Calgary is for you if you live in a high-cost city and want cheaper housing with no compromise on lifestyle.
In Calgary, you have an urban vibe, a beautiful natural setting, high incomes and houses at half the price of Toronto and Vancouver. Even compared with Ontario towns such as Barrie, Guelph and Windsor, Calgary’s a bargain.
Calgary is the corporate engine of Alberta, a province so economically strong that its Premier wants to exit the Canada Pension Plan and set up a provincial counterpart that, according to government claims, could cost less and pay more. But real estate values speak loudly in this housing-obsessed country. How can Calgary be so great – and so cheap?
The average resale home price in Calgary in October was $555,400, compared with a national average of $656,625 and an average of just over $1-million for Vancouver and Toronto. Windsor, adjacent to Detroit and a four-hour drive from Toronto, had an average price of $572,600.
Calgary’s housing market has consistently trailed that of perennial price leader Vancouver, but there have been periods when it muscled Toronto out of second place. In 2007, the average resale home price in Calgary was $414,066, compared with $377,029 in Toronto and $570,795 in Vancouver. In the early 1980s, Calgary also ranked ahead of Toronto.
The volatility of the energy sector, which drives Alberta’s economy, helps explain why Calgary lags on home price growth. But there’s another reason, and it leads to a surprising conclusion. In its comparative tameness, Calgary real estate exemplifies a rational, balanced market where the supply of homes meets the demand.
Charles St-Arnaud, the chief economist for Credit Union Central Alberta, says Calgary has a history of out-building Toronto on a per-capita basis. For the first half of 2023, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. numbers show Calgary built hundreds more detached houses than both Toronto and Vancouver.
The oil industry has created a lot of wealth, and workers have migrated to Alberta as a result. “But you didn’t have the same constraint on supply as you had in other major cities like Toronto or Vancouver, and so you didn’t have that big an increase in prices,” Mr. St-Arnaud said.
Calgary’s average home price puts it well below Ottawa and in the same range as Halifax and Montreal. But Calgary has one of the highest median after-tax household income levels in the country, while Alberta ranks first among provinces.
Mr. St-Arnaud dismissed the idea that the city’s tame real estate market offsets the narrative of provincial wealth. “You can see and feel the wealth in Calgary even though you don’t have skyrocketing high house prices,” he said.
Despite its nickname, Cowtown, the foundation of Calgary’s wealth is the energy industry, which is vulnerable to drops in the price of oil and natural gas. Oil prices plunged in 2008 and weakened again in the middle of the next decade. Calgary house prices stagnated or declined during these periods, while prices in Vancouver and Toronto stayed strong for the most part.
Mr. St-Arnaud said Calgary’s economy is less dependent on energy than it used to be. Energy companies are running leaner on staffing, while sectors such as health care have been contributing new jobs. “There’s probably less chance that if you have a downturn in oil that suddenly you’ll have a lot of people who are affected by losing their income,” he said.
Job opportunities have long drawn people to Alberta from other parts of the country, and affordable housing adds to the attraction. From July 1, 2002, through this past July, Alberta experienced the biggest annual net interprovincial population gains since data began being collected in 1971-72.
Calgary home prices reflect this influx of people. The average resale home price jumped 9.3 per cent on a year-over-year basis in October, compared with a national average of 1.8 per cent.
“For someone who lives in Calgary who is looking at buying, maybe it’s getting expensive,” Mr. St-Arnaud said. “But in the grand scheme of things, when we compare to other cities in Canada that are grossly overvalued, Calgary is still way reasonable.”
Mr. St-Arnaud may be onto something here. Maybe the question isn’t why Calgary houses are so comparatively cheap, but why other markets aren’t as normal.
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eXp Realty
537 Chaparral Dr. S.E., Calgary
Asking price: $725,000 (August, 2023)
Selling price: $712,500 (September, 2023)
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Previous selling prices: $500,000 (February, 2007); $315,900 (March, 2005)
Taxes: $3,778 (2023)
Days on the market: 25
Listing agents: Bryon Howard and Benjamin Archibald, eXp Realty
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The three-bedroom home has entertaining spaces on each level, from the basement to the second floor.
eXp Realty
The action
This three-bedroom house near a man-made lake in Calgary’s southern outskirts has all the markers of a prized family home, but some buyers felt differently once they saw a bus stop near the front lawn – it was the reason its first offer folded. Two other offers emerged before a final deal was negotiated at $12,500 under the asking price.
