Market Insights

From Altus Group – Throughout 2025, the Canadian commercial real estate market underwent a strategic reassessment, concluding the fiscal year with structural resilience despite a complex macroeconomic backdrop. Based on Altus Data Studio data, total investment volume reached $52.9 billion, representing a marginal 6% year-over-year decline. However, this figure’s downward trajectory was largely attributed to an atypical surge in activity during the second quarter of 2024, when investors accelerated deal closures to precede a proposed capital gains tax increase.

From Storeys.com – You can have a development proposal for a beautiful building, or a financially-viable affordable rental project, or a sprawling transit-oriented mixed-use community, but you can’t do anything without support from lenders. So, knowing what lenders are thinking can go a long way.

From RENX.ca – The report analyzed the responses of 47 domestic and foreign lenders, representing over $200 billion in commercial real estate loans under management combined, to a 30-question survey on activity expectations, lending terms and criteria, lender sentiment and preferences that was conducted from Dec. 10 to Jan. 16.

From Storeys.com – The City of Toronto’s recent “gentle-density” initiative, permitting multiplexes as-of-right across the city, was proposed as an inoffensive introduction of low-rise density within the single-family neighbourhoods that cover 70% of Toronto. Although well researched and widely supported, political pressure from local opposition groups ultimately imposed bedroom caps and size limits, effectively neutering the initiative.

From Altus Group – By the final quarter of 2025, the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) commercial real estate market recorded a moderate deceleration in investment activity. Based on data from Altus Data Studio, the total transaction volume for the GTA reached approximately $16.2 billion, representing an 8% year-over-year decrease. This decline was largely attributed to a “pull-forward” of activity in the second quarter of 2024, where investors accelerated deal closures to precede a proposed, and later cancelled, increase in the capital gains inclusion rate.

From cbc.ca – Toronto’s commercial real estate market is in a state of sustained growth for the first time since the pandemic, according to two new reports.

Data collected by commercial real estate services firm Avison Young shows more office space was leased than vacated last year. It’s the first time that’s happened since 2019.