Month: December 2020

A lot has changed since 2014.

A quarter of offices in Calgary were vacant in Q4-2020, according to a new report—vastly above the 10.8% nationwide vacancy rate.

Colliers Canada’s report attributed the rise in Canada-wide vacancies to increasing downtown sublets, but it also noted that, at $17.72 per square foot, the average net asking office rent this quarter was the highest it’s been since Q4-2019. Still, the report stated that office attendance in Canada’s downtowns is below 15%, and around 30% in suburban areas.

At 4.9%, Vancouver had the country’s lowest vacancy rate for office space in Q4-2020. However, sublet space increased by 350,000 sq ft and, compared to the suburbs, the downtown is suffering, according to Colliers. Landlords in the city haven’t given up much, but they’re willing to negotiate with tenants. Nevertheless, until a COVID-19 vaccine is distributed, not much will change.

Alberta had Canada’s highest vacancy rates. Calgary topped all major Canadian markets at 25.7%, although Colliers says that will likely decrease if the COVID-19 vaccine is successfully rolled out, followed by Edmonton at 17.6%.

“A majority of recent transactions in the Calgary office market have been shorter-term deals below 10,000 sq ft, however, some tenants with longer outlooks continue to vaccine rollout has increased office leasing interest, with the majority of tenants expecting to return to the office.”

Edmonton reported negative net absorption this quarter—although that comes with a caveat: two of the biggest transactions were relocations within the same building, which resulted in negative absorption—and with increased sublease space, leasing activity moderated.

In Winnipeg, Class A buildings are in demand among tenants, especially ones with free parking, and have experienced, both in downtown and the suburbs, positive absorption. On the other hand, B and C buildings saw negative absorption in Q4, says Colliers.

Toronto’s office vacancy rate increased in Q4 because of rising downtown sublets, and while average rents in the city’s core declined, rents in the suburbs managed to hold. Nevertheless, new premium space infused the downtown market and brought the GTA’s average rent up.

Leasing activity in Montreal is on the rise, although there’s a total of 1.4 million sq ft of office sublet space and landlords have been doling out concessions to tenants. A trend of tenants extending their leases on shorter terms also began in the fourth quarter, according to the report.

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Home insurance claims have declined substantially in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and related mobility restrictions, says a new report.

HelloSafe estimates that $1.1 billion worth of insurance claims has been saved in Canada this year, with $439 million in Ontario alone, because strict and soft lockdown measures have meant more time spent at home.

In Ontario, incidents related to theft and burglaries—for which claims have fallen by 14.2% this year—fire and water damage—which decreased by 11.95% and 13.3%, respectively—decreased, and as a result, home insurance claims dropped by 10.67% across the province.

However, accidental damage has increased by 12.4% because, says HelloSafe’s Antoine Fruchard, spending more time at home, as most Canadians have this year, raises the likelihood of mishaps occurring.

“Indeed, our numbers show that domestic incidents increased with people spending more time at home,” said Fruchard, HelloSafe’s CEO. “All the other types of claims have gone down, whether being related to water, fire, burglary or other causes. While being home, people can prevent such events from occurring. For example, water leaks could be fixed very quickly with the families at home, when in normal times there could be hours until someone gets to the house and calls for repair work. It is therefore logical to see home insurance claims decrease all along 2020.”

That doesn’t mean the price of premiums will drop, though. Prices have risen steadily in recent years because, according to the insurance industry, severe weather events like flooding now occur with greater frequency, and even intensity. In light of insurers’ savings on claim payouts this year, premiums shouldn’t rise in 2021, and Fruchard even believes bargains could be had.

“Home insurance savings in Canada, thanks to COVID-19, should not be considered alone. Insurance savings in Canada over 2020 have been even greater in regards to car insurance and health insurance. Considering those overall savings made by the insurance industry in Canada—which amounts to billions of dollars—Canadians could be entitled to claim bargains in 2021.”