“It was a quiet street and the sellers mentioned there were no more than a few people per day, if that, at the bus stop,” said agent Benjamin Archibald. “But … people had a stigma about the bus stop being constantly busy, no matter what the seller said. And you also couldn’t park right in front of the house. We would have sold it in 24 hours if the bus stop wasn’t there.”
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The kitchen is open to the dining room and an entertaining area.
eXp Realty
What they got
This nearly 20-year-old house has more than 2,300 square feet of living space, a double garage, and a private yard on a 38- by 118-foot lot.
The kitchen is open to the dining room and there are entertaining spaces on each level, from the basement to the second floor.
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The home has four bathrooms, an enclosed den and a laundry room on the main floor.
Annual homeowners’ association fees of $342 go to maintaining waterfront facilities.
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The house exits out to a private backyard with deck.
eXp Realty
The agent’s take
“It was a beautiful property with a beautiful bonus room upstairs,” Mr. Archibald said.
“The layout was conducive for families starting out or someone needing a little more space.”
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Kid-friendly amenities also fill the area. “The school systems are great, there are a lot of activities, and it’s a very vibrant community,” said Mr. Archibald.
“Chaparral is such a desirable community due to the lake access, a number of new developments there, and you’re close to the horse jumping at Spruce Meadows.”
Investing in Class A office space was an attractive proposition for most large pension funds thanks to its superior yield in the low-interest-rate environment for most of the past 15 years, one expert says.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
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Few asset classes face as many challenges in the post-pandemic era as commercial real estate – specifically, the office segment.
These troubles present potential concerns for institutional investors, including pension plans that have allocated significant capital to the space during the past decade. And that, in turn, could be a big issue for Canadians who rely on these pension plans as cornerstones of their retirement, says Jennifer Tozser, senior wealth advisor and portfolio manager with Tozser Wealth Management at National Bank Financial Wealth Management in Calgary.
“This is a big risk that might only get bigger,” she says. “With this whole work-from-home [trend] not going away, you have [many] tenants of Class A space – typically considered the safest of all – asking increasingly whether they want all that office space.”
Vacancy rates in downtown office properties remain persistently high even as life has returned to pre-pandemic normal in most major cities – although mostly among Class B or lower-rated properties, according to Jones Lang LaSalle IP Inc.’s recent Canada Real Estate Outlook report.
Pension funds’ exposure to commercial real estate ranges generally from about five to 15 per cent of total assets for most small to medium-sized plans to as much as 20 per cent for some large plans, says Lewis Gascoigne, lead for research on real assets for actuarial consulting firm Eckler Ltd. in Vancouver.
Office space only makes up a small share of most of these allocations, which are diversified across various types that include industrial and multi-family residential, which have strong fundamentals, and retail, which faces similar headwinds to the office segment, he adds.
Yet, for “some of the mega [pension] plans … there is a greater proportion of assets in office.”
Mr. Gascoigne further explains that large pension plans have much bigger sums to invest, so investing in Class A office space was an attractive proposition thanks to its superior yield in the low-interest-rate environment for most of the past 15 years.
Of course, that has changed markedly in the past 18 months, and the office segment is experiencing greater vacancies and reduced rent income. At the same time, higher interest rates have led to rising borrowing costs for owners. Furthermore, the value of many assets has fallen as low-risk investment vehicles are paying significantly more than they did a few years ago, Mr. Gascoigne says.
These problems are unlikely to go away soon and may actually exacerbate as asset owners with fixed-rate terms on their debt renew in the next few years at higher rates, Ms. Tozser says.
“All of this doesn’t necessarily show up in any current real estate metric,” she says, further noting pension plans’ positions in private real estate can also be somewhat “opaque,” and writedowns may trickle out over the next several years.
