Publicly traded office real estate trusts have seen their values drop precipitously in recent months as a combination of high interest rates and rising vacancies in the wake of the pandemic have sent tremors through the sector. Now Carl Gomez is waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The chief economist at commercial real estate analytics company CoStar said valuations for privately held office real estate assets in Canada, mostly held by large institutional investors such as pensions, are “not adjusting to reality” and face a reckoning that could see their values, too, cut by as much as half.
“The total return on (office) REITs has seen almost a 50 per cent correction,” he said, referring to the combination of unit price declines and cuts to distributions.
“I think there’s a disconnect … between what’s happening in the private market and what’s happening in the public market, which is already sensing that these changes (in valuation) need to occur.”
Cash flows at risk
Gomez said public investors seem to be acknowledging that changes to capital market conditions as well as “structural changes related to the nature of how we work — including hybrid and work-from-home” mean that valuations must adjust.
“Cash flows are at risk,” he said.
Among the publicly traded real estate investment trusts operating in the space that have already been punished is Slate Office REIT, which reduced its monthly distribution to one cent from 3.3 cents in April. True North Commercial REIT, which owns properties in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and the Atlantic provinces, announced a 50 per cent reduction to its monthly distributions in March to shore up cash to improve the trust’s capital profile. The unit prices of both REITs plummeted and are still off by more than 40 per cent.
The question of whether privately held assets will meet the same fate has been swirling ever since commercial real estate was thrust into the spotlight by market watchers who see it as one of the most vulnerable sectors to current interest rate and inflation trends, as well as credit tightening in the wake of a pair of bank failures in the United States.
“You can’t talk about vulnerable asset classes in Canadian real estate without addressing office first,” said Victoria Girardo, senior vice-president of real estate lending at Canadian Western Bank.
“The sector is facing considerable headwinds including high vacancy rates,” she said, as large numbers of workers continue to work in part from home. At the same time, rising interest rates are putting pressure on landlords, particularly when renewing loans or refinancing properties.
“High debt costs are eating up a much higher portion of rents from a shrinking tenant base,” said Girardo, adding that refinancing and renewal problems are further complicated by declining property values.
High-profile defaults
Toronto-based investment giant Brookfield Asset Management spooked some market watchers by defaulting on US$750 million in loans tied to two Los Angeles office towers in February and, later, a further $161 million on a portfolio of office buildings largely located around Washington, D.C. Girardo also cited PIMCO-owned Columbia Property Trust’s default on US$1.7 billion in notes secured by seven buildings in some of the largest U.S. cities, one of the largest office defaults since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
While Gomez said those defaults may have been affected by additional stresses in the United States, such as tighter borrowing conditions, and can be handled by large players such as Brookfield and PIMCO, the Canadian sector is not immune to the factors driving such decisions.
Equity analysts at CIBC Capital Markets recognized the challenges in a report April 12, in which they broadly reduced price targets across the office REIT segment of the market, citing “erosion in both sentiment … and fundamentals.”
At the time, the four Canadian Office REITs the CIBC analysts covered were trading at an average 41 per cent discount to net asset value, suggesting investors were already somewhat soured on the office sector.
While the analysts, led by Dean Wilkinson, emphasized that their outlook covered only the next 12 months and was “not an overtly negative perspective on the long-term prospects for office properties per se,” others aren’t so sure.
“I think in the short-run, investors are well capitalized. However, we will see impacts in the long run,” said Erkan Yonder, associate professor of real estate at Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business.
“It might not lead to (a) high number of bankruptcies, but I suspect that … the vacancy problem (could) lead to strategic defaults.”
Like Gomez, he sees trends including continuing vacancies alongside an uptick in subleasing as an indication tough times lay ahead, with newer buildings in good locations having the best shot at withstanding them.
But what Gomez sees as an inevitable adjustment or “revaluation” in privately held office real estate — unless trends in interest rates and hybrid work suddenly reverse — could be slowed by a concentration of office real estate ownership in Canada.
“A good chunk of office buildings, particularly in the downtown office buildings, are in the hands of well-capitalized investors like pension funds,” Gomez said. “They’re resisting taking write-downs right away (because) they’re not feeling distressed like some of the REITs, which are a little bit more leveraged and need access to capital to keep them going.”
Another drag on a forced reckoning is that, so far, there has been little actual trading of assets to set new “comparables” on which valuations are based, he said.
Cadillac Fairview has $40 billion in assets largely concentrated in office and retail properties.