Ontario’s savings topped all Canadian provinces, followed by Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta, which respectively saved $263 million, $146.7 million and $130.4 million.

“The Greater Toronto Area accounts alone for around $200 million of the savings in payouts made over Ontario in 2020 by the home insurance industry,” said the report. “Then, the cities of Ottawa ($32.1 million saved) and Hamilton ($17.7 million) rank second and third in the ranking of cities in Ontario where home insurance savings have been the highest.”

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Condo sellers in cities like Toronto and Vancouver benefited from supply scarcity for years, but the coronavirus crisis effectively has turned the tables on them. While more challenging, there are still ways to sell these units and maximize sale prices.

“I put 200% effort in and make sure all the problems in the unit are fixed, like that little hole in the wall or faulty tap faucet, and I make no mistakes in staging the unit,” said the head of the Norman Xu Team at Royal LePage Signature Realty. “I follow up with every visitor, whether my own clients or another buyer’s agent, about how they felt about the unit, its price—everything.”

The condo segment of Canada’s largest real estate market has become languid—a consequence of the deluge of short-term rental units that entered the long-term rental pool following a municipal regulatory regime, and because people fled Toronto’s downtown core when the pandemic began for reasons ranging from job loss and fear of contagion to international students no longer having reason to stay. In a market with so much competition and so few renters, Xu says paid advertising guarantees much needed extra exposure.

“I spend a good amount of money on paid ads, including on YouTube and Facebook,” he said. “I sold a $1.5 million penthouse unit overlooking Lake Ontario that way, and there were no comparables in that building. Paid ads attract more traffic from not only local people, but investors from outside of the country, and I also promote the listings to the realtor community. Realtors know the market and have better expectations.”

Units that are difficult to sell, and that could even be priced below the average benchmark price for good reason, shouldn’t be neglected. If anything, says Xu, they might require extra attention, and although client expectations must be managed at the outset, where there’s a will there’s a way.

“We cannot give up, and we should not give up. I have a team member there to help with each showing of the unit, and it’s very time and energy consuming, but I always send my own people there to make sure everything works smoothly.”

Social media is another tool to be harnessed. According to Cecilia Dapice, a sales agent with Connect.ca Realty, listing a unit on the MLS, especially in a soft market, doesn’t much optimize its sale potential when other platforms with broader audiences exist.

“Have your unit all over the internet, like on social media apps and create websites and landing pages for specific listings,” she said. “People always want to look at beautiful homes on social media, so the more views you get, the more interest you get. You get maximum exposure online.”

YouTube, in particular, can be used to generate interest by posting walking tours of the home and then listing every salient detail from upgrades and features to nearby amenities—including transit and grocery stores—and the price point.

“TikTok is a huge platform where people advertise themselves and their properties,” said Dapice. “It’s the new Instagram—you post short video clips of people walking through homes—and that platform is taking off for realtors because everyone likes looking at beautiful homes, so you can add TikTok reels to Instagram and that way you can get views from both platforms.”

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Canadian landlords have endured a difficult 2020, but there is one metropolis that, according to a Rentals.ca report, is brimming with investment opportunity.

“Montreal is expected to be the top major market in Canada next year with rent growth of 6%, rising from $1,665 per month forecast for December 2020 to $1,760 per month,” the report said. “There is clearly no urban exodus in Montreal despite the strong rent growth in 2019, and the above-inflation increase in 2020, average rents are still relatively affordable in comparison to Vancouver and Toronto.”

In the Montreal region, which Rentals.ca called “a bright spot for landlords in Canada,” rents rose by 9% year-over-year to $1,454 for one-bedrooms in November, although rents were down 1.4% from October. Two-bedroom units in the City of Montreal increased by 5.1% year-over-year to reach $1,889 last month, and also rose by 0.4% from October.

However, if 2020 has been any indication, landlords in the Greater Toronto Area aren’t likely to see rents increase in 2021, at least to start the year.

