Worldview International

Worldview: Canada

The new year is looking up for the Canadian commercial real estate market, with a 14.6 percent quarter-over-quarter increase in 3Q2020, according to CBRE’s Canada Investment MarketView 3Q2020. The report notes that “bid depth and interest in new listings have mounted significantly as more firms have returned to the table looking for new opportunities and upcoming periods are poised to be significantly more robust than those immediately following the pandemic.”

Multifamily and industrial sectors continue to lead the pack in investment volume, followed closely by industrial, commercial, institutional land. Not so surprisingly, Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal were far and away the top three epicenters of investment.

Looking at investor breakdown, private Canadian investors remained the dominant player in this market, accounting for 50.5 percent of acquisition volume in 3Q2020. The rest of the top four investor groups were private equity firms with 17.2 percent, REIT/REOCs with 14.2 percent, and pension fund/advisors with 11.4 percent. Foreign investors ramped up their activity in 3Q2020 with 5.8 percent, up from less than 1 percent in 2Q2020

With trends like these, combined with a sizeable amount of investable capital and listing activities on the rise, the future of commercial real estate in Canada looks bright for 2021.