Two of Canada’s largest commercial real estate investment and development companies — Cadillac Fairview, with $40-billion in assets largely concentrated in office and retail properties, and Oxford Properties, which has an office portfolio of more than 23-million-square-feet in Canada, the U.S., the United Kingdom and Europe — are owned by the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan and the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), respectively.
Jo Taylor, chief executive of the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, said in an April 5 interview that office occupancy was holding up relatively well in Teachers’ portfolio through Cadillac Fairview, particularly in desirable “class A” buildings in major cities, adding that Cadillac’s investment model is not predicated on external financing.
But even these coveted high-end office complexes in Toronto suffered in the first quarter, as the Canada’s largest city contended with “an influx of availabilities both in direct and sublease space … including space in Class A towers,” according to a report by real estate services firm Jones Lang Lasalle Inc.
In the April interview, Taylor acknowledged that there had been no recent “marquee disposals” in commercial office real estate that would establish “comparables” for future asset sales based on current conditions.
In the meantime, capitalization or cap rates — a key measure of a building’s value based on the income it generates from rent, taking into account the costs associated with the building — are being scrutinized by market watchers as they assess the situation and risks.
Average cap rates rode down from around seven per cent in the early part of the decade to about five per cent as interest rates fell. But they haven’t reversed course despite the rapid rise in interest rates, said Gomez.
“If net operating income goes down, your cap rate should go up, but what we’re seeing is that they haven’t adjusted by as much, if (at all),” he said.
“Those cap rates are, for the most part, staying sticky, mainly because of the appraisal lag.”
‘Significant’ writedowns coming
In late March, Jim Keohane, a director at Alberta Investment Management Corp. (AIMCo) who spent eight years at the helm of the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP), predicted “significant” write-downs were coming on office and commercial real estate as owners and lenders digested the effect of rising rates and lingering vacancies and their impact on traditional metrics including cap rates.The higher financing costs combined with lower rents would have a steeper impact on valuations than rising rates alone, he said.
Gomez said the spread between current average cap rates and 10-year government bond yields is another strong indicator that a revaluation is likely coming to the office segment.
The spread is a proxy for the level of risk taken on by investing in real estate instead of bonds, he said, and it would be expected to stay the same or even widen with new perceived risks — such as vacancy rates in some markets rising above 10 per cent, double what they were before the pandemic. Instead, the typical 400-basis-point spread has shrunk to around 200 basis points as interest rates have risen, he said.
Rising subleases
Rising subleases are also among the signs he sees of a reckoning on the horizon. These suggest that while landlords are still getting their full rents, companies are reassessing and reducing their space needs, and aren’t likely to occupy as much on lease renewal. Toronto showed the biggest absolute increase in sublets by square footage in the first quarter of 2023 from the previous year, according to an online presentation Gomez made April 19, while Vancouver’s increase was highest in percentage terms, at 55 per cent.
One of the most prominent examples of this trend was Shopify Inc.’s decision to abandon plans to move into The Well, a new retail, office and residential development on the west side of Toronto’s downtown. This put 350,000 square feet up for sublease, adding to 87,000 square feet of sublease space already available in the new building that was put up by other tenants who pre-leased space prior to the pandemic being declared in March 2020.
Other worrying trends such as shorter leases at renewal are starting to take hold, he said, suggesting these sector pressures show no signs of easing any time soon. And there are some that aren’t even on the radar yet.
“We’re starting to see an increase in the amount of incentives … so there’s a lot of discounts, free months’ rent,” Gomez said. “So the net effective rent that the landlord is getting is much lower than the base (rent) value … and that doesn’t necessarily get captured in the data.”
Some markets have had a head start when it comes to grappling with a glut of office space.
Calgary, hit hard by the last energy downturn, is offering grants to convert vacant office space into housing and has approved at least 10 projects under consideration as part of a downtown incentive program, said Girardo, the Canadian Western Bank executive.
Those projects face challenges including floor sizes and mechanical systems that are not conducive to residential units, and difficulty estimating renovation costs.
“Grants help remove some barriers but not all,” Girardo said.
The Loft Building in Calgary is one of five more downtown buildings designated by the city for conversion to residential units.
For Gomez, these attempts to retrofit or overhaul the sector are playing out against the “slow burn” of changing fundamentals, including what he sees as a protracted increase in vacancy over the foreseeable future due to both supply and demand issues.
Unlike the 2008 financial crisis, when the lending taps were turned off and building owners went into immediate distress, he expects this market drama to play out over a longer period of time.
“Office valuations simply haven’t adjusted (this time) … even though market expectations of all the cyclical and secular trends have,” he said.