According to the report, the city’s rents declined for 12 straight months in November, as the infusion of supply into Toronto’s long-term rental pool and a scarcity of renters have softened the market.

A one-bedroom unit in the GTA averaged $1,877 last month, plunging by 19% year-over-year and 2.3% month-over-month, but it’s still the highest in Canada. A two-bedroom unit in the region averaged $2,468, falling by 17.2% from November 2019 and by 2.6% from October.

“The average property for rent in Toronto is now $520 cheaper per month in November of this year compared to November of last year,” said the report. “The average rent dropped by a whopping 20% annually to $2,081 per month, lower than Mississauga. On a per-square-foot basis, the average rent declined from $3.60 PSF to $3.12 PSF, a decline of 13%.”

Short-term rental regulations and a dearth of international students, most of whom fled Canada when the COVID-19 pandemic struck and catalyzed lockdowns, has resulted in a proliferation of condo units in the City of Toronto that has rendered condo rentals the weakest segment of the regional real estate market.

“We’ve monitored the market and, pre-COVID, we had 4,500 rental condos units available in Toronto, and in August the number grew to above 10,000 units,” said Alex Balikoev, senior vice president of sales at Sotheby’s International Realty Canada. “The reasons for that were job losses and a drop in immigration.”

The average rent in Canada, according to Rentals.ca listings, was $1,743 in November, which declined by 9.1% year-over-year and by 2.2% month-over-month.

The average rental price of a one-bedroom unit in Vancouver was $1,865 in November, falling by 5.2% from the same month in 2019, and by 1.9% from a month earlier, while a two-bedroom unit averaged $2,636 last month, which is a 13.8% year-over-year decline and a 2.8% month-over-month drop.

“In November of last year, the average rent in Vancouver for all property types on Rentals.ca increased by 7% annually to $2,507 per month,” said the report. “A year later, the average rent is down 12% year-over-year to $2,216 per month.”

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A new web series exploring white-collar crime in Canada has its sights set on a recent headline-grabbing saga that saw about 14,000 Ontarians bilked out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The series, Capitalisms—which is relying on a GoFundMe page to finance its production—intends to focus its first season, entitled “Fortress,” on the alleged syndicated mortgage fraud perpetrated by Fortress Real Developments, in which its two directors, Jawad Rathore and Vince Petrozza pocketed roughly 17% of $920 million raised, and the toll its taken on investors’ lives. According to a news release, the season will also profile experts and whistleblowers—including Ben Rabidoux who successfully fought a defamation suit by Fortress Real, albeit at a great financial cost he’s yet to recoup—who claim they were bullied with threats and legal intimidation.

Rathore and Petrozza were fined $250,000 in September by the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FSRA), successor to the disbanded Financial Services Commission of Ontario (FSCO) that initiated proceedings.

Bryan Bakker, Capitalisms’ producer and director, wants to highlight how victims of such flagrant crimes are short-shrifted by the legal system.

“This series, more than anything, is about exploring the disparity between the rules for the 1% and the rules for the rest of us; the Capitalisms that divide us,” he said in the release.

David Franklin, a Toronto-based lawyer, has long been critical of the regulatory bodies he believes failed to protect investors from the alleged Fortress Real scam, which he previously told CREW is writ large in the meagre fine the company received.

“That is unbelievable, how in God’s name could they do that? That shows you that even FSRA isn’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing because there should be a major penalty,” said Franklin. “The fine is a joke and it took away their credibility. It’s an insult, given all the stuff that’s been in the media. What’s the purpose of FSRA? It encourages people to commit illegal acts because the penalty was so small.”

A petition is also in circulation to open a provincial inquiry into what it asserts is FSCO’s failed handling of the alleged fraud, noting there was mounting evidence the company exploited syndicated mortgages to enrich its directors, and failure to protect investors.

