Zahra Ebrahim is a principal at Monumental. The FutureBUILDS BIPOC Real Estate Development program will provide participants with mentors and connections to the professionals they need to get a project built.Brianna-Roye/Handout
A new incubator program aims to make the real estate development industry more reflective of the city’s diversity. Led by consulting firm Monumental and the University of Toronto Infrastructure Institute, the FutureBUILDS BIPOC Real Estate Development Incubator invites mid-career entrepreneurs for a five-month course that will provide training, connections and on-site learning.
“Real estate development has been an insider’s game,” says Zahra Ebrahim, a principal at Monumental. “Your network is what allows you to thrive in the industry. This program will provide participants with mentors and connections to the professionals they need to get a project built.”
The program builds on a report by Monumental for the think tank Future Skills Centre. It found that “representation of racialized folks in Canadian real estate development … is low overall, especially in leadership.” BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of colour) real estate professionals “described the prevalent culture in the industry as a ‘white boys club.’”
The five-month program, which is free, runs May to September; enrolment is open now. The program will assist participants in planning their first project, which will likely be a building with two to four apartments, with a goal of starting construction within three years.
The intended scale is modest. “We’d be surprised if someone wants to build a 40-storey tower,” says Kofi Hope, the other principal of Monumental. “We expect that people may have a single-family home that they want to convert into three units.”
However, he adds: “That’s where a lot of established development families started out: doing things on the small scale and then working their way up.”
The program was inspired by research by Monumental into the careers of BIPOC people in the local real estate industry. Ms. Ebrahim explains that many of them had the necessary expertise to become developers and builders but lacked a social network and the access to banks and other lenders.
Several such professionals will speak at a public roundtable March 6 at Innis College at the University of Toronto.
The program has support from several financial institutions including Bank of Montreal and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.
One secondary goal, Mr. Hope says, is to address the housing crisis by “adding new developers, bringing new creativity and energy.” Having more small-scale players, he argues, is a critical ingredient in creating more of the small-scale apartments that planners call “missing middle.” (The City of Toronto has signalled that it will begin making it easier to get such projects approved and built.)
That would mean that the financial returns from development would flow to a wider group of people. Earlier generations of real estate developers in the Toronto region – including many European immigrants – “got a chance to build generational wealth, not just for their families but for their whole communities,” Ms. Ebrahim says.
The program aspires to bring that same opportunity to BIPOC people, she adds, and to bring their resources to address the larger issue. “We do need new ideas. This is appropriate to the moment we’re in as a city,” she adds. “Because we’re in a crisis. It can only help to have more people in the ring trying to wrestle this to the ground.”
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.
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