The Canadian Real Estate Investor

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On the Canadian Real Estate Investor podcast, Daniel welcomes Hooman from Alliance REIT (https://www.alliancereit.com/) to discuss his path from Bay Street lawyer to multiplex developer and operator, and how Alliance built an evergreen, non-exchange-listed REIT focused on Toronto’s missing-middle housing.
They cover shifting CMHC underwriting and how first-time developers can struggle to secure MLI Select financing, plus potential partnerships where Alliance’s experience and conservative underwriting could help.
Hooman explains REIT liquidity, RRSP/TFSA eligibility, and the complexity of capital planning for redemptions, and shares operational realities: flat post-development appraisals on recent projects, rising turnover due to incentives in new purpose-built rentals, cheaper condo rentals, and more renters buying homes. He details cost-control tactics, tenant retention, and neighbor relations strategies, and outlines why authentic, vibrant neighborhoods and “would I live here?” location tests matter again.
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We are joined by friend of the show Ben Singer, of SR Law, Ben, maintains a general commercial real estate practice, including acquisitions, dispositions, financing as well as an emphasis on condominium and sub-division development.
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Part 2 picks up at 2008. Canada dodges the financial crisis, decides it's bulletproof, and spends a decade building brakes (four Flaherty tightenings, foreign buyer taxes, two stress tests) all pointed at demand, while barely touching supply. Then free money in 2020, the February 2022 peak, and the fastest hiking cycle in Bank of Canada history.
The payoff to the 1981 cliffhanger: CMHC's MLI Select in 2022 finally makes purpose built rental pencil again after 41 years, and rental is now about 58% of new construction. Meanwhile 2024 quietly undoes Flaherty with 30 year amortizations and a $1.5M insured cap, and population growth slams into reverse.
Where we are now: benchmark around $666K, down 3.3% year over year, roughly 21% off peak, policy rate 2.25%, and building at half the 500,000 starts target.
Five takeaways, one thesis. Nothing here was weather. Somebody signed something.
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Canada has never had a housing market, it has a housing policy, and the market is what happens downstream. Part 1 traces 100 years of deliberate decisions: 50% down mortgages that detonated in the Depression, CMHC inventing leverage in 1954, the 1972 tax exemption that made your house the best shelter you can own, and the two supply engines we switched off (MURB in '81, social housing in '93) while turning every demand dial to eleven, ending at zero down and 40-year amortizations in 2006.
Also: 21% rates, Toronto's 1989 crash and 13-year recovery, and the map moving from Montreal to Toronto to Vancouver.
Part 2 coming.
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Josh Findlay of BLD Financial joins us again to share all things commercial mortgages. How he started, the journey, and the main differences between small investments and big ones; plus some CMHC updates.
TORONTO MULTIPLEX EVENT
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