Buyer Oxford, Seller CPPIB Both Benefit from Western Canadian Office JV Buyout

Oxford Properties Group’s decision to buy the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board out of a joint-venture holding seven jointly owned Western Canadia office towers for $730 million proved to be beneficial to both parties.

The transaction, completed roughly midway through 2025, gave Oxford 100% ownership of the high-quality assets located in Vancouver and Calgary after buying CPPIB’s 50% stake in the assets. The transaction valued the portfolio at approximately $1.5 billion. Prior to completing the deal, Oxford had been a net seller of office assets for more than a decade. The acquisition, enabled Oxford to rotate capital back into the asset class.

Oxford was also able to reaffirm and reinforce its commitment to the office sector before the market started to heat up amid the burgeoning return-to-office movement, improved market and economic conditions and intensifying class-A supply pressures. Had Oxford waited six month or a year to make the purchase, it could have been a different story. It’s safe to say that Oxford might have had to pay a considerably higher price and faced competition from other potential buyers, based on Vancouver deals completed afterward and growing demand for trophy-class assets amid an ongoing flight to quality.

The four-million-square-foot portfolio includes seven class AAA/A and trophy properties, with strong occupancy and long-term lease commitments across diverse sectors including finance, tech, legal, transportation, and natural resources. Five of the buildings were built or extensively renovated after 2010, and several are sustainability certified, including the Stack in Vancouver.

Built in 2023, the 568,000-sf tower ranks as Canada’s first zero-carbon office building.

The Calgary buildings include:

• Eau Claire Tower: A 611,000-sf, 25-storey LEED Gold-certified tower built in 2016;
• Centennial Place: A 1.3 million-sf twin-tower complex built in 2010;
• 400 Third (Calgary): An 820,000-sf property constructed in 1988.

The other Vancouver assets are:

• Guinness Tower: A renovated 262,000-sf building near the city’s downtown waterfront;
• Marine Building: A historic 177,000-sf landmark, also situated near the downtown waterfront, that was renovated in 2014 and originally built in 1930;
• MNP Tower: A 277,000-sf building constructed in 2014.

Meanwhile, CPPIB generated what it described as “compelling returns” for the Canada Pension Plan Fund. The transaction also enabled CPPIB to continue its real estate strategy designed to secure strong business-plan execution and redeploy capital into new opportunities, supporting the ongoing growth and optimization of the pension-fund manager’s global property portfolio.

These are some of the reasons why Tyler Seaman, Oxford’s executive vice-president for Canada, and Sophie van Oosterom, a CPPIB managing director the organization’s head of real estate, were honoured with Connect Canadian Transactions of the Year Awards for the $730-million trade of a 50% interest in a Western Canadian office portfolio. The awards highlight deals and closings impacting Canada’s commercial real estate sector.