pay out maximums for the COVID-19-boosted revenue.

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Executive bonuses rose last year at Chartwell Retirement Residences (CSH-UN-T) as the company said it responded effectively to the COVID-19 pandemic and gave itself perfect scores for employee engagement, customer satisfaction and its reputation with the public.

Hersh Condos

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Six months after joining MEC, president and chief operating officer Jay Taylor and three other new executives are in the midst of a turnaround plan. It is not the first one attempted at the beleaguered retailer.

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Architecture studio 5468796′s 62M is one of Winnipeg’s most surprising new condo complexes: A disk-shaped building that rises on concrete stilts in an industrial area. (Its name comes from its address, 62 MacDonald Ave.)

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When Sohel Imani went looking for a second location for his bike shop in Toronto’s West End, he knew he’d be able to leverage the city’s current commercial rental market with dozens of storefronts sitting empty in any given neighbourhood.

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The Ontario government has issued a list of construction projects and activities considered essential under expanded emergency orders including services associated with the health care sector or long-term care, including new facilities, expansions, renovations and conversion of spaces.

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Highwoods Properties, Inc. (HIW-N) has agreed to acquire four class-A office assets in Charlotte and Raleigh, N.C., and one mixed-use redevelopment site in Atlanta from Preferred Apartment Communities, Inc. (APTS-N) for $964 million Cdn.

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Kroger was late to embrace the web’s potential, but under pressure from Amazon’s arrival in the category and Walmart’s massive investments, CEO Rodney McMullen is now overseeing a bold wager on robotics that the company lifer needs to get right.

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CoreCivic (CXW-N) and GEO Group (GEO-N), the two U.S. REITs that dominate the private prison sector, have ceased paying out dividends while each has put out a statement saying they are “evaluating its structure as a REIT.”

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$14.2 billion Cdn was invested in German commercial real estate in Q1 2021, 30 per cent below the five-year average. “The start of 2021 has been characterised by a cautious attitude from several owners,” says Savills CEO Germany Marcus Lemli.

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Canadian housing starts rose 21.6 per cent month-over-month in March, easily beating expectations and setting a record, data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) showed on Monday. The seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts rose to 335,200 units.

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Homes are no longer just a place to retire after work and sleep. They have become workplaces for millions during COVID-19, daycares for their young children and schools for those who pursue online learning, either by choice or force.

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The real estate market is booming in parts of Quebec, and Damien Meunier, a RE/MAX real estate agent focused on the Brossard area, said he’s met more and more retirees who are thinking of changing from owning to renting.

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VIDEO: Glenn Fogel, CEO of Booking.com, speaks about the state of the travel and tourism industry amid the pandemic.

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