Feeding the boom

A tug-of-war between foreign and domestic buyers is currently taking place in Canada’s hottest housing market – and right now it’s anybody’s game

Feeding the boom
A tug-of-war between foreign and domestic buyers is currently taking place in Canada’s hottest housing market – and right now it’s anybody’s game.

Foreign buyers are increasingly turning their sights to Toronto’s commercial real estate sector, according to one expert in that field, but so too are domestic investors.

“It’s been here for a while and it’s not going away (and) ... I don’t forecast that to change. The biggest thing we want to watch is there are some pretty significant assets (available) right now,” Daniel Holmes, senior managing director and broker at Colliers International, told MortgageBrokerNews.ca. “It’ll be interesting to see who gets those. Will it continue to be local money or is it going to make a shift to more foreign money?”

It’s no secret foreign buyers are interested in Toronto real estate, and that interest is expected to grow following Vancouver’s 15% tax on foreign buyers.

For its part, Colliers is also bullish on Toronto’s commercial segment.

The company has its sights set specifically on smaller-asset classes, focusing on sales in the sub-$20 million range in 2017.

“For 2017 in commercial … Colliers just launched a private capital division. Private capital being investment sales in the under $20 million.
We’re really seeing … we’ve got Asian buyers, we’ve got foreign buyers, all different sorts coming into Toronto. The largest number of transactions are still happening in that private capital. It’s (smaller investors) that own the buildings,” Holmes said.

“We just launched that as of January 2. That’s our biggest insight into what we forecast for next year. We’re going to see a lot more transactions, a lot more growth, a lot more sales, (in that segment).”


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