Downtown Mtl. will be in ‘enviable situation’ post-COVID

RENX  Residential, Commercial  •  Office, Retail, Apartments, Condominiums  •  Greater Montreal

Although Montreal’s downtown is going through tough times like most urban cores around the world, “it is holding its own” and should soon be on the road to recovery post-pandemic.

Mini Mall Storage tops $100M in assets in its first year

RENX  Commercial  •  Industrial, Investment  •  Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba

Calgary-based Mini Mall Storage Properties, under the Avenue Living Asset Management Ltd. umbrella, began about a year ago with the purchase of an older property in Calgary for $4.8 million, which comprised about 450 units and just under 50,000 square feet.

OverActive Media to build $500M T.O. esports venue

Commercial  •  Sportsnet  •  The Verge  •  PR Newswire

OverActive Media — the Toronto-based ownership group of esports teams Toronto Defiant, Toronto Ultra and MAD Lions — announced a new $500-million, 7,000-seat entertainment facility is slated to be erected on the Exhibition grounds in Toronto, with an expected completion date of 2025.

2.9M-sq.-ft. development proposed in Richmond

Residential  •  Daily Hive

Westgem Communities Development has proposed more than a dozen Richmond buildings reaching up to mid-rise heights with a total residential floor area of 2.9 million square feet across 20 acres, making the master-planned community nearly 2.5 times larger than Vancouver’s Olympic Village.

HBC plans 25-storey office tower above Mtl. store

Commercial  •  Montreal Gazette  •  Retail Insider  •  La Presse

La Baie wants to build a 25-storey office tower above its downtown Montreal location. The department store would be partially demolished to make room for the project, but the century-old part of the building would be restored.

Concert’s huge waterfront project in Van. underway

Residential, Commercial  •  Western Investor

A decade after planning began and seven years since it was approved, Concert Properties has started its North Harbour waterfront development in North Vancouver, the largest city project in decades. North Harbour will begin with the development of four buildings.

Sponsored by Lockourier Canada Helping kids and communities continue learning + over 100 million deliveries

Don’t count the days, make the days count, Muhammad Ali. That was a hard lesson learned for many people in 2020. That year is now done. We have not forgotten. It was a time for coming together as families and communities.

Van. industrial vacancy rate flirting with zero: CBRE

Commercial  •  Western Investor  •  RENX

The industrial real estate vacancy rate in Metro Vancouver, which is already in the sub-one per cent level in four municipalities, will soon fall below one per cent across the entire region, which is unprecedented, according to a CBRE forecast.

Levante acquires three senior living properties

Residential  •  Canada Newswire

Levante Living Trust, a Canadian mutual fund trust focused on senior housing in North America, announced it has completed the acquisition of three additional senior assisted living properties in Brantford, London and Welland, Ont., in a transaction of over $35 million.

Avenue Living repurposes Alta. shopping centre

Commercial  •  Retail Insider  •  RENX

Leasing efforts and strategy are focused on repositioning Calgary-based Avenue Living Asset Management‘s Wetaskiwin Mall by creating a community hub with medical-related and entertainment/experiential-related tenants, according to Ben Volorney, principal with Avison Young, which is leasing the shopping centre.

Queen’s Park approved deal for disputed T.O. land

Commercial  •  CBC

The Ford government approved a closed-door deal in September to sell Toronto’s Dominion Wheel and Foundries property, which is at the centre of a dispute over heritage value. The government won’t disclose the prospective buyer’s identity or the purchase price.

Van. permit systems need urgent rework: Councillors

Residential, Commercial  •  Globe and Mail

Fixing Vancouver’s broken development-approval and business-permitting systems needs to be a top priority for a soon-to-be-hired city manager, said many councillors after they spent last week dealing with a flood of stories about city-hall dysfunction.

PSP invests in U.S. private prison providers

Commercial  •  Toronto Star

In the last half of 2020, the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP) bought more than 600,000 shares of CoreCivic and the Geo Group, two of the largest providers of private prisons, jails and immigration detention centres in the United States.

Texas CRE powerless in face of system failures

Commercial  •  Bisnow

Texas CRE developers say they were helpless against the failure of multiple systems. “I don’t know what we could do, individually or at a property level, that would have changed anything,” De La Vega Development‘s Artemio De La Vega said.

Rock bottom for NYC real estate could be long way off

Residential  •  Bloomberg  •  New York Post  •  Architectural Digest

Rents in Manhattan and Brooklyn had the steepest year-over-year drop on record in January, according to StreetEasy, with Manhattan rents slipping 15.5% and Brooklyn rents down 8.6%. Home prices in January also fell a precipitous 6.2% in Manhattan and 5.4% in Brooklyn.

Hong Kong homes least affordable, Van. second-worst

Residential  •  Vancouver Sun

Hong Kong remained the world’s least affordable housing market for the 11th year. The Asian hub topped Vancouver, Sydney and Auckland as the most unaffordable residential market in the world, says Urban Reform Institute and Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

Monthly rent in Toronto expected to rise 4% in 2021

Residential  •  Daily Hive

According to a new report released by Rentals.ca, although rent prices will likely continue to fall for the first few months of the year, by the end of 2021, rent in Toronto will rise by four per cent.

A peek inside booming Oshawa housing market

Residential  •  RE/MAX blog

Is Oshawa primed to become one of Canada’s hottest housing markets? Statistics Canada reported in January that Oshawa is one of the country’s fastest-growing areas, with its population increasing more than two per cent over the past year.

Penticton council rejects 300-home development

Residential  •  CBC

Penticton city council has unanimously rejected Canadian Horizons‘ rezoning application to build 300 detached homes on the Naramata Bench, a 160-acre area of the southern Okanagan known for its vineyards and orchards.

T.O. falls behind on building homes for transit riders

Residential, Commercial  •  NOW Magazine  •  Daily Hive

Over the past three decades, Toronto dips way below other Canadian cities such as Montreal and Vancouver when it comes to building housing near transit lines, according to a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation new housing market insight report.