Barbara Carss
Canadian Property Management
Fossil fuel fortunes burn Calgary
Reflecting on a year in which the pandemic unsettled market fundamentals to the east and to the west, Calgary-based analysts focus more on tangential circumstances than the COVID-19 outbreak itself.
Canadian Property Management
New office supply poses backfill challenges
An influx of new office supply was always expected to shake up the status quo in the downtown Toronto market given that approximately two-thirds of the 8+ million square feet of space currently under construction is already preleased.
Canadian Apartment Magazine
New fee model for Ontario elevator licenses
The flat license rate will penalize mid-rise and high-rise owners with extra costs if an elevator passes the periodic inspection and does not require a follow-up. It will be a bargain if just one follow-up inspection is required.
Canadian Property Management
Climate risk infuses investment agendas
Canadian commercial real estate assets are comparatively less exposed to the dire physical threats that extreme weather poses or has already served up in other global regions.
Canadian Property Management
COVID-19 clips 2020 investment performance
A ten-year run of capital growth abruptly reversed, resulting in a 7.8 per cent loss of value across the 2,356 assets that the 44 portfolios represented in the Canada Annual Property Index hold.
Canadian Apartment Magazine
Multifamily assets surpass 2020 index average
Newly released 2020 investment results find industrial and multifamily assets on the positive side of the national average total return for 2,356 directly held standing assets, which registered -4.1 per cent.
Canadian Property Management
Cracking through entrenched social inequities
Commercial real estate investors, owners and managers are acknowledging that entrenched social inequities undermine their workforces, their tenants and the value of their portfolios.
Canadian Property Management
Fire code updates demand steady upkeep
Although they increasingly rely on professional service providers to keep up with the complexities of compliance, owners/managers ultimately carry the responsibility for life safety and bear the brunt of enforcement.
REMI Network
REMI Network extends COPA nomination streak
Fittingly for 2020, both nominations for the Canadian Online Publishing Awards are tied to reporting how the property and facilities management sectors responded to the challenges of COVID-19.
Canadian Apartment Magazine
Multifamily energy performance typically vexing
Multifamily and industrial properties are routinely lumped together as favoured investment assets, but asset managers face divergent degrees of difficulty when they seek to mine value from energy performance.
Canadian Property Management
Historic property tax disparity dismantled
As announced in the provincial budget, the Ontario government plans to equalize the business education tax (BET) rate at 0.88 per cent for 2021, equating to a $450-million tax cut province-wide.
Canadian Property Management
Real estate makes space for climate capitalism
The 2020 race2reduce field boasts more than 1,730 buildings encompassing 248 million square feet of space in common areas and tenant premises — an increase from 650 buildings covering 95 million square feet in 2019.
CondoBusiness
Rebate extension postpones hydro cost hit
The six-month extension comes with an improved rate since the discount on pre-tax electricity consumption and transmission/distribution costs will increase to 33.2 per cent on November 1.
Canadian Property Management
Feds to invest $2 billion in energy retrofits
A promised $2 billion investment in large-scale building retrofits will be central to the Canadian government’s job creation ambitions. Energy efficiency champions have plenty of ideas of how and where the funds could be best leveraged.
CondoBusiness
COVID-19 confounds electricity system models
After scrambling to recalibrate their models in the early days of COVID-19-related shutdowns, analysts with Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator faced more uncharted territory when the hot weather arrived.
Canadian Property Management
Ontario capital markets set for rule revamp
Proposals address a range of issues that are likely to be of interest to listed real estate entities and their investors, as well as start-up ventures and other publicly traded service providers to the industry.
Canadian Property Management
Stop-gap September CECRA coverage offered
Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance will be offered for a sixth month. The announcement comes eight days after the portal for new applications for the relief program appeared to be closed.
