Constitution Square sale largest in Ottawa’s history

Constitution Square sale largest in Ottawa’s history

Greystone Managed Investments, Canderel and Canstone Realty Advisors closed the largest real estate transaction in Ottawa’s history Monday, buying the Constitution Square downtown office complex for $480 million. Regina-based Greystone becomes the majority owner of the three-building complex, while Montreal’s Canderel will take on the roles of property and leasing manager and Toronto-based Canstone will act as asset manager of the 1.06-million-square-foot space.

Ottawa Business Journal – Property Biz Canada – Marketwired – Globe Newswire

Calgary approves Eau Claire redevelopment plans

Ten years after the City of Calgary sold the Eau Claire site, council has approved a long-awaited plan to redevelop the area once seen as a jewel of the downtown core. Council gave the green light Monday to a multi-use redevelopment plan that will include five towers, 1,000 residential units, a hotel and an office building on the 2.1-million-square-foot site along the Bow River.

Calgary Herald – CBC

Vancouver developers bullish on Calgary’s recovery

Calgary’s real estate market has taken a hit over the last few years due to a vicious economic downturn, but Vancouver developers remain bullish about the Alberta city’s long-term prospects. Firms such as Bosa Development, Anthem / Anthem United and Hungerford Properties continue to create new projects in the city, see steady growth in the market, and are well positioned to lead an eventual resurgence.

Property Biz Canada

President says Flames will not pursue new arena in Calgary

The president of the Calgary Sports and Entertainment Corporation — which oversees the Calgary Flames, Stampeders, Hitmen and Roughnecks — says the group is dropping its plan for a new arena. Ken King says the group is no longer in talks with the city after an owners’ meeting Tuesday that included NHL commissioner Gary Bettman. 

CBC – Globe and Mail – CTV – Calgary Herald

Ice District ‘like nothing in North America’: Katz Group

Construction work at the Ice District, Canada’s largest mixed-use sports and entertainment district, is busy. Very busy. And that brings a lot of joy to Glen Scott, president of Katz Group Real Estate. “There is nothing like this in North America or the world that I’ve seen,” Scott said. Scott said demand has been strong right across the board for all its real estate products.

Edmonton Journal – CBC – Global News – Marketwired

Tech tenant eyed for Vancouver’s Bentall III tower

U.S. shared-workspace firm WeWork Cos. Inc. has leased 80,000 square feet across five floors at Bentall III, and four of those floors – or about 64,000 square feet – are for a single company. Speculation will soon end as to whether the company is Amazon, Microsoft or some other firm, but word on the street pegs the tenant as a tech firm.

Business In Vancouver

Vancouver hotel room demand will keep industry growing

Robust demand and revenue at Vancouver’s hotels this year suggests that the downtown core is ready for more hotel rooms, say commercial real estate and tourism stakeholders. The hotel industry in Canada’s largest cities has become the envy of commercial asset classes, according to a new report by Cushman and Wakefield, which noted a 11.3 per cent year-to-date rise in total room revenue nationwide.

Vancouver Province – Property Biz Canada – Property Biz Canada

PROREIT buys Halifax retail property

PRO Real Estate Investment Trust  (PRV.UN-X) has added to its East Coast portfolio with a binding agreement to purchase an $8.2 million retail site in Halifax. The property, at 165 Chain Lake Drive, is fully leased to a single national retail tenant on a long-term lease. Closing is expected prior to month end. The purchase price represents a going-in capitalization rate of seven per cent, rising to 7.6 per cent in 2018.

Property Biz Canada – Property Biz Canada – Property Biz Canada – Property Biz Canada

BTB announces sale of Laval property

BTB Real Estate Investment Trust (BTB.UN-T), further to the conclusions of its strategic review of its portfolio, announces the sale of a property located at 1125-1135 St-Martin Blvd. West in Laval in the province of Québec, for total proceeds of $2.625 million. The net proceeds will be mainly allocated to fund future accretive acquisitions in its strategic markets. 

Canada Newswire – Property Biz Canada – Property Biz Canada

Slate Retail buys Pennsylvania’s West Valley Marketplace

Slate Retail REIT (SRT.U-T), an owner and operator of U.S. grocery-anchored real estate, announced a binding agreement to acquire West Valley Marketplace for US$34.5 million ($133 per square foot). The Walmart-anchored property is 96 per cent occupied and is located in the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton Metropolitan Statistical Area. Closing is expected to be completed in the Q3 2017. 

Marketwired – Property Biz Canada

Vancouver developers cash in on community gardens

Temporary gardens, and sometimes parks, have popped up throughout Vancouver, usually in places undergoing densification, around Olympic Village or the downtown core. The Davie Village Community Garden at Burrard and Davie streets is owned by Prima Properties, which plans to build a mixed-use tower on the site. London Drugs Ltd. has a community garden next to its store on East Hastings Street.

BCBusiness

	U.S. hurricanes’ impact on real estate
	The following section of the RENX newsletter is dedicated to news about Hurricanes Harvey and Irma in the U.S. and its impact on real estate.

 

Canadians attempting to assess damage to Florida homes

Many Canadians who own property in Florida are taking on the difficult task of assessing the damage left behind by Hurricane Irma from as many as 2,000 kilometres away. As the storm churns towards the northeast U.S., the cleanup in most of Florida is just beginning. Many who have no idea what damage the storm did to their residences are Canadian snowbirds.

CBC – CNBC – CP Executive – Globe and Mail

Canada’s not ready for a future of massive storms

Perhaps the most important way to capture the devastation of the latest storms isn’t the image of a survivor, a rescuer or the seemingly floating roofs of homes. It’s an insurance graph. In both Canada and the U.S., the visual is stark: a clear, curving line of catastrophic ($25 million or greater) losses from natural disasters headed in only one direction: up.