“[It] demands an independent public inquiry to investigate FSCO’s handling of Fortress and affiliate brokerages for syndicated mortgage complaints and its failed duty to protect the investors,” said Corinne Sutej, a former HR professional living in Ottawa who says she lost $25,000 on a Calgary-based project called The Orchard.

“We’d also like them to investigate the executives, from the top down, of the licencing and market conduct division, the investigative team, their procedures, what their escalation and complaint processes were, risk management, and adherence to legislation,” Sutej added.

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As the saying goes, “There’s no place like home.” Buying your own home ensures both comfort and safety, which is why real estate holds significance for a lot of people. However, even with the recent spike in COVID-19 cases, the real estate market is still hot in Montreal compared to other Canadian cities. 

Montreal’s real estate market has withstood the mounting severity of the pandemic, with property prices growing 12.5%, because people have taken advantage of low-interest rates to upgrade their homes or invest in real estate. Another reason for the growth is the government’s implementation of standard operating procedures, which all Montreal sales agents follow strictly.

How have real estate companies in Montreal handled business amid the pandemic?

The pandemic has destroyed businesses across the world. What’s surprising is that real estate companies in Montreal have still managed to advance sales and have shown excellent growth.

According to Centris statistics, the sales volume is much higher in Q2-2020 than it was in 2019. A major reason is, as the COVID-19 pandemic has helped them realize, people need more space, including for office space inside their homes, and this shift will definitely keep the real estate market hot.

Montreal’s real estate brokerages and sales agents have tweaked how they work and adopted digital signatures, virtual notarization, and virtual property tours. In addition to quickly adapting to digital methods and following all safety precautions, some other reasons for the Montreal market’s performance are:

360-degree virtual tours

In Montreal, agents and brokerages have started working with real estate photographers who have expertise in creating virtual home video tours. These bring property listings to life and help prospective buyers feel the space without actually being physically present there. These 360-degree video tours are very interactive and fully controlled by the viewers, replicating the walk-through experience while keeping agents and buyers safe. 

E-signatures and the end of paperwork

As mentioned earlier, Montreal’s sales agents have adopted digitized methods to facilitate real estate deals. Now all property deals are completed via electronic signatures, which eliminate contact between parties. This mode of signing is legitimate and can be encrypted by a tamper-evident seal. 

Live sessions via Facebook Live and Zoom

To avoid all the fuss, Montreal real estate firms have made things virtual, as face-to-face meetings contravene government-mandated social distancing protocols. Agents in Montreal have been showcasing properties via Facebook and Zoom sessions.

Online notarization 

Realtors in Montreal have started using online notarization methods that eliminate the process of signing in the notary public presence. Now homebuyers connect with the commissioned e-notary public in a couple of minutes through live video calls anytime they want. The whole process takes fewer than five minutes, from connecting the notary public to downloading the final notarized PDF. By using online notarization, real estate companies and agents in Montreal have created happier customers, and it’s resulted in higher sales this year. 

Video channels on YouTube 

Many real estate agents and companies are running channels on YouTube where the public can watch videos about properties’ details. Interested homebuyers now go to viewings without even leaving their own homes.

Private video call meetings

Real estate sales agents in the city are communicating through video calling tools like WhatsApp, Facetime, and Skype, and this eliminates physical contact while providing convenience to clients. 

Final words 

COVID-19 has changed our lives, in some ways for the better, and in others for the worse. However, in Montreal, the real estate industry is still on fire, and it looks like that will continue into 2021.

 

Alp Perez is a broker with Royal LePage.

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The term “foreign buyer” is often used pejoratively in Canada—it’s become synonymous with speculators who have nary a vested interest in the country apart from using empty homes as appreciation vehicles, to the detriment of the domestic population—and it couldn’t be more misguided.

Turns out, many of these new Canadians bolster the national economy in ways few people can, and it isn’t without personal risks, either. Richard Leuce, an immigration consultant with Richard’s Business Immigration Corp., specializes in high-net-worth individuals from South Africa, most of whom yearn to replicate their success in a safer environment.