More challenges ahead
Signs of stress are emerging, says Arthur Salzer, chief investment officer with Northland Wealth Management, a multi-family office in Oakville, Ont.
“On the equity side, some are already bleeding red ink because of the vacancy issues, and walking away, giving their lenders the property,” he says about the instances in which debt is non-recourse, and creditors only can pursue collateral – the asset itself.
One notable example is an investment fund connected to Brookfield Properties, which recently defaulted on more than US$750-million in loans for two downtown Los Angeles properties, he adds.
Whether any Canadian pension plans walk away from their stressed office holdings is unclear, but Mr. Salzer notes these investors are often well-diversified and use various risk-hedging strategies to limit these downside outcomes.
However, other exposure through submanagers can also pose risks.
Real estate investment firms such as Hazelview Investments, which serves institutional clients, including pensions, are also facing challenges. Its flagship private fund Four Quadrant Global Real Estate Partners has been under pressure due to rising requests for redemptions.
“There are definitely headwinds in [the] office [space],” says Michael Tsourounis, managing partner and co-head of real estate at Hazelview Investments in Toronto.
Still, the need for office space, while diminished, is not going away, but asset owners must be creative with their assets, including providing more amenities along with more flexible leasing terms, he adds. In other cases, repurposing is required, including office-to-residential conversions.
“The long-term fundamentals for housing are good,” Mr. Tsourounis says, adding that Hazelview Investments has been at the vanguard of this trend.
Opportunities in the market
Prior to the pandemic, the firm completed two conversions of former Class B office buildings, including a low-rise in downtown Calgary and a downtown high-rise in Winnipeg that previously catered to medical professionals, to housing.
“Both were pretty successful from our vantage point because the floorplates they already had were conducive to a conversion, but not every office asset can do that,” he says.
The stresses in the office category also present an opportunity, Mr. Tsourounis adds.
“Having good liquidity is important because you can find great opportunities when there’s great dislocation in the market.”
For advisors, the focus is less on the opportunities and more on overexposure for clients to these stressed assets not only in their portfolios but also in workplace pension plans, Ms. Tozser says.
“You’re not going to convince your client who has been at [Canadian National Railway Co.] for 20 years that they need to get out of the [defined-benefit pension] plan because they have too much exposure.”
But she has minimized allocations to commercial real estate, especially the office segment, in clients’ portfolios.
Impact on pensions, preferred shares and liquid alts
Even so, the risk exists – however small – that clients’ workplace pension plans could sustain larger than expected losses. In turn, they might face higher contributions while working or even reduced payouts upon retiring.
At the same time, other retail investors could be surprised by losses in their own portfolios from exposure to office real estate they may not even realize they had. These include investments in liquid alternative funds and even preferred shares.
“If you look at the preferred shares market, many issuers have been commercial real estate companies,” Ms. Tozser adds.
Risks aside, commercial real estate remains an important diversifier for pension plans and all investors, for the matter, Mr. Gascoigne says.
“Within the asset mix studies and liability work we do, we still believe real estate has an important role in asset mixes despite the current headwinds,” including the beaten-up office segment, he says.
“A lot of the managers we speak to expect [the] office [segment] will recover, but it could be two or three years before we see some normalcy,” Mr. Gascoigne adds.
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The Royal Bank Plaza, located on the northwest corner of Front St. West and Bay St. in Toronto’s Financial District, sold for $1.1-billion last year.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
A year into the fastest campaign to hike interest rates in decades, the commercial real estate sector is deadlocked.
In one corner, the world’s most sophisticated private real estate investors, including Canadian pension plans, say scores of properties they own are worth hundreds of millions of dollars each and have held most of their value. In the other, investors are dumping shares of publicly-traded real estate investment trusts (REITs), particularly those that own skyscrapers, because they don’t think such lofty values still make sense. In Canada, the national vacancy rate of office towers just hit an all-time high, and in New York, there are enough empty offices to fill 26 Empire State Buildings.
Who’s right? That’s the trillion-dollar question looming over private investors in particular as they gauge whether to start marking down the value of their property portfolios more aggressively. It is a complex puzzle: Not all commercial properties are equal; deals that set market prices are at a low ebb; and there is a healthy dose of discretion permitted in the way private investors weigh the matrix of variables.
