Private buyers have been dominating commercial real estate investing in recent months. CBRE research director Ross Moore tells us it’s got a lot to do with the lack of available institutional-quality product out there, the kind pension funds prefer. There haven’t been big deals, Ross says, and the sales that are taking place at the moment are mostly strategic. He points to firms like RioCan that are "fine tuning their portfolios” by selling off assets in secondary and tertiary markets and reinvesting in major urban areas.
Now smaller private buyers and equity firms are taking advantage of historically low interest rates and lender liquidity that Ross says is “probably as good as it gets,” snapping up the smaller properties as they come available. It’s not to say the big players aren’t active; firms are still putting considerable capital into development (like Cadillac Fairview, co-developer of Ice Condos, seen above). Fun fact: Ross' first summer job was as a councillor at a camp on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast run by Yuichiro Miura, the man who skied down Mount Everest in 1970.
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