“South Africa is a beautiful, beautiful country—I fell in love with it the minute I landed there—but it’s not very safe, and a lot of times South Africans, who are ready to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars, are looking for safety,” Leuce told CREW. “My clients’ intents are to become Canadians. Their first language is either English or Afrikaans, and if that’s the case then English is their second language. They seek to become permanent residents as soon as possible; they’re not just coming to buy properties and leave them vacant.”

Leuce primarily works through the Ontario Provincial Nominee Program (PNP), which requires his clients to create business plans, pass interviews with Canadian immigration officials, and take an exploratory trip to the region of the province where they want to set up shop. But Leuce says it isn’t as simple as it sounds.

“After all of the relevant information is submitted, the province gives back a performance agreement, which stipulates that the nominee has two years to meet all requirements, including investing at least $400,000 and creating high-paying jobs,” he said. “They’re not hiring family members; they have to hire Canadian citizens. They invest money and boost the economy here. They did it in South Africa and they want to do the same thing in Canada. They’re active contributors to the economy.”

Among the many innovative ideas from abroad that Leuce has helped turn into Canadian companies is a drone firm that analyses former mining pits for environmental damage. Not all ideas have to be bankrolled by the applicant.

“In a lot of developing economies, you have people with these great, innovative ideas, but who may not have the money,” said Leuce. “You do some matchmaking to help the individual with the idea enter a partnership with a high-net-worth individual already in Canada to bring the idea to fruition using the latter’s money.”

The Canadian government announced in November that it would welcome 1.2 million new immigrants into the country through 2023, 60% of whom Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) described as belonging to the “economic class,” which includes skilled workers, investors and entrepreneurs. But the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic may prove a spanner in the works, warns Leuce, because processing times have already ballooned and the country’s ambitious goal to settle record numbers of immigrants in each of the next three years might not be attainable.

“The second wave will slow everything down. The door is not closed, but there will be a slowdown and it will take a while until the backlog is cleared. I’m curious to see if, in the spring budget, [IRCC] gets additional funding to hire more officers, or gets the money to pay existing officers overtime, because if the agency doesn’t get an increase in its budget, there’s no way things will move along. The spring budget will be the biggest indicator.”

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Sigh a breath of relief, 2020 is almost in the rear-view mirror!

And while a new year typically renews optimism—or in this case, what’s left of it—2021 will bring especially good news for one cohort of homebuyers.

“I think it will be easier for first-time homebuyers to get into the market in 2021,” said James Laird, president of CanWise Financial and co-founder of Ratehub.ca. “First-time homebuyers will have a limited opportunity to enter the housing market, but not in the single-family detached market; it will almost certainly be in the urban condo market. Condos will soften for the first half of the year, but they will stabilize in the second half of the year.”

In other words, the time to act is nigh.

“The last several years, the condo market has been on fire, making it difficult for first-time buyers, but it’s not right now,” added Laird. “It’s better to enter it when it’s weak than when it’s on fire, depending on the person’s life situation, of course.”

First-time buyers in Vancouver and Toronto have been short-shrifted in recent years by runaway housing prices, including in the market’s starter home segment, and while 2020 has been a proverbial kick in our collective teeth, it has proffered opportunity to these buyers. If first-time buyers act quickly heading into 2021 and get prequalified, their prospects will be brighter.

“When you participate in a competitive housing market, you have to be well prepared and organized, which means having a preapproval, and understanding what you can qualify for might allow you to make an offer without financing conditions and that could help you win a bidding war,” said Laird, adding that the door to urban condo markets, like Toronto’s, is wide open.

But that door will begin closing by the second half of 2021. The widening gap between ground-related homes and condos will broaden to the point that the latter will, as they were a few years ago, be people’s only vehicle towards homeownership. Furthermore, just because we’re in the throes of a pandemic and interest rates have fallen—in fact, because rates have plummeted—affordability woes could become more pronounced next year.