Macro trends must also be factored in. The sudden runup in interest rates has collided with the long tail of a global pandemic that has altered how and where people work, shop and live – all of which is coupled with the threat of an economic downturn that could upend a sector that has been fuelled by cheap money for more than a decade.
“You see what’s happening with private real estate versus what’s happened to the price of REITs – there’s just a massive valuation difference there that isn’t easy to explain, quite honestly,” Bert Clark, chief executive officer of public-sector pension manager Investment Management Corporation of Ontario, said in an interview.
The answer impacts trillions of dollars worth of office towers, malls, warehouses and apartment buildings, affecting everyone from banks that lend to the sector – including U.S. regional lenders whose share prices are already under siege – to the millions of Canadians whose pensions are managed by major property owners such as the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS).
Because so much is at stake, the standoff is getting testy. Pressed to justify their optimism for the real estate sector, private investors are starting to push back against the naysayers. “My honest view is people are overreacting quite materially,” Blake Hutcheson, OMERS’ CEO, said in an interview. “I think private valuations are much closer to reality than publics.”
Valuing real estate portfolios is tricky work, and private owners – as well as the outside experts they hire to vet their numbers – have leeway in how they appraise properties. By design, most private investors are patient owners with long-term leases who look not only at what a property would fetch today, but its future potential based on cash flows, replacement costs and the values of comparable buildings.
Over time, that makes their results less volatile. But it also raises eyebrows when markets plunge and private valuations don’t follow. The $21.2-billion real estate division of OMERS returned 13.6 per cent in 2022. Ivanhoé Cambridge, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec’s real estate arm that manages $48-billion worth of properties globally, was not far behind with a 12.4-per-cent gain last year.
Those returns are at odds with the performances of publicly-traded REITs. Shares of Allied Properties REIT AP-UN-T, once viewed as one of Canada’s most desirable REITs because it owns offices in downtown cores of cities such as Toronto and Montreal, many of which are in heritage-style buildings that have charm, are down 62 per cent from their prepandemic high. And the Canadian REIT universe – which encompasses everything from skyscrapers to rental apartment buildings to suburban shopping centres – is trading around a 30-per-cent discount to its net asset value, according to research from CIBC World Markets.
MSCI, a financial market research firm, tracks the difference between publicly-listed and private, or unlisted, real estate in Canada and the U.S. Its latest figures show the gap in public and private values is 37 per cent in Canada, and 30 per cent in the U.S.
Comparing price movements for listed
and unlisted real estate
Price/asset value level (Index: Dec. 2019 = 100)
JOHN SOPINSKI/the globe and mail,
source: msci real assets
Comparing price movements for listed
and unlisted real estate
Price/asset value level (Index: Dec. 2019 = 100)
JOHN SOPINSKI/the globe and mail,
source: msci real assets
Comparing price movements for listed and unlisted real estate
Price/asset value level (Index: Dec. 2019 = 100)
JOHN SOPINSKI/the globe and mail, source: msci real assets
These value gaps are now so large that they are hard to ignore, yet few people are willing talk publicly about them. Multiple companies that specialize in commercial real estate valuations declined to comment for this story, citing tensions between their public and private clients.
Amid this chaos, private owners do occasionally acknowledge the winds have shifted. Last year Royal Bank Plaza, the tower that houses the headquarters of Canada’s largest lender, Royal Bank of Canada RY-T, sold for $1.1-billion to the Spanish billionaire behind the Zara fashion retail chain. Its sellers were OMERS’ real estate arm, Oxford Properties, and its co-investor, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. At OMERS’ annual meeting in April, Mr. Hutcheson told pension plan members that if they tried the same sale again now, “I would think we’d get $300-million or $400-million less.” That’s a 30- to 40-per-cent drop, in line with public market valuations.
The question, then, is at what point must these estimates be integrated into financial models, if at all? Private real estate owners have long argued that they are private by design, because it allows them to smooth out market volatility, but they can’t ignore public investors forever. Many institutional shareholders doing the public-market selling are just as large, smart and sophisticated.