Housing affordability is a key issue in the provincial election campaign in British Columbia, particularly in major centres.
Here are some statistics about housing in B.C. from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s 2024 Rental Market Report, issued in January, and the B.C. Real Estate Association’s August 2024 report.
Average residential home price in B.C.: $938,500
Average price in greater Vancouver (2024 year to date): $1,304,438
Average price in greater Victoria (2024 year to date): $979,103
Average price in the Okanagan (2024 year to date): $748,015
Average two-bedroom purpose-built rental in Vancouver: $2,181
Average two-bedroom purpose-built rental in Victoria: $1,839
Average two-bedroom purpose-built rental in Canada: $1,359
Rental vacancy rate in Vancouver: 0.9 per cent
How much more do new renters in Vancouver pay compared with renters who have occupied their home for at least a year: 27 per cent
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Voters along the south coast of British Columbia who have not cast their ballots yet will have to contend with heavy rain and high winds from an incoming atmospheric river weather system on election day.
Environment Canada says the weather system will bring prolonged heavy rain to Metro Vancouver, the Sunshine Coast, Fraser Valley, Howe Sound, Whistler and Vancouver Island starting Friday.
The agency says strong winds with gusts up to 80 kilometres an hour will also develop on Saturday — the day thousands are expected to go to the polls across B.C. — in parts of Vancouver Island and Metro Vancouver.
Wednesday was the last day for advance voting, which started on Oct. 10.
More than 180,000 voters cast their votes Wednesday — the most ever on an advance voting day in B.C., beating the record set just days earlier on Oct. 10 of more than 170,000 votes.
Environment Canada says voters in the area of the atmospheric river can expect around 70 millimetres of precipitation generally and up to 100 millimetres along the coastal mountains, while parts of Vancouver Island could see as much as 200 millimetres of rainfall for the weekend.
An atmospheric river system in November 2021 created severe flooding and landslides that at one point severed most rail links between Vancouver’s port and the rest of Canada while inundating communities in the Fraser Valley and B.C. Interior.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
British Columbia voters face no shortage of policies when it comes to tackling the province’s housing woes in the run-up to Saturday’s election, with a clear choice for the next government’s approach.
David Eby’s New Democrats say the housing market on its own will not deliver the homes people need, while B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad saysgovernment is part of the problem and B.C. needs to “unleash” the potential of the private sector.
But Andy Yan, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University, said the “punchline” was that neither would have a hand in regulating interest rates, the “giant X-factor” in housing affordability.
“The one policy that controls it all just happens to be a policy that the province, whoever wins, has absolutely no control over,” said Yan, who made a name for himself scrutinizing B.C.’s chronic affordability problems.
Some metrics have shown those problems easing, with Eby pointing to what he said was a seven per cent drop in rent prices in Vancouver.
But Statistics Canada says 2021 census data shows that 25.5 per cent of B.C. households were paying at least 30 per cent of their income on shelter costs, the worst for any province or territory.
Yan said government had “access to a few levers” aimed at boosting housing affordability, and Eby has been pulling several.
Yet a host of other factors are at play, rates in particular, Yan said.
“This is what makes housing so frustrating, right? It takes time. It takes decades through which solutions and policies play out,” Yan said.
Rustad, meanwhile, is running on a “deregulation” platform.
He has pledged to scrap key NDP housing initiatives, including the speculation and vacancy tax, restrictions on short-term rentals,and legislation aimed at boosting small-scale density in single-family neighbourhoods.
Green Leader Sonia Furstenau, meanwhile, says “commodification” of housing by large investors is a major factor driving up costs, and her party would prioritize people most vulnerable in the housing market.
Yan said it was too soon to fully assess the impact of the NDP government’s housing measures, but there was a risk housing challenges could get worse if certain safeguards were removed, such as policies that preserve existing rental homes.
If interest rates were to drop, spurring a surge of redevelopment, Yan said the new homes with higher rents could wipe the older, cheaper units off the map.
“There is this element of change and redevelopment that needs to occur as a city grows, yet the loss of that stock is part of really, the ongoing challenges,” Yan said.
Given the external forces buffeting the housing market, Yan said the question before voters this month was more about “narrative” than numbers.
“Who do you believe will deliver a better tomorrow?”
Yan said the market has limits, and governments play an important role in providing safeguards for those most vulnerable.
The market “won’t by itself deal with their housing needs,” Yan said, especially given what he described as B.C.’s “30-year deficit of non-market housing.”
IS HOUSING THE ‘GOVERNMENT’S JOB’?
