101 Sheldon Dr. in Cambridge, Ont., is among a portfolio of light industrial buildings sold by Skyline Commercial REIT to a KingSett Capital fund. (Courtesy Skyline Commercial REIT)
Skyline Commercial REIT has sold a six-building industrial portfolio in Cambridge, Ont., for $58.2 million, bringing its total dispositions since Jan. 21 to more than $355 million.
Guelph-based Skyline Commercial REIT has been repositioning its industrial holding for the past year and has made four significant transactions so far in 2022. However, with most of its non-core assets now sold, that burst of activity is nearing an end.
The properties in the most recent sale are: 15, 101 and 131 Sheldon Dr.; 1177 and 1195 Franklin Blvd.; and 1425 Bishop St. N.
The sale reduces Skyline’s current holdings in the Cambridge area, just west of Toronto, by more than half.
“The REIT maintains a strong presence in the City of Cambridge, with three properties totalling 223,583 square feet of industrial space,” said REIT president Michael Mackenzie in the announcement Tuesday afternoon.
Skyline’s repositioned industrial portfolio
In an interview last week with RENX, Mackenzie said the trust is updating its portfolio. The REIT had owned numerous smaller-bay, multi-tenant properties from its earliest acquisitions, in the years after it was launched in 2012.
Those properties are now largely all gone, in favour of newer assets with larger tenants and stronger covenants. There is also a more significant focus on logistics, warehousing and distribution, a sector which is driving enormous demand for light industrial space across Canada.
In recent weeks, Skyline has also sold:
– four properties in the Montreal suburbs of Lachine and Dorval, totalling 402,709 square feet, to KingSett Real Estate Growth LP No. 7 and Candev Immobilia Inc. for $80.13 million;
– two industrial properties in the Greater Toronto Area totalling 207,689 square feet to Pure Industrialfor $62.8 million; and
– during 2021, it made four other Ontario dispositions (in Ayr, London, Mississauga and Windsor), totalling more than 597,000 square feet and bringing in gross proceeds of $87.4 million.
Mackenzie had alluded to the Cambridge sale in the interview with RENX, noting it had one other portfolio under contract. He said that would likely be the last of the major dispositions, though the REIT does still have some properties remaining for sale.
“This was a fulsome strategy that we had and have pretty much completed at this point,”he said last week. “We’ve really changed the complexion of the portfolio.”
About Skyline
Skyline Commercial REIT is a privately owned and managed portfolio of commercial properties, focused on acquiring industrial and logistics-centred properties along major highway corridors and transportation routes in Canada.
The REIT is distributed as an alternative investment product through Skyline Wealth Management Inc., the REIT’s preferred exempt market dealer.
Skyline Commercial REIT is operated and managed by Skyline Group Of Companies.
TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
