Economic fallout from COVID-19 is shifting more of the tax burden to this flourishing group of assets via the mill rate, while also driving up the tax rate, for a double-whammy of consequences in jurisdictions that update valuations annually.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Commercial real estate investors, owners and managers are acknowledging that entrenched social inequities undermine their workforces, their tenants and the value of their portfolios.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.