Real Estate

The head of the city’s largest property management firm says the federal government needs to be “much more transparent” about what it plans to do with its downtown office footprint so landlords can start preparing now for future vacancies.

A new report suggests Ottawa’s industrial market “may have reached a peak” after a pandemic-fuelled e-commerce boom triggered unprecedented demand for warehouse space, but it says rents are still expected to rise amid an ongoing supply shortage.

The sale of aging federal government buildings in Ottawa could still be “several years” away, Public Services and Procurement Canada says, while a Crown corporation that redevelops surplus federal properties says it will look into whether any of the sites on the disposal list could be financially viable as residential conversions.

The Altea wellness and social club that is moving into the former Canadian Tire store on Carling Avenue could be the first of many businesses opting for a location near but not in the downtown core, market watchers say.

The federal government this week released a list of several properties that it is planning to dispose of in the National Capital Region.

Claridge Homes chief financial officer Neil Malhotra said higher mortgage rates, rising construction costs due to inflation and a new bylaw that hikes the fees developers pay to the city in lieu of parkland at highrise building sites have combined to make large-scale development projects a risky proposition.

National home sales jumped by 11.3 per cent between March and April as the real estate market picked up again, but supply remained at a 20 year-low, the Canadian Real Estate Association said Monday.

The national housing agency says the seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts for the fourth month of the year was 16,673 units, up six per cent from 15,715 in March.

Pro athletes and senior executives trying to buy a home in Ottawa are among those being affected by the federal government's foreign buyer ban, realtors say. 

Minto Apartment REIT is refinancing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of mortgages as rising interest rates jack up the costs of servicing its debt and eat into its cash flow, the company said this week.