What no one contests is that the recent rise in interest rates is a dominant variable for both camps. The real estate sector is one of the most sensitive to interest rate changes, and the speed at which central banks across the West have hiked rates is extremely rare.
Higher rates have, in simple terms, taken the punch bowl away from the real estate party. In the decade leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, most commercial real estate was on fire because ultralow rates made mortgages extremely cheap. Central bank intervention to keep rates artificially low during the pandemic only exacerbated this trend.
Now that the pandemic is no longer a global emergency and benchmark interest rates have jumped at least four percentage points in both Canada and the U.S., investors are taking stock of all that has transpired. As the dust settles, with Canadian and U.S. central banks suggesting they are hitting pause, it is clear there are stark differences between the different asset classes of commercial real estate.
Industrial properties such as warehouses, manufacturing plants and distribution centres are hot – particularly in Canada, where the national vacancy rate fell to a record low of 1.6 per cent at the end of 2022, according to CBRE Group Inc., and is now only a tad higher. The supply of properties is so tight that some landlords have been able to raise rents more than 100 per cent in tenant turnovers and lease renewals.
Rental apartment building owners have also performed well, because their supply is constrained in many major cities across the U.S. and Canada. Boardwalk REIT BEI-UN-T, a major rental apartment owner in Calgary, reported earnings this week and its average rent increase when a tenant turned over last quarter was 15 per cent.
The office sector, though, is very clearly hurting, as are retail properties, albeit to a lesser extent. Office towers were among the hottest commercial real estate to own heading into the pandemic, with a vacancy rate of just 1.2 per cent in downtown Toronto, but white-collar workers have embraced hybrid work accommodations and the national occupancy for office buildings in Canada hit an all-time high of 17.7 per cent in the first quarter, according to CBRE.
“The fundamentals are brutal. Some of these buildings are never coming back,” Jeff Olin, the co-founder of Vision Capital Corp., which manages real estate investment funds, said in an interview. He still thinks some office towers are great, but when when it comes to private owners’ estimates, “there’s certainly denial, that’s for sure.”
Despite the headwinds, major property owners, including Brookfield Asset Management and Blackstone Inc., argue the process of valuing commercial real estate today is nuanced. Even in the office sector, they stress that quality matters. Newer towers with modern amenities, known as Class A buildings, are seeing higher occupancy rates and rising rents, while older, less well-maintained buildings, often located in suburban areas – the Class B and C inventory – are emptying out.
There has been “an absolute bifurcation of the real estate market,” Connor Teskey, president of Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management Ltd., said on a conference call last week.
To this end, Slate Office REIT SOT-DB-T and True North Commercial REIT TNT-UN-T, both of which largely own Class B properties predominately in Ontario, slashed their monthly payouts in recent weeks by 70 per cent and 50 per cent, respectively.
A dearth of property sales has also complicated things. Because there are now so few yardsticks to use when pricing a deal, even the most prominent and experienced investors can’t agree on what properties are worth.
In the first quarter of 2023, commercial property deal volume in Canada dropped 52 per cent year over year, according MSCI Real Assets, with the office sector plummeting 86 per cent and the retail sector dropping 66 per cent. In the U.S., first-quarter office deal volume dropped below the depths of the pandemic, hitting a pace not seen since the immediate aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis.
Although property sales will eventually rebound, offering some new benchmarks, there is a wildcard in this valuation puzzle: a wave of mortgage refinancings. Although private holders have the financial wherewithal to think long-term, they finance their property purchases with shorter-term debt, often on five-year terms, and some of it comes due each year. Most of the new debt replacing it is more expensive because the previous mortgages were locked in when rates were lower, or at ultralow rates in some cases, and owners will have to ask themselves if it makes sense to put more money into their properties to stave off defaults or sales under duress.
Even Brookfield BN-T, which regularly touts the high quality of its properties, has already defaulted on two loans for office towers in Los Angeles worth a combined US$755-million in February, and on another US$161-million mortgage for a dozen office buildings in Washington in April. It is possible the defaults are strategic, in order to negotiate better deals with lenders, but they also likely wouldn’t have happened if the market was still hot.
