Contemplating Commercial?

Are you thinking of buying commercial real estate? Whether as an end user or for investment, the time couldn't be better. Market is balanced and there are plenty of options available for all levels of investors. For the first time ever, after a long time in the City of Toronto, and perhaps for the last time, a commercial condominium retail mall is available for sale. That's right! You can actually own a piece of a multi-million dollar project and benefit from a professionally run system. It is like investing in stock market but through a professional mutual fund management company.

Welcome to The Landmark! It is the ultimate location for business and investment value. Strategically positioned among the national retailers, it is bound by new residential developments. The site will be well served based on an optimized traffic flow plan. Strolling along the wide corridors of The Landmark, shoppers will be dazzled by the variety of shops and services, truly a shopping paradise for the entire family.

The site boasts of approximately 100 acres of continuous shopping.

Representing the project as the sales partner, I had the opportunity to att end the press conference held today to announce the financing and the general construction company for the project. Time couldn't be more right to buy in commercial. While second quarter 2010 demonstrates to be a much stronger period by total price for all transactions, the average price per square foot in Metro increased from Q2 2009 to Q2 2010.

As the chart indicates, compared to other markets, Toronto is the place to be. So enjoy the update on Landmark, and happy investing to all.

Canada Ranked High in Real Estate

Jones Lang LaSalle’s Global Real Estate Transparency Index quantifies real estate market transparency across 81 markets worldwide. The Transparency Index is updated every two years and has been charting the steady progress in real estate transparency across the globe since 1999. The Index aims to help real estate investors, corporate occupiers and retailers understand important differences when transacting, owning and operating in foreign markets. The Index is also a helpful gauge for governments and industry organisations who are interested in improving transparency in their home markets. Rising levels of transparency are associated with rising levels of foreign direct investment – a powerful incentive for encouraging the free flow of information and the fair and consistent application of local property laws.

Jones Lang LaSalle made a number of refinements to the 2010 Index in response to feedback from clients and the ever-changing demands of cross-border investors, corporate occupiers and retailers. In recognition of the increasing relevance of real estate debt transparency, the company has introduced new elements relating to the availability of information on commercial real estate debt and the role of bank regulators in monitoring and publishing data on real estate debt. New markets have been added from North Africa and the Levant (i.e. Tunisia, Lebanon and Jordan) to reflect the ever-widening real estate universe now being targeted by investors, corporate occupiers and retailers.

Out of all the countries rated, Canada is ranked number 2 on the list. This means that Canada is the second most transparent market. The Asia Pacific region has shown the most broadly-based improvements in transparency over the past two years. It is in India and China where the region’s greatest advances have been recorded, a trend that has now filtered across each of their secondary and tertiary cities. U.K. is a close 3rd while number 6, 8 and 10 are United States, France and Germany respectively. Number 1 spot goes to Australia. India is 41 on the list and Pakistan is 73.

Among the world’s most transparent real estate markets, Canada differentiates itself on having a combination of a sound banking system, well-developed commercial real estate lending standards and stable property markets with relatively low vacancy and rental volatility. Historically, lending in Canada has been dominated by large, domestic financial institutions with conservative underwriting standards. Indeed, cash flows and collateral values of commercial real estate loans are monitored regularly. Unlike many other advanced economies, Canada’s major chartered banks are regulated depository institutions which had strong deposit bases and high capital reserve ratios going into the global recession. The largest investment banking operations in Canada are housed within the major chartered banks, making the banking system inherently less prone to bank runs, since chartered banks have access to cash in the form of deposits. In liquidity constrained environments, access to cash via deposits is crucial to the wealth of banks.

Transparency Index provides valuable insights into the changes in real estate transparency across the globe. On an ongoing basis, this will prove to be a valuable decision making tool for the international investor.

Photos of "Marilyn Monroe"

Absolute Towers near Square One in Mississauga, with a twisting profile that brings to mind a curvaceous Marilyn Monroe, are under construction.

Yansong Ma, founder of MAD Architectural Design Studio in Beijing, drew up the tower that beat out five other designs. It's the first international design competition held in Mississauga. The gentle spiral that sees the oval building twist almost 360 degrees from bottom to top won accolades from architecture critics around Toronto.

Due to overwhelming success of the first building, Fernbrook announced that a second 50 storey that is also now under construction. Unlike the South tower, which gets thinner in the middle as it rises, Absolute North will instead get larger in the middle, which has resulted in some members of the public calling them the "condo couple" with the South Tower being the sexy female and the northern tower being the masculine man.

