Commercial Real Estate News - Toronto - Jan 15, 2010

Business is picking up in the Toronto and GTA area! I have seen increasing demand for the 500 to 5000 square foot units yet Landlord's have started being more flexible on rental rates and are offering increased free rent and construction allowances. Signs point to now being the time to lock in long term!

In the News:

RioCan REIT ready to brave U.S. expansion Riocan REIT - REI.UN-T

Ed Sonshine is really, really, really excited about 2010. RioCan REIT's chief executive officer fidgets constantly as he tries to rein in his enthusiasm – one minute wrapping his hands in elastic bands, another waving a sharpened pencil in the air – before taking a breath and trying to calm down for a few moments. It's been a good year for the real estate investment trust, with its units gaining 37.4 per cent.

Globe and Mail Mon Jan 04 2010

Rebranded Colliers Moves Further From Network Roots First Service

The combining of Colliers and FirstService under the Colliers brand culminates a gradual move away from the global network brokerage model that began when Toronto-based FirstService Corp. entered commercial real estate in 2004, buying a 70% stake in the largest Colliers International affiliate. The real estate arm, FirstService REA, continued its aggressive expansion by acquiring controlling interests.

CoStar Group Thu Jan 07 2010

Massive aquarium slated at CN Tower

Toronto city councillors vote next week on a plan to build a 14,000-square-metre aquarium at the base of the CN Tower. Canada Lands sought private proposals for three undeveloped acres at the site; it chose Ripley Entertainment to build a three-storey aquarium that is to feature a variety of aquatic species, from jellyfish to sharks.

National Post Thu Jan 07 2010 - Globe and Mail

Dundee REIT Completes $103.5 Million Equity Offering Dundee REIT - D.UN-T

Dundee REIT announced today the closing of its previously announced public offering of REIT Units, Series A ("Units") at a price of $18.75 per Unit. The underwriters, led by TD Securities Inc., elected to exercise their over-allotment option in full, resulting in a total of 5,520,000 Units being issued today by Dundee REIT for gross proceeds of $103.5 million.

Market Wire Thu Jan 07 2010

Commercial real estate driving energy efficiency

The Building Owners and Managers Association of Canada reports the all-important first step to reaching the aggressive energy consumption target by 2015 is well underway with establishing the common methodology for normalization of energy data with industry partners Real Property Association of Canada and the Canadian Green Building Council.

BOMA Canada News Release Sun Dec 20 2009

The high cost of green power in Ontario

Even as electricity demand - and market prices - dropped last year with the global economic downturn, electricity bills have risen steadily on the back of generous contracts signed by the province's power planning agency. What's at stake is an industrial strategy that's on a collision course with a century-old policy of delivering electricity to consumers at the lowest possible cost.

Globe and Mail Fri Jan 08 2010

Markham plan could contain sprawl, save farms

A groundbreaking plan to freeze Markham's expansion onto prime farmland could voluntarily take the fast-growing suburban powerhouse where no GTA municipality has dared go: upward but not outward. Several councillors are pushing for a permanent "food belt" within the town's borders that would be preserved for agriculture until at least 2031.

Toronto Star Mon Jan 11 2010

Toronto’s Office Market Still Waiting for Economic Recovery Colliers International

Although the Canadian economy is on the path to recovery, Toronto’s office market is still impacted by the recession according to the Colliers International Winter 2010 Semi-annual Office Market & Industrial Reports and Forecast released today. Vacancy rates continued to climb, reaching 6.1% at the end of 2009 while Average Asking Net Rent declined by more than 9%.

Colliers International New Release Mon Jan 11 2010

Boom and bust cycles and buildings in Toronto

In Wednesday’s Financial Post, Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins wrote of the relationship between large buildings and investment crashes — the theory being “that businesses overestimate the value of long term investments and an investment-led boom ensues ... The boom ends in busts.” He cited 40 Wall Street and the Empire State Building in the early 1930s and more recently the Burj Dubai in Dubai.

National Post Mon Jan 11 2010

Union Station reno to chase away gloom

Most GO commuters hopping a train at Union Station wouldn't recognize the blackened, leaky roof over the platforms as a Canadian architectural jewel. But on Monday, GO Transit begins the mammoth task of transforming one of the city's gloomiest spaces into a light-filled, 21st-century terminus, while preserving the designated heritage features of the 1929 train shed.

Toronto Star Mon Jan 11 2010

Two of downtown Toronto's last single-family homes for sale

However you look at it, the ramshackle, stucco houses recently listed for sale at 122-124 Peter St. – two adjoined, lopsided funhouses – are an anomaly. They're among the last private homes in the downtown core that haven't been refurbished for commercial purposes. They're surrounded by glitzy nightclubs, trendy retailers and spiffy condos. Vacant and poorly maintained, they look like they're falling apart.

Globe and Mail Mon Jan 11 2010

A 2010 Canada, U.S. real estate forecast: Avison Young Avison Young

Recessionary headwinds took their toll on real estate markets on both sides of the border in 2009, with the U.S. continuing to shoulder the worst of the storm. Now several quarters into it, the Canadian real estate sector has not been entirely immune, but appears to be weathering the downturn thanks to relatively sound, though shaken, market fundamentals.

Canada News Wire Wed Jan 13 2010

GTA landlords drop rents on commercial space Colliers International

Weak demand for office space and an influx of new buildings has caused landlords to drop rents for commercial buildings in the GTA. Average asking rents fell 9 per cent or from $17.83 in 2008 to $16.20 per square foot by the end of last year, according to Colliers International. Office vacancies continued on an upward trend, hitting 6.1 per cent equal to 11.3 million square feet at the end of 2009 a 20 per cent increase.

Toronto Star Wed Jan 13 2010 - National Post

Rush is on to lock up rights to flat GTA rooftops

Flying into Pearson International Airport offers a view of the GTA that would make even the least excitable solar entrepreneur salivate. What's the big deal? Rooftops. Thousands of flat rooftops on hotels, manufacturing plants, warehouses, apartment and office buildings, schools, hospitals and shopping malls. Each is a sunlight sponge with the potential convert them into emission-free electricity.

Toronto Star Wed Jan 13 2010

Toronto construction industry building strength

As the director of Union Station infrastructure, Mike Wolczyk has to oversee the facelift of the Toronto transit hub over the next five years. Construction started on the historic building on Monday, with hoardings the equivalent of a city block going up in the station. At $196 million, the train shed renovation project part of a $640 million makeover of the station that GO Transit is the largest in the city.

Toronto Star Wed Jan 13 2010

Toronto Downsview Park doomed by frugal mindset

It started out as Canada's first "national urban park." Now it's just another field of broken dreams. Despite more than a decade of effort, the 572-acre Parc Downsview Park remains pretty much as empty as it was in 1999, when Ottawa launched an international design competition to remake the site. The winners were Bruce Mau and Rem Koolhaas, global luminaries who ended up wasting their time and ours.

Toronto Star Fri Jan 15 2010

Commercial real estate still hurting

Canada's commercial real-estate market faces another tough year, but is at least poised for more rapid recovery than the battered U.S. market once the economic cycle begins its next upswing, says real-estate services company Avison Young. In 2009, "the dislocation in real estate lending and investing was so severe in March and April that the market appeared to be on the verge of collapse," said Mark Rose, Avison Young chief executive.

Financial Post Thu Jan 14 2010