Month: May 2021

It’s a near certainty that employees will interact with their office environments differently in the post-COVID-19 world, and while it’s too early to know the extent of the transformation, there are some indicators.

“We’re almost going back to what we had in office spaces many decades ago with wider footprints per employee, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some partitioned spaces,” said Sunny Sharma Commercial Team and co-owner of Century 21 Leading Edge VIP Realty. “Most modern buildings are okay because they have good HVAC systems, but some older buildings may need to be retrofitted because they’re quite similar to older apartment buildings which recirculate air. For example, the filter going through one person’s apartment goes into the neighbouring unit, but more modern buildings have independent air intake exhausts for individual units.”

Sharma also predicts that a majority of businesses will have some of their employees work from home permanently—he estimates about 20% of the workforce—if they don’t need to be in the office.

A recent survey from KPMG showed that 77% of respondents want a hybrid work arrangement in which they split time between their home and office, and that could determine the future of office tower construction. In Kelowna, The Block, a 100,000 sq ft office building in the city’s downtown is incorporating some post-pandemic principles, from enhanced air filtration systems to Zoom rooms, into its design environment.

“New office towers will have the ability to design flexibility into space planning from the start, and there will be more and more breakout spaces, higher amenities that relate to outdoor space, which would be difficult to retrofit into existing office towers, and they will become attractive qualities for office spaces,” said Luke Turri, executive vice president of Mission Group, The Block’s developer. “The Block will have touchless access throughout the office space, from the lobby to the parkade to the facilities. We’re looking at smart glass, which is energy efficient, and to improve some of the HVAC capabilities in the tower.”

The hybrid work model will reduce employees’ footprints through shared workstations as employees alternate which days they come into the office.

The Block will be Kelowna’s first A-class office tower, and while it’s located in the centre of the city, it’s four blocks from Okanagan Lake.

Kelowna’s cost of living relative to nearby Vancouver is attractive to employers and its central location bolsters its appeal, says Turri.

“People are selective with where they want to live, preferring locations where everything is walking distance,” he said. “

The B-20 mortgage stress test modification slated to take effect June 1 will adversely affect first-time homebuyers and push them into a rental market that’s already on the precipice, claim a couple of Toronto real estate professionals.

The stress test, implemented by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, will raise the floor rate to 5.25% from 4.79% where it is now. Moreover, the stress test could prevent some first-time homebuyers from attaining ownership and keep them in Toronto’s rental market, where demand will return with a vengeance when the country fully reopens to immigrants, international students, permit workers, and when domestic students return to school in the fall.

“The idea of living in a condo wasn’t, from my memory, as fancy a few years ago as it is today, and it’s going to be what we see for rentals going forward,” Bradley Watson, a real estate broker with Sutton Group-Sutton Realty, told CREW. “There’s nothing wrong with renting, but unfortunately the stress test will push people down the property ladder.”

Indeed, there is nothing wrong with renting, but rental prices will invariably skyrocket once full demand returns to the market, and with mass vaccinations underway and other jurisdictions outside of Canada readying to fully reopen this summer, if they haven’t already, it’s only a matter of time before life returns to normal in Toronto. Although many of the city’s renters took advantage of the lull in rental demand during the COVID-19 pandemic, that window appears to be closing.

“If you’re a renter, lock in your rate now because as demand pressure moves from the resale market to the rental market, as is already happening, and with the influx of immigration—immigrants typically rent for the first three years of moving here—and other segments coming in, there will be additional competition,” said Watson.

The stress test is believed to reduce purchasing power by 4-4.5%, and while not as severe as B-20’s previous incarnation, which cut buying power by 22%, first-time homebuyers, already struggling with runaway housing prices, are likely to be more short-shrifted than any other buying cohort—although it will trickle up to move-up buyers who will have fewer people to sell their homes to.

Alex Balikoti, SVP of sales with Balikoti Real Estate Group, believes the June 1 stress test amendment won’t be as aggravating as it was the last time it changed, however, it will worsen an imminently untenable situation in Toronto’s rental market.

“We’re going to get back to the pre-pandemic rental situation, probably by the end of the year given the amount of units on the market right now, which are dropping, and I think prices will keep increasing because the city’s failing to address the fundamental problem, and that’s a lack of housing units,” he said.

