Market participants in Canada are boasting a vast commercial real estate market ripe with opportunity. According to various public sources such as Statista, the Canada CRE market is already valued at nearly $2tn and is expected to boast a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of over 2% through 2028. Given such a volatile CAGR, industry leading brands like Green Street are eager to cover the different Canada CRE News stories speaking to this growth. 

In this post, we’ll be covering some of Green Street’s most interesting news stories and decipherable trends in Canada’s commercial real estate space focused on two different sectors – Industrial and Multi-family. And as the title implies, there is a certain “yin and yang,” for these two very differently performing sectors.  

Industrial Availability Yin 

Availability is on the rise in the Canada Industrial sector and many others. For the Industrial sector, specifically, availability has recently climbed over 5% as Green Street has covered in recent stories. But as supply begins to catch up with a previously sky-rocketed demand, there are now implications of the vast discrepancy beginning to close out in the sector (across multiple markets).  

Large portfolios have been purchased recently such as Epic, Woodbourne purchasing their new Montreal industrial portfolio in order to take advantage of this newly opened up availability. This could very well be a sign of new opportunities to come. It's an interesting opportunity to see what the implications of rent rates could be for the Canada CRE market in general as the supply/demand window begins to close. Seeing that other large-form investors are making moves in the great white north, it’s worth participants from the public or private market at least paying attention to what’s happening in Canadian markets if it fits into your investment strategy.  

Multi-Family Availability Yang  

Multi-Family supply has been stifled as of late in multiple Canadian markets. Due to a lack of affordable housing and an equal lack in legislation dedicating funds to support new builds, the ability to acquire funding has been very hampered. This legislative gap has left many incomplete builds over the past 2 years, and many remain unfinished to this day given the unfavorable financing conditions. Because of this, demand is steadily outpacing supply.  

On top of this, as spoken to at the Western Canada Apartment Investment Conference, there has been an influx of inbound migration into Canada leading to an even further growing demand. Within this context there has been a lack of pre-construction purchases because incoming residents tend to rent before buying. In fact, sales have sunk nearly 45% in Q1 alone for the Canada Multi-Family sector, which could give landlords an opportunity to consider raising rents given spiking demand and low availability. With availability on the rise and the opportunities for divergent investments popping up more and more, large portfolios are being purchased in Canada by multiple firms and real estate investment trusts (REITs).  

Now that demand is likely to continue to climb with no immediate solution for supply, this means an even wider window of opportunity for rental rates to rise.  

Canada Articles 

You can read more of the stories themselves in these recently published Green Street News articles to get a bigger bite of the juicy details dripping from the Canada commercial real estate market:

• Vancouver industrial availability continues to rise: CBRE 
• GTA multifamily sales volume sinks 44.1% in Q1: Colliers 
• Key takeaways from the Western Canada Apartment Investment Conference 
• Epic, Woodbourne purchase Montreal industrial portfolio
• National industrial availability rate climbs to 5.1%: Altus 

Takeaways 

All these stories and more are available via our Green Street News offering which now provides multiple vantage points on the Canada commercial real estate market. Knowing which major actions are taking place in the market and who the key players are signals flags waving that can help give you a contextual and competitive advantage over the market. And when combined with Green Street research/data and our integrated platform of intelligence, the insights only become that much more powerful. 

Learn about Green Street’s Canada News and Research Offering to get access to breaking stories and unbiased data you can trust!