Efficiency in CRE

I’m very thrilled to have Brad Bradford, the Councillor for Ward 19 Beaches East York in Toronto as our special guest on this week’s podcast. Here’s an excerpt from Brad during our conversation when discussing extremely restrictive zoning and policies. “…let’s be clear, all that was done very deliberately. And that was done because of the powers and forces and politics of the day that set those restrictions. And so… while it would have been advantageous through the 2000s and 2010s in that era were you had a politics that rewarded nimby councillors, I think that’s shifted. We’re not all the way there but I think it’s shifted rapidly and aggressively to say we recognize what happened over the past 20 years has kind of gotten us in this housing crisis.” Click the link below to listen to our conversation!

I’m very thrilled to have Kevin Leon, President and CEO at Crestpoint Real Estate Investments as our special guest on this week’s podcast. Here’s an excerpt from Kevin during our conversation, “When you go to refinance a building… sometimes you can’t count on the lenders to either take out your entire financing, meaning refinancing upward, and in some cases now what you’re in the office market especially… lenders don’t want to finance an office. So you have to make sure you have enough equity in your portfolio, through your investors to make sure that you’ve looked ahead and are prepared to provide enough equity even if it means paying down debt.” Click the link to listen to our conversation!

I’m very thrilled to have Hugh Gorman, CEO at Colonnade Bridgeport, as our special guest on this week’s podcast. Here’s an excerpt from Hugh in our conversation, “Historically we’ve overbuilt, we go through these boom bust cycles were we overbuild… It doesn’t matter what type of development… it’s a long lead time… by the time you’re through land acquisition to entitlement to design to construction, stabilization… it’s three four five years depending on the scale of the project. Lots happens in three or four or five years from the demand side. Our view is… for the next decade… Ottawa is extremely short supplied.” Click the link below to listen to our conversation!

I’m very thrilled to have Mike Bonneveld, President at Skyline Industrial REIT, as our special guest on this week’s podcast episode. Here’s one of my favourite quotes from Mike in our discussion of industrial assets types on the podcast, “You’re seeing groups like Amazon… Walmart and Sobeys with these large… scale robotic pick and pack facilities, which is changing the dynamic of who the employee is… it’s not just a warehouse employee… driving around and picking stuff up. I toured a Sobey’s… about a year and half ago. And I think they had 30 robotics engineers on full-time staff because they had 400 robots that were moving constantly and was a 24/7 operation. And if you have a robot that goes down, it needs to be replaced, pulled off… put a new one back on so it doesn’t slow the process.” Click the link below to listen to our conversation!

I’m very thrilled to have Jaime Mckenna, Managing Director and Group Head Real Estate at Fengate Asset Management, as our special guest on this week’s podcast episode. Here’s one of my favourite quotes from Jaime in discussing the different aspects impacting the supply of housing, “If we woke up tomorrow and we all said ok great, we can now pencil all the development we wanna build, whether it’s commercial whether it’s residential… it makes financial sense. We don’t have the labour to actually build the supply we need to meet the demand and a lot of that could be solved by adjusting immigration policy.” Click the link below to listen to our conversation!

I’m very thrilled to have Adrian Rocca, CEO at Fitzrovia, as our special guest on this week’s podcast episode. Here’s one of my favourite quotes from Adrian on the podcast when talking about the impact of delays in the development approval process, “Delays kill deals… it’s an equity drag, it reduces your returns, it impacts your ability to fundraise, it impacts your ability to give… investors, institutional investors, the confidence they need to deploy capital in this space, it’s everything.” Click the link below to listen to our conversation!

I'm very thrilled to have Rob Kumer, CEO of KingSett as our special guest on this week's podcast episode. Rob takes us behind the scene of KingSett's decarbonizing of the Royal York Hotel, revealing a story of transformation and forward-thinking. Rob also shares his leadership philosophy of leading from behind as new CEO of KingSett. And what could be achieved regarding the current housing crisis if the three levels of government are more aligned? Click the link below to listen to our conversation!

I'm very thrilled to have Ugo Bizzarri, CEO at Hazelview Investments as our special guest for this week’s podcast episode. In the podcast, Ugo talks about how investing for the long term has been key for Hazelview. We also discuss Hazelview’s development pipeline of over 21,000 housing units and what it’s going to take to completely build these units. Ugo also mentions how technology can be used to fast track construction. Click the link below to listen to our conversation!

I'm very thrilled to have Wenzel Hoberg, Global Head of Real Estate at Fiera Real Estate as our special guest for this week’s podcast episode. In the podcast, Wenzel talks about a recent Fiera white paper that highlights how Canada has showed stronger performance metrics compared to other G7 countries for real estate investments in the last 15 years. We also discuss the difference in the real estate sector between Canada, the UK and the United States. Wenzel also mentions what should be done to attract more foreign capital in Canadian real estate. Click the link below to listen to our conversation!