Leveraging appropriate service technology and integrated service tools can ensure buildings are safe and properly maintained. 

COVID-19 has intensified pressure to support physical, social and emotional well-being within the built environment, but many investors, owners and managers were already embracing healthy building principles ahead of pandemic-triggered challenges.

Reflecting on a year in which the pandemic unsettled market fundamentals to the east and to the west, Calgary-based analysts focus more on tangential circumstances than the COVID-19 outbreak itself.

An influx of new office supply was always expected to shake up the status quo in the downtown Toronto market given that approximately two-thirds of the 8+ million square feet of space currently under construction is already preleased.

A ten-year run of capital growth abruptly reversed, resulting in a 7.8 per cent loss of value across the 2,356 assets that the 44 portfolios represented in the Canada Annual Property Index hold.

Newly released 2020 investment results find industrial and multifamily assets on the positive side of the national average total return for 2,356 directly held standing assets, which registered -4.1 per cent.

Industrial availability tightened from the third quarter in eight of the 11 surveyed markets, ending the year at well below 2 per cent in Vancouver and Montreal and below 1 per cent in Toronto.

One of COVID-19's major challenges has been maintaining or improving cleaning activities when the managers responsible are not on-site.

CERS will deliver direct rent support to qualifying tenants without the need to work though their landlords. As a direct subsidy, unlike CECRA, no loan agreement is required.

In the second wave of the pandemic, business owners and facility managers must be unprecedentedly vigilant about protecting workplaces.

Canada has a numerically slight presence with disproportionate weight in Lee & Associates’ newly released third quarter commercial real estate results.

Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance will be offered for a sixth month. The announcement comes eight days after the portal for new applications for the relief program appeared to be closed.

With the August 31 deadline for first-time applications for Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance (CECRA) now passed, the three-month program that evolved into five months of relief is closed to new recipients.

Market analysts typify a second quarter uptick in downtown sublet activity as a spurt, not a glut. However, they project the trend is likely to continue.

Commercial real estate specialists are noting a recent Quebec superior court decision with interest, suggesting it could become a beacon for other tenants seeking rent relief.

There is plenty of uncertainty and little consensus on the economic outlook for Canada and the United States. It is becoming clear that it will not be a V-shaped recovery, and it is more likely to be uneven and prolonged.

Commuters’ willingness to jump on the bus, light-rail car or subway is expected to be a driving factor in repopulating office space in some major North American markets, including Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.