The towers have also been referred to as Yansong Ma's version of Yin and Yang. The community is being created by Fernbrook Homes in partnership with the Cityzen Development group. Enjoy the recent photos that I took this past long weekend.

The Best Area to Buy In? – A mini blog!

A colleague of mine (a fellow REALTOR) asked me this morning, “Can you please give me some quick tips/advice for a person looking to buy a condo unit / home for investment and rental income perspective, eventually selling after 5years? What’s the best area?” The purchase intends to occupy the unit before the end of the year.

Is the answer to this really as simple as naming an area? I don’t think so. Here is what I wrote back:

Assuming you are asking only from a rental perspective only and not a “flip” scenario and have pre-qualified the purchaser in regards to their overall intent and ability to buy, the questions you need answered are as follows.

1. What sort of return they will be happy with?
2. Will they sell if they are unable to rent or can they hold out?
3. Who is going to manage the rental, i.e. finding a tenant, collecting rent, addressing maintenance issues regarding the property?
4. Has the prospective Buyer/Investor been a landlord before? S/he need to be aware of the new changes under The Residential Tenancies Act, specially be familiar with the Regulations 516/06 & 517/06. Will the buyer (future landlord) be able to this themselves or need professional help every time they rent out the property.
5. Is this person a “local buyer” i.e. how important is proximity of the rental property to them?

Once we have answers to these questions, we can correctly advise them regarding the area. That’s it for me. Do you have any thoughts? If so, please post your comments.

A Tale of Toronto

In its Scorecard on Prosperity – 2010, Board of Trade’s study ‘Toronto as a Global City’ continues its examination of Toronto’s economic development, benchmarking Toronto against 23 other great metropolitan areas around the world.

Founded in 1845, the Toronto Board of Trade is Canada’s largest local chamber of commerce, representing 10,000 members. It connects more than 200,000 business professionals and influencers throughout the Toronto region. BoT plays a vital role in elevating the quality of life and global competitiveness of Canada’s largest urban centre.

The board updated data and included new indicators, allowing it to offer an enhanced picture of Toronto’s performance, including a new analysis of Toronto’s relative attractiveness for capital investment. In this way, providing a more comprehensive picture of how Toronto is doing compared to other world-class cities around the globe. The study used a scorecard of 34 indicators grouped into two domains of Economy and Labour Attractiveness. Overall, Toronto ranked 4^th, which is the same as last year.

In my opinion, considering the high net migration into the Greater Toronto Area each year, resulting mainly from immigration, we could have done far better as a city. How can a city attract the world’s best and brightest people and still produce only average economic results? Well, the answer is simple. The world’s best and brightest people are not put to their highest and best use. Qualified professionals are prevented from entering into their professions and forced to drive taxis or work in call centres to support themselves and their families. Only a handful have enough resources or piggy back on their relatives for sustenance, while they struggle full time for years to get a mere foot hold in their profession. After such long struggle, most of this already small group, loose the drive, relevance and creativity that they brought over with them. No wonder Toronto’s poor performance in innovation and productivity growth is troubling, even though these two forces are the major drivers of future prosperity.

The Scorecard on Prosperity introduces the “Capital Lens”: a combination of eight of the Economy domain indicators most closely linked to capital attractiveness (including productivity, venture capital and office rents). The purpose of the capital lens is as an indicator of a metropolitan area’s capacity to attract capital investment — a key determinant of economic prosperity. Despite Toronto’s relative affordability as a place to do business, it falls short when it comes to attracting significant capital investment. Boston ranks first in this category based on outstanding levels of venture capital investment, boosted by the availability of affordable office rents that are better than Toronto’s and a reasonable tax burden.

Toronto has proven itself an attractive place to live, drawing in enough well-educated, skilled newcomers to keep it near the top of the labour attractiveness domain. Toronto leads the pack in its share of high-tech and professional workers and remains competitive in its share of the population with university degrees. Within an easy day’s drive of the populous North-eastern and Midwestern US, Toronto has the market size to generate good investment opportunities and sustain solid productivity growth. With its relatively low business taxes and office rents, Toronto is affordable on the global stage as well.

Toronto is number 10 on the list for Gross Domestic Product (GDP) - $42,538, with Paris leading the pack in GDP category - $79,681. In GDP growth, we rank 14^th. Five-year average annual percentage growth in total employment puts Toronto’s five-year average of 2% at 7^th place, ahead of every US metro area.