The stress test could also hamper investors who provide precious rental units in a city that has long neglected purpose-built rental apartment buildings.

“The stress test won’t just push more people into the rental market, it will drive out some potential investors who were going to buy units and rent them out as secondary units, but now some of them won’t be able to do that,” said Balikoti. “You’ll have more renters vying for fewer rental units.”

Voracious demand and a dearth of available land have compelled industrial real estate developers in Vancouver to get creative.

Stacked industrial facilities optimize square footage while tightening the reins on construction budgets, and although not very common outside of Asia and parts of Europe, Ilya TIhanenoks, a broker and associate vice president of CBRE Vancouver, noted the region has about 707,056 sq ft of large-format stacked industrial space and over 500,000 sq ft of small-bay stacked industrial and flex space under construction. He says they’re here to stay.

“What we’ve been used to seeing is warehouses with mezzanines you walk up, but now you’re getting full second and third floors accessible by elevators. It’s less traditional industrial but it’s been evolving in Vancouver. We’re very much in the early days of stacked industrial and that’s what it’s going to look like,” TIhanenoks told CREW. “The main driver is land pricing and land availability, so if you’re a developer who doesn’t have hundreds of acres in your land bank for future uses, you have to hit the market with owner-users, land speculators and others, and, in core markets, you end up buying land at a hefty price tag. The only way to maximize what zoning allows is stacked industrial.”

Vancouver’s zoning bylaws are more liberal than surrounding municipalities’, allowing for some creativity, but TIhanenoks suspects it’s only a matter of time before the entirety of Greater Vancouver follows suit. However, Vancouver isn’t the only municipality in the metropolitan that allows stacked industrial facilities. In 2019, Oxford Properties Group launched Canada’s first stacked industrial development in Burnaby, a 7,000 sq ft warehouse with an upper floor accessible to transport trucks.

Additionally, Union Allied is building 1308 Adanac in East Vancouver, and according to the company’s investment and acquisition director, the development’s offerings are consistent with the most common inquiries, which are for dock loading, high ceilings, street exposure and transportation, but most importantly it reflects the industrial sector’s evolving needs.

“The global shift to e-commerce during the pandemic has only increased demand for our supply-constrained city. The city has to undergo a reshuffle where people who have existing amenities, like grade access and dock loading, need to begin asking themselves if they need it given the high cost of these spaces, or if their business is of a lighter industrial use and can survive in a multilevel environment” said Michael Chiang. “Moving forward, the way to adapt is to develop true logistics based on multilevel industrial like those in other parts of the world have limited land, like Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan.”

Nineteen percent of Ontarians intend on buying a home in the next year, rivalling pre-COVID sentiment in Canada’s largest province, according to new survey results.

But that could prove challenging, given how voracious demand has become relative to available supply.

“In the last year, the desire among buyers for detached homes has grown stronger, but unfortunately, seller intentions for such properties have receded, so inventory is not keeping up with demand, making it tougher for buyers to find a great place to call home,” said David Oikle, president of the Ontario Real Estate Association (OREA), which commissioned the survey conducted by Ipsos.

Sixty-three percent of respondents want more space in the form of a detached home, up from 60% in 2020, while 28% plan on buying a home that’s at least 2,500 sq ft, up from 20% a year ago. Although detached home prices have skyrocketed since March 2020, 75% of the survey’s respondents are banking on existing home equity to help them buy a detached home, an increase of 9% from a year prior.

However, only 62% of sellers will be listing a detached home. That doesn’t surprise Norman Xu, head of the Norman Xu Team at Royal LePage Signature Realty, who says the pandemic reinforced the need for more space.

“Demand for detached homes increased as more people started working from home. There’s such huge demand for detached homes and people want their homes to be more functional, both as a home and as an office,” he said. “A lot of jobs require their own space, especially if there are kids at home. It’s so important for me to have my own space, so I’m assuming there are others with similar needs. Certain jobs cannot be performed in a condo space and people can’t rent commercial spaces today like they could before. Balancing working from home with home life is the key reason demand for detached homes has increased compared to before the pandemic.”

With demand outpacing supply, OREA is calling on the government to implement solutions that will grow the availability of desired housing types—a problem that predates the pandemic.

