Canadian CRE Executives Offer Market Insights
Connect is holding its Summer 2025 Leadership Series in which top executives from Canadian commercial real estate firms provide insights on the state of the market. Today marks the first edition in the series. Read on as Jonathan Turnbull, managing director and head of Canada for Harrison Street; Alex Akman, chief operating officer at Shindico; and, Mark Goodman, founder and principal for Goodman Commercial, share their insights. And, watch for more comments in coming days and weeks.
What potential investment barriers could people overlooking?
Diana Hoang: “There’s still a delta between the owners of these assets and the investors/occupiers of these assets. When the asset gets divested, it’s when they absolutely need to sell, meaning they’re [selling] before receivership or, even bigger, we’ve encountered groups that are going into receivership.
“They still demand a number that’s not realistic to the market, and that’s been a [hindrance.] Acquiring takes a little bit longer. Another route is financing. The Big Five banks, they’re very tight on their lending. They’re not seeing a whole lot of deal flow because of the lending criteria that hasn’t been removed, even for the residential-development market. So it trickles down. … I’ve heard, that they wanted to remove the stress test in order to bring up the residential-development market to where [developers] can sell condos.”
How do you think tariffs will impact the Canadian CRE market during the second half of 2025 and beyond?
Alex Akman: “My view is that tariffs are likely going to result in material price increases, not materialism, very expensive, but construction-material price increases. Which, as a result, is going to make the building more expensive. Which means [as a property owner] you’re going to need more rent to just to achieve the same return. For example, Alumicor shut their Winnipeg office down. That is a big problem for us. There’s not a lot of aluminum-window suppliers in the city, and that’s one of the biggest ones nationally, internationally. So, now you’re looking for a different product that’s made in Canada to avoid the tariffs, and the tariffs have also resulted in a competitor closing. So, we know what that means for market pricing. If you’re the only one, you’re probably able to charge more. So, we’re a little bit nervous from that perspective on the development side.”