Did you know that there are 548 buildings of 40 units or more in the Montreal region – for a total of 59,208 rental units? These figures were provided by Messrs. Poulin and Germain Villeneuve, two Vice-presidents of CB Richard Ellis Québec Ltée, a real estate broker specialized in this type of transaction.
It is also interesting to note that these 548 buildings are mainly located in the Ville Marie sector (downtown Montreal) with 149 of these being high rise buildings. St-Laurent, Côte-St-Luc and Notre-Dame-de-Grâce follow with the remaining portion of these large buildings. There are some 21,639 rental units from these 40-unit-or more buildings and there are others in the Ville-Marie sector comprising the total number of units.
Landlords of these large buildings are mainly from the private investment sector and comprise a share of 93. Four percent of capital is from corporate sources. Capital comes from corporations, individuals, and sponsorship corporations. Corporate capital mainly comes from pension funds, insurance companies, cities, and finally from governments.
Canadian corporations make up 86% of the «pie» and the balance is from foreign capital. The Ville-Marie sector contains the greatest share of foreign investors at 29%.
These buildings brought in close to $300,000,000 in 2003, but there were fewer transactions in 2004, for a total of $50,000,000 less. Analysis of 2005 transactions shows a significant increase, reaching $375,000,000.
Large private landlords are selling
Speakers at a conference revealed that the current market of large buildings is dominated by private investors. However, there appears to be trend whereby there are more and more public and corporate buyers.
It should be noted that private landlords, for a part of the Montreal real estate community, are now selling because of: an increase in the vacancy rate, difficult conversions. the Régie du logement that limits increases according to property value, and the stagnation of net revenue and of shares as a result of increases in property taxes and the costs of energy that are still climbing.
Finally, even if « these big players » sell these housing towers, Montreal will still remain an excellent choice for investors.
Most of the Montréal region’s large buildings are owned by private capital