“The current situation we’re facing in Ontario—increasing prices, demand for more space and larger homes—all during a once-in-a-century pandemic, points to a much larger systemic issue facing Ontario’s homebuyers: a serious lack of housing supply.”

Canada’s white-hot housing market has revealed blemishes in the real estate industry pertaining to the professionalism of some agents.

Looking at how many real estate agents are registered with the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) alone, Christopher Alexander, chief strategy officer and executive vice president of RE/MAX Ontario-Atlantic, isn’t surprised that the level of professionalism consumers receive could be compromised.

“The explosion of agents in Ontario specifically, and particularly under TRREB, is having an effect on the quality of service people are getting. People get in with good intentions but their motivations don’t always align with providing the best experience for the customer, and the current state of the market has allowed a lot of agents to stay in business who arguably shouldn’t be,” Alexander told CREW.

“A lot of business models have been surviving off of rapid price appreciation and robust demand, and they’re not always providing the experience that a consumer deserves and people are finally starting to notice it.”

Multiple offers have arguably become the biggest pain point for the industry because there’s a dearth of consistency from one agent to the next. It isn’t a stretch to imagine that many disappointed buyers, having gone through the song and dance a few times only to be blindsided by something new every time, have had enough.

“Oftentimes, people have already bid on multiple homes and lost and they end up going through a different experience each time, and that sours a lot of them,” said Alexander. “It seems like each agent has their own way of doing it.”

But Mike Usiri, president of the Mississauga Real Estate Board, says that, while agents follow clients’ instructions, they’re duty bound to extract the best possible sale price from buyers.

“The owner is the principal and they call the shots. Agents only offer certain strategies to extract the highest price because they work for the seller, but sellers sometimes get greedy and the agent has no choice but to take their instruction,” said Usiri, adding that there’s been talk about switching to the auction model, but that could easily backfire.

“There’s talk about the auction—it’s been done in Europe and the U.S.—it’s very much like a car auction where there’s complete transparency and everybody knows what the offers are, but if buyers are already complaining about prices, what will happen is homes will go for even more money. If you bring an open auction, all that will do is put more undue pressure on buyers and make homeownership more unattainable for buyers.”

RE/MAX released a survey this morning detailing consumer confidence in the real estate profession, and 57% of millennials stated that they were more likely to buy or sell a home using real estate technology in lieu of an agent. Ninety-one percent of respondents want their agents to conduct business ethically, exercise patience, actively listen and be empathetic.

Alexander noted that overall consumer sentiment is positive, he believes the industry could always do better and says multiple offer situations have yielded more complaints than ever before.

“There are rules agents bound by, but some people do a closed bidding process where you get one shot and if there’s a tie, there’s a tie breaker. Agents hold off offers and take the bully offer, but then their brokerage remarks say there was no bully offer, or they take an offer well past the deadline. People don’t like to lose but knowing they have a fair shot would do wonders for our industry.”

Barrie has been a beneficiary of the COVID-19-induced exodus from the Greater Toronto Area and a new freehold housing project perfectly encapsulates why people are moving there.

Eagles’ Rest Estates by Fernbrook Homes and Crystal Homes, is a development in Upper Barrie comprised of 208 detached homes between 2,800-5,200 sq ft, and with 75-110-ft frontages, located near some of the city’s four-season outdoor activities.

According to Louis Nguyen, VP of Sales and Marketing at International Home Marketing Group, a lot of Torontonians are buying at the project, while keeping a condo unit in the city where they spend a couple of days a week working.

“People can enjoy bigger homes with wider frontage and get closer to nature, and it’s still within 40 minutes of the GTA,” he said. “There are lots of golf courses, ski resorts and the lakes around the wider areas, so it’s great for people working from home and people who are looking for a second home. We thought we’d get a lot of middle-aged buyers, but surprisingly we’re getting a lot of young families who are going to use this as their main home and have a condo in downtown Toronto where they work once or twice a week. They know they will be working remotely.”

Eagles’ Rest Estates is primarily an end user-driven project but Nguyen noted that there are investors for this product as well.

That is not surprising, according to Barrie-based Jeremy Brooks of Engel & Völkers, who says COVID-19 has changed his city dramatically. The exodus from densified Toronto to its suburbs, then exurbs and beyond, reached Barrie.

