The Square Foot

From December 1-3, 2009, the 18th annual Real Estate Forum was held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. This article will give you a brief overview of some of the Forum highlights.

Widely considered to be the premier real estate networking event in Canada, over 2,100 participants gathered on Tuesday evening for the opening cocktail at the Fairmount Royal York Hotel, sponsored by Colliers International and First National Financial LP.

The Forum kicked off in earnest on Wednesday morning. The chairmen of the 2009 Real Estate Forum, Michael Catford,  Vice President, Real Estate Investments, HOOPP and Michael Emory, President & CEO, Allied Properties REIT, presented the theme of the 2009 Forum: Values, Capital and the Economy.

(Listen to the chairmens event comments in the video at the end of this article)

Next to take the podium were John Morassutti, COO of the Altus Group and John O’Bryan, Vice Chairman of CB Richard Ellis Limited. They tried to dissuade some of the confusion that’s presently reigning in the market place over whether or not the bounce back in the economy has truly begun. Morassutti and O’Bryan remarked that several key indicators are already on the upswing – the housing market is showing strength and capital markets appear to be open for business once again. They also pointed out that, according to The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, Canada ranked first in the world in a study examining the world’s soundest banking systems.  Both men agreed that liquidity is the key ingredient to getting the Canadian real estate market moving in the right direction again.

The keynote morning session was given by David Rosenberg, Chief Economist & Strategist, Gluskin Sheff + Associates and Benjamin Tal, Senior Economist, CIBC World Markets. The title of their presentation was ‘The Great Debate: If the Recession Is Really Over, Then What Kind Of Recovery Can We Expect? Will The Deleveraging Last A Decade?’ According to Tal, while the economic turmoil is far from being behind us, the good news is that Canada is not in as bad a situation as some other countries.

“Compared to the US, the duration of unemployment in Canada is much shorter and business bankruptcies are far less. Also, Canada is far more liquid than the US and a fair amount of companies are sitting on a great deal of cash on both sides of the border,” Tal said.

Canadian REITs, when compared with certain sectors of the TSX and REITs in the US, are performing much stronger and posting dividend yields above 7%.

However, Tal, in a report recently released by CIBC, said that major cities across Canada are continuing to feel the pinch and that were not out of the woods yet.

CIBC, which compiles a metro monitor index, said that 10 of the country's top 25 urban areas showed negative growth in the third quarter.

"On a year-over-year basis, our index continued to trend downward," said Tal. "More than two-thirds of Canadian GDP is generated in Canada's major cities. So the tale of those cities is the tale of the economy."

"Calgary and Edmonton, which until recently were the stars of our index, (are) losing ground rapidly and currently hardly above water in terms of overall economic momentum," Tal added.
Mr. Rosenberg, who was ranked sixth with a forecast accuracy of 77.6% in Bloomberg’s annual list of top economic forecasters in the four quarters ended June 2009, is generally considered to be a more bearish forecaster. He is still reluctant to declare the recession over in the United States.

“I know that sounds outlandish considering what the stock market’s telling you. The stock market’s predicted nine of the past 10 recoveries, but I’m skeptical that the recession is over and even if it is, the depression is ongoing,” he recently told the Financial Post. “What history teaches you is that in the aftermath of a credit collapse the transition to the next sustainable bull market and economic expansion, the operative word being sustainable, is measures in years not months or quarters.”

He said fiscal stimulus would help the U.S. economy post close to 2% economic growth in 2010, with Canada performing only marginally better.

Another great session was called Winning the War for Young Talent and Succession Planning: Recruiting, Retaining, Developing & Engaging The New Workforce. The session focused on how to keep young workers who are fresh out of school more engaged, and how today’s ‘Generation Y’ workforce differs from that of the Baby Boomer generation and the Generation X generation.

The session was moderated by Dr. John Izzo, one of North America’s most sought after advisors on attracting and retaining good talent and creating great workplaces. One of his best-selling books is Value Shift: Recruiting, Retaining and Engaging the New Workplace. Dr. Izzo has an impressive list of clients who rely on his expertise and he shared some of his experiences with the packed house audience.

Dr. Izzo highlighted a few key differences in today’s young workers:

• They constantly seek and require feedback
• The desire to be involved in the decision making process
• They want a well defined career path
• They know that they’re probably not staying in a given job longer than 5 years

Dr. Izzo then invited three panelists to join him on stage. The three panelists were David Bowden, President, Canada, Colliers International,Diane Jeffreys, National Industry Leader - Building, Real Estate, and Construction, KPMG LLP and Stephen Taylor, President & COO, Morguard Investments Limited. Each panelist spoke about what they were doing at their respective companies to engage and motivate their young workforce.

William Jegher is President of Wika Consulting, a consulting company specializing in facilities management and real estate benchmarking, communications and consulting. Contact him at wjegher@wikaconsulting.com