The coming refinancing cycle will also affect banks, which are the dominant lenders in commercial real estate. In the U.S., recent deposit woes at regional lenders are already shrinking the pool of available credit for property owners, and in Canada the federal banking regulator has ranked commercial real estate as the third most acute of nine key risks it is tracking this year, citing offices as well as construction and development assets as those under the most pressure. About 1.2 per cent of all loans at Canada’s largest banks are underpinned by office buildings.
Banks have tougher lending standards than they did in past crises, and their risks are spread over multiple sectors of real estate, so Canada’s lenders are expected to withstand commercial real estate shocks, Mike Rizvanovic, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, said in a recent note to clients. But if they and their U.S. peers pull back on lending, it could force distressed sales for real estate owners who can’t refinance.
Private owners acknowledge this scenario is possible, and that it would push down real estate valuations. But they argue they have the financial heft and scale to withstand short-term shocks. “If you can stay at the table, time will be your friend,” said Mr. Hutcheson, the OMERS CEO.
Recalling his estimate of Royal Bank Plaza’s market value today, he stressed it would only be realized if the buyer was forced to sell now. “As a private owner, I think it’s worth everything they paid for it,” he said.
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank could reverse interest rate trends in U.S. and Canada, potentially bringing down mortgage costsZoon Media
Here are The Globe and Mail’s top housing and real estate stories this week, with the lowest mortgage rates available in Canada today, commentary from our mortgage expert and one home worth a look.
What housing crash? What Canadian markets look like for the spring
Prospective home buyers held their breath in anticipation last year as real estate prices declined across the country, hoping to enter the market as prices would plunge. But the housing crash didn’t happen. A year after the Bank of Canada started raising interest rates, houses remain unaffordable, mortgages cost more, and homeowners are holding on to their properties, making real estate listings scarce. Erica Alini and Rachelle Younglai look at what to expect from the market this spring.
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank could reverse interest rate hike trends
The U.S. Federal Reserve was widely expected to raise interest rates at its next meeting on March 22, but the sudden failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) – the largest collapse of a U.S. bank since the 2008 crisis – has investors slashing their bets, Mark Rendell reports.
The bank’s failure is sharpening the tensions between fighting inflation and managing risks of financial instability, leading markets to believe the Fed will hold off on further interest rate increases to stabilize the economy.
Why the SVB collapse is the best news for mortgage renewals and homebuyers
The failure of SVB could ripple through the economy, but for now, fear is manifesting itself through a rush of money into government bonds. The rush to the market is raising prices and bringing down interest rates on bonds.
The cost of fixed-rate mortgages is heavily influenced by interest rates in the bond market, which makes this the best news in a while for anyone renewing their mortgage or buying a house, writes Rob Carrick. Plus, the fear of economic instability triggered by the bank’s failure could push central banks to lower interest rates sooner than anticipated.
Mortgage specials start arriving, just in time for spring
This week’s market news could lead mortgage rates to go on sale, writes Robert McLister.
Canadian home sales are up slightly as prices continue to fall in February
Home prices in Canada fell in February for the 12th month, but sales volume is rising slightly in a potential sign that buyers are adjusting to higher interest rates, reports Rachelle Younglai.
The Home Price Index, which adjusts for pricing volatility, reached $704,300 last month, a 1.1-per-cent fall from January and a 16-per-cent loss from last February, when values hit their record high, according to the monthly report from the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA.)
Decoder: The hit to Canadian house prices is deeper than it seems
While February’s housing report contained signs that the market may be stabilizing, it also cemented this as the steepest house price correction at the national level in decades, reports Jason Kirby.
According to CREA data, the typical home price in Canada has fallen by $132,000 since February 2022, and the drop is actually worse once inflation is factored in. In real, or inflation-adjusted terms, national house prices have fallen nearly $168,000, a more-than-19-per-cent decline.