“They want more elbow room and more space that they don’t have in the main urban centres, but they still want to be connected to people. They don’t want to be out on 20 acres in a rural area,” said Brooks. “They want a place that has a sense of community, park space and great outdoor amenities that they can access on a regular basis.” Brooks says that 65% of buying activity in Barrie is coming from people leaving the GTA, and it has driven up the cost of the city’s single-family detached houses.

“We’ve seen the most demand from people moving from a semi-detached home or a condo into a 3,000-4,000 sq ft house in a subdivision here,” said Brooks. “Those houses cost $600,000-700,000 a few years ago but now they’re million-dollar homes because people have realized they can increase their living space. They want more space both inside and outside their home.”

Over three quarters of Canadians want a hybrid work arrangement in which they split time between their office and home, according to a new survey from KPMG.

Seventy-seven percent of the 2,003 respondents prefer the flexible work arrangement, with 71% stating that the hybrid model should be standard for all organizations. However, 81% expressed reservations about whether or not their employers could accommodate such an arrangement, while 49% expressed concern that they could be passed over for promotions or be singled out for discrimination if they keep working remotely. Forty-six percent of respondents believe their managers would go so far as to penalize them for not physically being in the office every day, and 45% aren’t confident their employers fully grasp the implications of the hybrid work model.

Three in five, or 63%, of respondents want to physically return to their workplaces, which KPMG’s Leigh Harris, a management consulting partner on the company’s federal government practice, says is unsurprising because of the toll isolation has taken on people through the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This isn’t surprising given that our previous research showed the pandemic is negatively impacting Canadians’ mental health and many feel overworked and burnt out,” said Harris. “COVID-19 lifted much of the inertia around challenging the what, how, when, and where people work, and organizations now have an opportunity to articulate and plan for the future shape of their workforce.

Sixty-eight percent of survey respondents worried about contracting COVID-19 from colleagues who are either sick or asymptomatic as among their three biggest concerns about returning to offices.

According to Melissa Burton, consulting practice leader for Arup Canada, an engineering advisory company that focuses on the built environment, offices will be different post-pandemic. For one, building entries might have to be staggered to prevent a series of queues from forming that stretch around city blocks.

“If you’re an individual or company that owns or rents floors—let’s say floors 27-35—in an office tower and you want to understand how you will be able to bring people back to work, you need to share elevator space with all other floors,” she said. “Queuing protocols are set up for staff to enter into buildings, which includes their times of entry. Instead of everybody arriving at 9 AM, why not stagger entry times into the building?”

Vancouver homes are the most expensive in North America, according to a new report, which rated Toronto and Hamilton the continent’s second- and third-most expensive cities.

While the Oxford Economics report found San Jose and Los Angeles are the fourth-and fifth-most expensive cities in North America, Canadian homes are 34% more expensive than the median household income affordability.

“Canadian housing affordability has worsened considerably over the past decade, not only in Toronto and Vancouver, but also in several smaller metros,” said the report.

Ottawa is the sixth-most expensive metropolitan region on the continent, says the report, while Montreal is ninth.

However, Oxford Economics ranked Quebec City as the third-most affordable city in North America. In fact, another report rated Quebec City as the best city in Canada for millennials,

“Quebec City is Canada’s best city for millennials,” said the report from Point2Homes. “Not only does it rank the highest overall, it also boasts an affordable housing market compared to most of the other surveyed locations. Add this to the fact that the city has the third lowest unemployment rate in Canada and an above average yearly income, and it makes sense why it takes the number one spot on our list. For millennials looking to settle down and start a family, Quebec City also has a low crime severity index.”

Ottawa also made its way onto the list, ranking as the No.2 city in Canada for millennials, despite the fact that Oxford Economics rated it the sixth-most unaffordable region in North America. Point2Homes, however, noted that the Canadian capital is replete with steady government jobs and an average income of $88,310.

“Besides having a good economy and well-paying jobs, Canada’s capital city also boasts a thriving cultural scene. In addition, it also ranks sixth for the highest percentage of Canadians with a bachelor’s degree or above. This makes it a top location for young professionals looking to interact with like-minded individuals.”

A couple of properties in Toronto were recently listed for $1, however, it’s little more than a ploy and it won’t yield desired results, says a local real estate broker.

