Canadian Industrial Real Estate Blog

For a great snapshot of the existing and developing Global REIT markets, have a read through the recently written article in The New York Times by clicking here.

Sam Zell is considered one of the best real estate entrepreneurs in the World. His early years in real-estate investment could be traced back to, while an undergraduate, purchasing apartments in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He went on to create the Equity Group Investments, which spawned three public real estate companies, including: Equity Residential, the largest apartment owner in the United States, Equity Office Properties the largest office owner in the country, and Manufactured Home Communities, a mobile home company. I recently received a link to a humerous, insightful and very awakening message by Sam. To hear Sam's message, click here, turn on your computer volume and have a listen.

There is an increasingly amount of end users who are now finding opportunities to locate to what was generally accepted in the past as outlying areas from the GTA. These locales include Brantford, Woodstock, Barrie, Guelph, Kitchener/Waterloo and London, Ontario. This flight to areas that are more accessible to many in the workforce should not have a significant impact on overall vacancies of the measurable areas in the immediate GTA. Developers are already monitoring the progress of new development throughout a much larger geographical area when considering the delivery/development of new buildings.

The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) boasts the fourth largest industrial space inventory in North America at approximately 675,000,000 square feet, we notice that there has generally been steady demand from the end user community throughout 2006 however this demand has been slightly outpaced by new supply. There was a tremendous push of development throughout 2004, 2005 and the beginning of 2006. This development is now slowing which will naturally result in demand beginning to surpass supply which will conversely decrease the options available for end users to choose from, leading us into a period of increasing rental rates throughout 2007. 

I will be providing a National Industrial Market Overview and making forecasting for 2007 on CFRA radio located in Ottawa, ON on Friday October, 20. Listen in for insight.