Home of the week: A Calgary home for the tech lover
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Home of the Week, 530 Crescent Rd. NW CalgaryZoon Media
1 of 30
The Crescent area of Calgary, just a 15-minute walk to downtown, offers stunning vistas and a mix of more traditional and newly built homes. The lot size is 28.9-by-120 feet, and the entire house is oriented toward the view: a modernist building with 13-feet high windows – made in Belgium – and outdoor spaces with built-in fireplaces.
On the very back of the house is a screened-in back deck and an office workspace. Sitting in the office, you can turn around and look straight through to the front terrace and beyond. “The idea was, wherever you are, you have a view to the downtown,” the owner said.
What do you think is the asking price for this house?
a. $995,000
b. $1,899,000
c. $3,550,000
d. $2,350,000
a. The asking price is $3,550,000.
Calgary, Feb. 10, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Sproule, a leading global energy consulting and advisory firm, is pleased to announce an agreement to acquire SGS S.A.’s (“SGS”) Subsurface Consultancy (“SSC”) based in the Netherlands. Geneva-based SGS is a testing, inspection and certification company recognized as the global benchmark for sustainability, quality, and integrity. SSC conducts reserves certification, seismic interpretation, integrated subsurface studies, and provides expert witness services for clients related to various energy projects globally, but primarily in Europe and the Middle East.
“This acquisition strengthens Sproule’s existing Reservoir Services, Geothermal, and Energy Advisory teams, particularly in the European market. It offers continuity for clients and employees, while providing additional scale to our growing platform at a disruptive time in global energy markets,” says Christoffer Mylde, SVP Corporate Development, Sproule.
This acquisition combines SSC’s deep bench and extensive track record in reservoir studies, expert witness testimony, and advisory services with Sproule’s growing global platform. The combined expertise, industry contacts, and technical acumen will offer an even more compelling value proposition to clients. SSC will be integrated with Sproule’s existing team in the Netherlands. The transaction is set to close on March 1, 2023.
“This acquisition further cements our business within the European market. It positions us to compete more effectively and deliver better solutions for our global client base, by further deepening our technical and commercial expertise. We look forward to welcoming the SSC team to Sproule, where we will provide critical continuity and offer new services to existing SSC clients,” says Jim Chisholm, CEO, Sproule.
About Sproule
Sproule is a global energy consulting and advisory firm that helps companies, investors, and governments understand value and risk in an increasingly complex energy market. Clients value our solutions and the resulting stakeholder confidence in decisions. Sproule offers trusted advice on evolving energy markets, including decarbonization strategies, net zero pathways, independent assurance for resource reports, optimized turn-key asset management solutions, and strategic advice on M&A transactions across the energy value chain.
About SGS
We are SGS – the world’s leading testing, inspection, and certification company. We are recognized as the global benchmark for sustainability, quality, and integrity. Our 97,000 employees operate a network of 2,650 offices and laboratories, working together to enable a better, safer, and more interconnected world.
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Phone: +1-403-771-6702
Devyanni D had to leave her previous apartment and found rents had skyrocketed, forcing her to spend more of her salary on housing in Toronto.Galit Rodan/The Globe and Mail
Rising rents mean Canadians are devoting a higher portion of their income to rent, leaving them cash strapped and stressed about how much they might have to pay if they’re forced to move in the months ahead.
Inflation, rising interest and mortgage rates, growing utility costs and swelling demand are among the factors combining to lead to increasingly high rental costs across Canada, experts say, a marked change from the start of the pandemic when rents fell for a time.
Until recently, Devyaani D (the name she goes by), 28, a media and communications professional who works at an IT consultancy firm in Toronto, shared a two-bedroom condo with a friend, and paid $2,250 inclusive of utilities, in North York.
Then her landlord said she needed the rental unit for personal use. Though her landlord tried to be subtle, the message was clear – ‘Leave ASAP!’
This meant Devyaani had to start house hunting for the third time since her arrival in Canada in 2019. She decided it was time for a place of her own.
“I couldn’t find anything that was within my budget. I decided to go overboard and shed a good chunk of my salary on rent as I had no choice. It was either that or me moving outside the city,” she says.
She narrowed down her search to a few studio apartments that ranged from $1,400 to $1,600. “The $1,400 rental properties went off the market soon after they were listed. I had no choice but to go for the $1,600 studio.” Those condos are now renting for $1,800, she says.