“I don’t believe it’s a good listing technique regardless of the market we’re in. A lot of sellers or realtors who use the technique do so because they know it might get some media attention, which it has in these cases, but at the end of the day I don’t think it helps sell a property for the maximum amount of money,” said Tom Storey.

CTV News reported listings at 16 Kenrae Rd. and 15 Rebecca St. are presently using the $1 strategy and that one of the lots is approved for two semi-detached homes, which would be difficult to reflect in a listing price.

“We’ve had a crazy six months. It’s been extremely volatile. Prices have fluctuated and asking prices and listing prices have not been reflective of a property’s value for quite a long time,” Paul Poliszot, the listing agent for 15 Rebecca St., told CTV.

“All we’re really striving to do [is] be innovators in the real estate investment space in Toronto and serve our clients as best as we can.”

Storey noted that, earlier this year, homes were listed below their eventual selling prices on offer nights, but that buyers appear to have grown weary of such strategies. And if they aren’t playing that game, fat chance they play the $1 game. He added that Toronto-area buyers have become demoralized, and where, on average, 10-15 people would show up on offer night, he’s noticed that only about two to five do now.

“If buyers aren’t willing to play the regular game of listing low, which is 15-20% below what you believe the value is, they’re not going to be willing to play the $1 game,” he said. “Not every buyer is willing to play these games anymore and we’re finding a lot of buyers don’t show up on offer night and the property is usually then relisted for the price the seller actually wants.”

There were 1.3 months of inventory in the GTA last month, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board’s latest data, and that determines how Storey, who leads his own team, lists properties.

“We look at the micro-market of the specific pocket a property is located in for the last 30-60 days and check how many active listings are available and how many have sold,” he said. “Then we take the active listings divided by the number of sales and it will give us the months of inventory. If that number is below two, we typically list lower and hold an offer date, which means buyers will play the game and it will usually sell for higher, but if the months of inventory are three or higher then you list for whatever you want and there’s no offer date.”

A lot of commercial spaces have been at risk of suffering infrastructure damage during the COVID-19 pandemic because of scant usage.

Whether a small retail unit or a large office building, unoccupied spaces can suffer everything from water leaks to overflowing toilets, and because there’s nobody around to mitigate the damage early, big problems often result.

“If the space isn’t occupied, have them inspected,” said Bill Fender, SVP of commercial property portfolios at First Onsite Property Restoration. “When sitting dormant other issues can creep up on them, like a small water leak, which can end up being a big problem. An unoccupied building can have a water episode or a mould problem, and a lot of the time it’s discovered by occupants—a wet ceiling tile, a toilet overflowing or pipe bursting, but when there’s no occupancy in the building, time becomes money, and as time goes on it becomes more expensive to repair and remediate.”

As an example of what should have been a small problem instead metastasizing, Fender said, “We’ve seen a water line in a coffee machine with a quarter-inch copper pipe break loose and nobody was in the building, so what should have been a typically small cleanup ended up being over $100,000 because it seeped through every nook and cranny. There will be mould issues, too.”

There are some preventive measures that can be taken. Systems, especially ones with water, should be run as often as possible otherwise the water quality will weaken, which Fender says is an issue in some hotels that have high pandemic-induced vacancies. If not careful, Legionella could make its way through the water.

Most commercial properties already have preventative maintenance in place, and Fender is emphatic that their application must not be neglected during times of reduced occupancy.

“Reducing frequency and lowering costs might be tempting but we’d recommend they continue. Many property managers and landlords would strongly recommend that. Those general routine inspections of a building need to increase in frequency, with security guards and other maintenance personnel. Make sure ceilings aren’t wet or toilets are not overflowing.”

First Onsite Property recently conducted the Business Preparedness Survey to determine the reasons businesses’ interruptions and found that the 43% had disrupted operations from winter storms, while 23% reported flooding being the biggest issue, and 12% fire-related setbacks.

The survey also revealed that 77% of business disruptions in the last five years are a consequence of the pandemic, despite being a little over a year into it.

“The impact of the pandemic has been losses and interruptions to business and it has been devastating,” said Fender. “Some businesses were impacted severely in the hospitality sector, like hotels and restaurants, where staying alive has been an issue. Other areas we’ve been working with, like commercial office real estate, have been hard hit as well. We’re seeing very little occupancy rates in downtown cores.”