“My expectation is fixed rates will be a little higher at the end of 2021 than at the start of it,” said Laird. “As the vaccine rolls out and we return closer to the ‘old world,’ which will bring optimism, bond yields will rise above their current rock bottom levels and cause fixed rates to increase. And because the difference between the average price of a condo and average price of a house is growing, once it reaches a certain level a lot of demand will return to the condo market.”

Timing is key, as well. As the 2020 spring lockdown taught us, minimal market activity created an opening that few took advantage of, and by summer, when Canadians adjusted to the new pandemic-induced normal, the market resumed its barnburner status.

The wild card in 2021 is the COVID-19 vaccine—how quickly it’s distributed and, of course, its efficacy. It will nevertheless take much, if not all, of the upcoming year for normalcy to resume, but, again, if this year has been any indication, the housing market isn’t listening.

But 2021 should also bring other encouraging news, says Laura Martin, chief operating officer of Matrix Mortgage Global. From Ontario’s Fair Housing Plan to the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institution’s B-20 regulatory regime, to even CMHC’s additional stringent qualifications earlier this year, the last three years brimmed with regulation, but buyers should breathe another sigh of relief and expect respite moving forward.

And interest rates will remain at historic lows to buoy the economy, too, added Martin.

“I don’t think there’s going to be any regulatory changes, which have been the main disruptions for a year or two,” she said, noting that homeowners had to qualify at around 4.29% because of the 200-basis point stress test introduced in January 2018. Howvever, not much has changed.

“If your rate is 1.39%, and that’s not going to change for five years, you still have to qualify at 4.29%, even if you are putting more than 20% down.”

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The COVID-19 pandemic has complicated investing in real estate, but not as much as one might think.

Investment in Canada’s industrial sector last quarter hardly declined from the prior-year period, demonstrating that the pandemic hasn’t disrupted all areas of the real estate market.

“National investment volume in the first three quarters of 2020 dropped by 22% compared to the same time last year, with 5,106 transactions totalling $22.8 billion in volume,” said a new report from Altus Group’s Erika Siegert, senior analyst of national research insights. “The industrial sector continued its strong momentum, with 994 transactions making up nearly a quarter of year-to-date transaction totals at $6.5 billion, a drop of only 1% compared to year-to-date volumes last year.”

According to Altus Group’s Ray Wong, vice president of data operations and data solutions, the industrial sector’s availability rate is 1.9% in Toronto, 2.3% in Vancouver, and 3.1% in Montreal, signifying robust demand.

“Industrial is my favourite sector—[it] continues to track very well, with the availability rate at about 3.1% on a national basis,” he said. “A combination of low availability and e-commerce growth this year has fuelled demand for warehouse distribution, which had been steadily increasing for 10-15 years, but this year it’s been very strong. You’re dealing with investors who like this asset because it’s one of few assets that increased rents this year (3-5%).”

The industrial sector was scorching before the pandemic struck in March, thanks to the explosion of e-commerce in recent years, which has come at the expense of the retail sector. Given that rotating lockdowns throughout the country this year delivered additional blows to fragile brick-and-mortar retail outlets, more Canadians have opted to shop for goods online. Online shopping has become so ubiquitous that new residential towers count delivery areas among the amenities they offer.

“Unsurprisingly, the office and retail sectors have seen decreasing activity year-over-year, with volume over the first three quarters dropping 53% and 22%, respectively,” said the Altus report.

But Wong noted that major cities’ office sectors are buoyed by a growing number of sublets. Tenants and landlords have also begun renegotiating leases, with the latter lowering rents in exchange for extended lease durations.

“In Vancouver’s downtown, sublets of available space went from 20.1% in Q3-2019 to 38.6% in Q3-2020,” he said. “Toronto went from 23.7% to 34.6%, meaning there are more sublets this year because there are some companies that don’t need as much office space, or any office space at all.”

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