Residential building permit growth indicates the rate of investment activity in the residential sector. As an important sector of the economy, housing is a proxy for confidence in the growth of the metro region. The percentage increase in the number of residential building permits is calculated for the five-year period from 2003–08. Toronto, which had negative growth (-0.9%) in the five-year period, is placed 9^th, behind Seattle (1), Montreal (3), Vancouver (4) and Calgary (8). Perhaps building more houses would have met the demand for housing and thus controlled the upward spiral of prices in Toronto’s real estate market.

Toronto’s most pronounced weakness is its lengthy commuting time. Citing under-investment in transit as one of the reasons, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warned in a recent report that congestion in Toronto is costing the Canadian economy over $5 billion a year. A personal observation: Diversity brings diverse driving habits. The commute time problem is compounded by lack of enforcing progressive driving habits. To make our roads safer, the only way known to Greater Toronto’s traffic policy makers and traffic enforcement agencies seems to be reducing speed. This only adds to the commute times. The focus should be on sharing the road and making traffic efficient.

Overall, Toronto is a world class city and a great place to live or invest in. After Montreal, Toronto’s crime rate is lowest in North America (measured by average number of homicides per 100,000 people). It is economically, socially and culturally vibrant. The city fosters an environment conducive to promote powerful collaborations among businesses, government, technology leaders and community builders. Globally, Toronto plays a vital role in elevating the quality of life and global competitiveness of Canada.

Toronto Condo Market ... Up Up and Away

Condo market in Toronto is going strong. The reason is simple. With roughly 80 thousand net migration to Greater Toronto Area, we add several thousand in population over the years. Land is scarce. This has resulted in prices of detached houses to go up. In order to keep revenues up and housing affordable, the house lots are either getting smaller or builders are opting for semi-detached and townhouses. High Rise condominium apartments are the obvious answer.

During a seminar with RealNET and FLY Condos in February 2010, I met with Christine Brennan, Director of Sales & Marketing, High Rise at Empire Communities. Empire Communities has given Greater Toronto Area a wonderful selection of excellent buildings. Their FLY condo project in the Entertainment District in downtown Toronto is a huge success. During the seminar, a presentation by RealNET president showed the trending of condos in downtown.

In my opinion, the condo market is going to appreciate on an ongoing basis. Short of having a crystal ball, the general demand will grow. Low mortgage rates are also helping. Even with the new mortgage qualification rules and the introduction of HST, the sales haven't slowed down. The average buyer will still be exempt from 75% of the new tax. New mortgage rules will ensure that we do not have buyers overstretching themselves. In the long run, this will result in a robust real estate market.

Projects like FLY Condos have a healthy mix of owners and investors. Because of this, there will not be too many units for sale at the same time, resulting in over supply. Prices are and will continue to go up significantly ahead of the inflation rate. This is one of the best time to trade and invest in real estate.

Opinion regarding "Why doesn't Century 21 want more people viewing its real estate listings?"

Cliff Peskin's has written about "Why doesn't Century 21 want more people viewing its real estate listings?" and about Century 21 suing Rogers Communications Inc regarding over its website Zoocasa (source: Financial Post).

Listing data by REALTORS® is up loaded on MLS® system directly through their regional boards. MLS®, which is a trademark, thus enables members of the public to see the information protected under strict data integrity guidelines. Century 21 REALTORS, like other licensed REALTORS, are part of this trademark. Any business would and should protect its trademarks - wouldn't you?

The writer's claim that CREA and Century 21 have an "iron like grip...thereby any individual looking to purchase a home must go through them" doesn't hold much ground. If one reviews the flow of any real estate transaction, the answer to this will become obvious. Once the Seller has retained a REALTOR® to exclusively protect its rights, then no matter where the buyer sees the information about the house, the buyer has to come through the REALTOR® representing the Seller. This is for the protection of the Sellers since REALTORS® are professionals safeguarding the Seller interests.

There is strong possibility that by scraping and aggregation of the listing data, a loss of control occurs and the information might be misquoted or misrepresented, thereby putting the Seller’s interest at risk. Moreover, isn't the data on MLS aggregated anyways? Why is there a need for scraping it and aggregating it again, other than that the company doing so wants to scrape some advertising dollars from such websites. That is my opinion. – Jagdeep Singh is a Century 21 REALTOR® and the Team Leader of the Residential Club at Century 21 New Star Realty Inc., a flourishing Brokerage based in Toronto.