According to the CBRE 2019 Tech Analysis, “the typical 500-person tech company needing 75,000 sq. ft of office space can expect a total annual cost (labour and real estate) to range from $29 million in Montreal to $60 million in the San Francisco Bay Area”, meaning that it costs far less to establish tech offices here in Canada.
So let’s take a minute to take stock:
- Google is investing in real estate and opening up shop here in the GTA– at a fraction of the cost of opening an office back home in the U.S.
- The Canadian government has established initiatives to accelerate the employing process through programs like the Global Talent Stream.
- Google will bring 5,000 high-income earning tech jobs to Toronto, Waterloo and Montreal by 2022.
- An additional 216,000 tech workers needed by other employers by 2021.
If you are a real estate investor wondering where to invest next, a good idea is to invest where Google invests.
There are a number of pre-construction condos going up within a 5 km radius of their new offices, in areas these workers will be vying to live. And based on the previously mentioned analysis by the CBRE, “if we were to compare the annual average apartment rent with annual average tech-worker salary, tech salaries generally can cover the cost of living in even the most expensive markets, based on the affordability standard of 30% of income to housing”.
Check out the maps below to find pre-construction condos going up next to Google’s new office in Toronto and Kitchener-Waterloo.