Maclean’s

City Office REIT reports minimal damage

City Office REIT, Inc. (CIO-N) announced it has completed its preliminary assessment at its Tampa and Orlando properties and they have incurred only minimal damage as a result of Hurricane Irma. The company expects all damage will be insurable under its insurance policies subject to a standard deductible.

PRNewswire

Microsoft president views Vancouver as a second home

Microsoft president Brad Smith says the technology company anticipates growing beyond the 750 jobs it initially expected to create in Vancouver. Smith said when the company opened its Microsoft Canada Excellence Centre, now named Microsoft Vancouver, in June 2016, it anticipated hiring about 750 employees. Currently, 800 workers are employed across product development, sales and marketing, and retail and office work.

Toronto Star

Amazon weighs Boston in search for second HQ

Several senior Amazon.com Inc. executives advocate putting a second headquarters in Boston, according to a source. Boston is being considered for its proximity to Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an airport with nonstop flights to Seattle and Washington, D.C., and a lower cost of living than many other big cities, said the source.

Bloomberg – Fortune – Calgary Herald

Ottawa-based Shopify conquering digital economy

Shopify (SHOP-T) has become the undisputed Canadian all-star of the digital economy world, creating an e-commerce platform that’s now used by more than 500,000 merchants in 175 countries conducting more than $40 billion in sales. The Ottawa-based company’s Shop Class tour was in Winnipeg last week where it held an interactive workshop for about 100 current and future entrepreneurs.

Winnipeg Free Press – Property Biz Canada

Aritzia rides out stormy retail year with style

The past year was tumultuous in the world of retail. Q1 2017 saw record bankruptcies in the U.S., and in B.C. companies such as Vancouver startup Shoes.com folded and technical clothier Kit and Ace closed down all 26 international stores. But, Vancouver-based Aritzia Inc. was opening new locations, enlarging existing ones and restocking shelves with its coveted women’s clothing.

BCBusiness

Market Trends and Research

Which U.S. office markets offer the best value to investors?

The U.S. office market has gained a lot of momentum over the last eight years, with many markets now reporting low vacancies and record-high rents. The bottom line for investors, however, is each market’s value in terms of return on investment (ROI) relative to pricing. A new report from Situs RERC, a global research and advisory firm, analyzed U.S. primary, secondary and tertiary office markets.

National Real Estate Investor

Real Estate Companies

Home Capital plans to keep rebuilding after Buffett rejected

Home Capital Group Inc. (HCG-T) officials pledged to continue rebuilding the battered mortgage lender Tuesday after shareholders overwhelmingly rejected a second investment in the company by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway at a price below the current share value. Only 11.21 per cent of votes cast were in favour of the additional investment of nearly $247 million, which would have boosted Buffett’s stake to 38.4 per cent from 19.9. 

Financial Post

Real Estate Investment Trusts

Keep a close eye on Inovalis REIT

Inovalis Real Estate Investment Trust (INO.UN-T) has a forecast total return of more than 14 per cent (including its eight  per cent yield). In the near-term, the unit price could retreat and fall below the $10 price level, trading back into its historical trading band. From 2013, until recent months, the unit price has been locked in a trading range, trading largely between $8.70 and $10.

Globe and Mail (Subscription required)

Buy Dream Global and gain exposure to the German market

Dream Global REIT (DRG.UN-T) provides a means to  gain exposure to real estate in the fastest-growing G7 economy and also earn a yield that is often well over seven per cent. Dream Global’s portfolio is spread across key German cities, including Hamburg, Hanover, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Nuremberg, Munich, Stuttgart, and Frankfurt, with an additional holding in Vienna. 

Motley Fool

U.S. investors find bigger returns in alternative property sectors

Investors searching for alpha returns in a maturing real estate cycle are looking beyond the mainstream REITs to some of the outliers, such as data centres, cell towers and manufactured housing. “We’re seeing a lot of non-core REIT sector outperformance,” says Haendel St. Juste, senior REIT analyst at Mizuho Securities USA.

National Real Estate Investor

Retail

Sears Canada pensioners still fighting for payout

A motion to wind up the Sears Canada pension fund was postponed on Tuesday, but Ontario Superior Court Justice Glenn Hainey also ordered that other creditors in the company’s insolvency are not to be paid until the issue is addressed. “There shall be no distributions to other creditors . . . prior to the final determination of the Wind Up Motion,” Hainey wrote in the order.

Toronto Star

Whole Foods price cuts brought jump in shoppers

Amazon.com Inc.’s splashy takeover of Whole Foods, complete with deep price cuts, did more than bring a surge of publicity to the chain: It boosted customer traffic by 25 per cent, according to Foursquare Labs Inc. The data, culled from shoppers’ mobile devices, was compared with the same period a week earlier.

Bloomberg

More U.S. retail stores will open than close In 2017

The kind of store that’s opening now is different.  The most significant closings are due primarily to the Radio Shack bankruptcy and the closure of a lot of fashion stores. The fashion-related vacancies you’re seeing are dominating the list of store closures. You could blame technology for that, but that wouldn’t be entirely fair. It’s more fair to say technology accelerated the decline of retailers who have not been in touch with what their consumers wanted.

Forbes

Sports Venues

Mid-size, multi-use arenas setting a trend for the future

The 3,800-seat Covelli Multi-Sport Arena at The Ohio State University will not take the place of the Schottenstein Center, where 19,500 can watch a basketball game. What it will do is provide a home for wrestling, volleyball and gymnastics, while also allowing for lectures, concerts, banquets, academic college’s graduation, and similar campus events.

Building Design & Construction

Other

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