(Source: Daily Commercial News) Work continues on the James Cooper Mansion condominium project on Sherbourne St. in Toronto. Tridel Corp. is the general contractor of the 32-storey project. The condos will be connected to the heritage mansion by a glass podium. The refurbished mansion will be used for amenity space. Read the full article, “James Cooper Mansion undergoes refurbishment in Toronto” at Daily Commercial News (Nov 2, 2009). Map the Project here. Discuss it or ask a question in the … Read More

Toronto’s 53 Storey Ritz is a technically challenging development consisting of four different structures…”very little repetition” makes the construction project especially challenging…never a builder’s choice to “stack different uses on top of each other”…hotel and condos will be ready in 2010… (Source: Daily Commercial News) Mixed-use highrises often come with construction challenges atypical of one-use towers. Toronto’s 53-storey Ritz-Carlton is a prime example. The tower consists of four different structures made up of different grids (varied concrete column and shearwall … Read More

BuzzBuzzHome Oct 31, 2009 According to billionaire investor Wilbur L. Ross Jr., the U.S. is in the beginning of a “huge crash in commercial real estate.” On Friday he told Bloomberg Radio “All of the components of real estate value are going in the wrong direction simultaneously,” said Ross, one of nine money managers participating in a government program to remove toxic assets from bank balance sheets. “Occupancy rates are going down. Rent rates are going down and the capitalization … Read More

Matthew SlutskyBuzzBuzzHomeOctober 31, 2009 The facade.. the green roof… and it is the tallest building in the world to be designed by a woman. All sounds very cool, but to really get a feel for it check out the image! Drawing Lake Michigan up to the sky, beginning on the 53rd floor and soaring 81-stories, Aqua is destined to be the most talked about building in Chicago. According to a recent article by The Gaurdian: “The Aqua Tower, rising up … Read More

The dollar… the weather… the welcoming attitude to foreign investment… all make Arizona a hot spot for Calgarians to purchase property.. (Source: CTV News) At least one Arizona realtor says Calgarians make up the majority of their clients. Jon Denney, a realtor based in Scottsdale, has travelled to Calgary three times this year to run real estate seminars because this is where most of his buyers are based. Read the full article “Calgarians flock to buy property in Arizona” in … Read More

(Source: The National Post) As you step out trick or treating this Halloween, reports coming out of the Toronto housing market are rather less scary than they were this time last year. According to the Teranet National Bank House price index, house prices in Toronto in August were 2.7%, up from the previous month. Read the full article by Helen Morris, “Price index casts a bit of moonlight on the Canadian housing market” in the National Post.

(Source: Reuters) Fannie Mae, the largest provider of funding for U.S. home mortgages, said on Friday that delinquencies on loans it guarantees accelerated in August, while its mortgage investment portfolio grew in September from the previous month. The delinquency rate on loans in its single-family guarantee business rose 0.28 percentage point to 4.45 percent in August, the most recent data available. That was well above the rate a year earlier when it was 1.57 percent. Read the full article “Fannie … Read More

BuzzBuzzHome Oct. 30, 2009 Google is getting into real estate. It recently made two announcements about how it is ramping up its real estate search options: The first announcement, made on its AdWords blog, is about a new comparison feature suited perfectly to real estate. Although the functionality is being rolled out slowly for testing, it enables users to filter what they’re really searching for. The example Google provides on its blog is someone searching for a mortgage. The user … Read More

(Source: The Globe and Mail) This is shaping up as the year the Greater Toronto Area’s new-homes market went topsy-turvy. For the past half decade there has been a slow but steady march toward high-rise condominiums taking over the lion’s share of the market. They climbed from about 40 per cent of new-home sales at the start of the decade to about 60 per cent 18 months ago. So far this year, that trend has done a complete flip-flop. Read … Read More

Commercial real estate sector recovering and few good deals to be had…Brookfield’s $5-billion investment fund remains untapped as little distress in Canadian markets to capitalize on… (Source: The Globe and Mail) Brookfield Properties Corp. and its partners have an unexpected problem: They have $5-billion to spend on commercial real estate, but markets have recovered so strongly that they can’t find the juicy deals they hoped would lead to 20-per-cent returns. Read the full article by Steve Ladurantaye, “Lots of cash, … Read More