Craig Jones, associate director of the Housing Research Collaborative at the University of British Columbia, echoed Yan, saying people are in “housing distress” and in urgent need of help in the form of social or non-market housing.
“The amount of housing that it’s going to take through straight-up supply to arrive at affordability, it’s more than the system can actually produce,” he said.
Among the three leaders, Yan said it was Furstenau who had focused on the role of the “financialization” of housing, or large investors using housing for profit.
“It really squeezes renters,” he said of the trend. “It captures those units that would ordinarily become affordable and moves (them) into an investment product.”
The Greens’ platform includes a pledge to advocate for federal legislation banning the sale of residential units toreal estate investment trusts, known as REITs.
The party has also proposed a two per cent tax on homes valued at $3 million or higher, while committing $1.5 billion to build 26,000 non-market units each year.
Eby’s NDP government has enacted a suite of policies aimed at speeding up the development and availability of middle-income housing and affordable rentals.
They include the Rental Protection Fund, which Jones described as a “cutting-edge” policy. The $500-million fund enables non-profit organizations to purchase and manage existing rental buildings with the goal of preserving their affordability.
Another flagship NDP housing initiative, dubbed BC Builds, uses $2 billion in government financingto offer low-interest loans for the development of rental buildings on low-cost, underutilized land. Under the program, operators must offer at least 20 per cent of their units at 20 per cent below the market value.
Ravi Kahlon, the NDP candidate for Delta North who serves as Eby’s housing minister,said BC Builds was designed to navigate “huge headwinds” in housing development, including high interest rates, global inflation and the cost of land.
Boosting supply is one piece of the larger housing puzzle, Kahlon said in an interview before the start of the election campaign.
“We also need governments to invest and … come up with innovative programs to be able to get more affordability than the market can deliver,” he said.
The NDP is also pledging to help more middle-class, first-time buyers into the housing market with a plan to finance 40 per cent of the price on certain projects, with the money repayable as a loan and carrying an interest rate of 1.5 per cent. The government’s contribution would have to be repaid upon resale, plus 40 per cent of any increase in value.
The Canadian Press reached out several times requesting a housing-focused interview with Rustad or another Conservative representative, but received no followup.
At a press conference officially launching the Conservatives’ campaign, Rustad said Eby “seems to think that (housing) is government’s job.”
A key element of the Conservatives’ housing plans is a provincial tax exemption dubbed the “Rustad Rebate.” It would start in 2026 with residents able to deduct up to $1,500 per month for rent and mortgage costs, increasing to $3,000 in 2029.
Rustad also wants Ottawa to reintroduce a 1970s federal program that offered tax incentives to spur multi-unit residential building construction.
“It’s critical to bring that back and get the rental stock that we need built,” Rustad said of the so-called MURB program during the recent televised leaders’ debate.
Rustad also wants to axe B.C.’s speculation and vacancy tax, which Eby says has added 20,000 units to the long-term rental market, and repeal rules restricting short-term rentals on platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo to an operator’s principal residence or one secondary suite.
“(First) of all it was foreigners, and then it was speculators, and then it was vacant properties, and then it was Airbnbs, instead of pointing at the real problem, which is government, and government is getting in the way,” Rustad said during the televised leaders’ debate.
Rustad has also promised to speed up approvals for rezoning and development applications, and to step in if a city fails to meet the six-month target.
Eby’s approach to clearing zoning and regulatory hurdles includes legislation passed last fall that requires municipalities with more than 5,000 residents to allow small-scale, multi-unit housing on lots previously zoned for single family homes.
The New Democrats have also recently announced a series of free, standardized building designs and a plan to fast-track prefabricated homes in the province.
A statement from B.C.’s Housing Ministry said more than 90 per cent of 188 local governments had adopted the New Democrats’ small-scale, multi-unit housing legislation as of last month, while 21 had received extensions allowing more time.
Rustad has pledged to repeal that law too, describing Eby’s approach as “authoritarian.”
The Greens are meanwhile pledging to spend $650 million in annual infrastructure funding for communities, increase subsidies for elderly renters, and bring in vacancy control measures to prevent landlords from drastically raising rents for new tenants.
Yan likened the Oct. 19 election to a “referendum about the course that David Eby has set” for housing, with Rustad “offering a completely different direction.”
Regardless of which party and leader emerges victorious, Yan said B.C.’s next government will be working against the clock, as well as cost pressures.
Yan said failing to deliver affordable homes for everyone, particularly people living on B.C. streets and young, working families, came at a cost to the whole province.
“It diminishes us as a society, but then also as an economy.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