“I fear what’s going to happen next year. Another email hinting that I leave? Maybe,” she added.
Even though her lease isn’t up for another six months, she regularly checks rental listings just in case. “I wish the rental market was more accommodating towards newcomers and single occupants. It’s hard to budget wisely [with] this inflation and forever rising rental market,” she says.
Devyaani’s tale likely resonates with the millions of Canadian renters – especially those who are stuck somewhere between unaffordable rents and even less affordable home-ownership.
The average condo rents in Toronto were up by double digits annually in the second quarter, according to the 2022 Rental Market Report by the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB). The average one-bedroom rent increased by 20.2 per cent year-over-year to $2,269. Over the same period, the average two-bedroom rent was up by 15.3 percent to $2,979. And there’s no respite in sight.
Rent spikes can be seen across Canada. According to data from Rentals.ca, the average rent for all property types across the country was $2,043 a month as of September, up 15.4 per cent annually. The market low in April 2021 was $1,676.
In Calgary, average condo and apartment rents are up 24 per cent year over year to $1,770 in September, says data from Rental.ca. Vancouver is up 29.3 per cent to $3,225. Even Halifax has seen an increase of 13.8 per cent to $2,052.
“Vancouver renters were already shelling out compared to other parts of Canada. Honestly, I was expecting the rents to go down a bit post-pandemic,” says Apoorv Kudtarkar, a Vancouver-based recruiter who is feeling the pinch of high rents and housing prices. “The opposite has happened.”
He says that in 2018 he and his partner paid $2,300 for a two-bedroom apartment in Burnaby. They decided to move closer to downtown and had to shell out $2,400 a month plus utilities for a one-bedroom apartment.
“We are expecting our parents to arrive [from India] next year and stay with us, we are searching for a bigger place but to no avail. We aren’t even in a situation to purchase a house anytime soon,” he says.
Rental market conditions are expected to tighten further in the coming months, says TRREB president Kevin Crigger.
“Higher borrowing costs may have temporarily precluded home buying for some households, but the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) population continues to grow alongside a booming regional economy. This means that an increasing number of people requiring a place to live will turn to the rental market,” he says.
But are rising interest rates and inflation the only reason for the rent hikes? Brampton-based businessman and realtor Raman Angroya, who has two rental properties in Brampton, says high-interest rates constitute only one factor behind the unaffordable rent hikes. Mr. Angroya, who came to Canada as an immigrant in 2011, says the scarcity of rental supply and the influx of newcomers, both immigrants and international students, are leading to an exponential increase in demand.
With the rise in interest rates, Mr. Angroya’s monthly mortgage payments for both his properties have gone up by an additional $1,200 each.
“A basement [apartment] in Brampton rents for $1,300 which used to be $1,000 just a year ago. I won’t mince my words here and say landlords aren’t greedy. They probably are and, let’s be honest, who wouldn’t be given the mind-boggling demand?”
The rental crisis is not only affecting major centres like Toronto or Vancouver. The domino effects can also be seen in other cities like Calgary and Edmonton.
Julius Ogunnariwo, 80, a property manager and a realtor based out of Calgary is taken aback by how the rent prices have gone up in the city. “We have seen an influx of people coming to Calgary from Eastern Canada and Vancouver,” he says.
An average two-bedroom basement apartment used to rent for $1,000 prior to the pandemic but can easily cost $1,300 now. An upper two-bedroom can cost about $1,600, up from $1,300 before, he says.
Apart from the interest rates, “a lot of people bought houses at an expensive price so naturally, they are going to charge higher rent,” says Mr. Ogunnariwo, who owns nine properties in Calgary.
Kayla Andrade, chief executive officer and founder at Ontario Landlords Watch, says potential renters are also going above and beyond to ensure they can rent the place they desire.
“I have been a landlord for 20 years and in recent years I have seen drastic changes in how competitive tenants in Toronto have become because of lack of supply. They are willing to offer money upfront, show their extraordinary credit records and do everything possible to get that accommodation,” she says.