It was just nine years ago that Fitzrovia, now Canada\u2019s largest purpose-built rental developer, opened the doors of its Yonge-St. Clair office in downtown Toronto. In under a decade, the company has delivered 3,500 rental units, hired 400 employees, and opened a second office in Montreal. <\/p>\n
Now, they\u2019re putting down roots on the West Coast. <\/p>\n
This month, they opened their first B.C. office in downtown Vancouver, headed by Oscar Lisa. Lisa was Director of Investments on the Toronto team before moving cross-country to assume the role of Vice President, Investments and Vancouver Head. <\/p>\n
The move coincides with the opening of Sen\u0313\u00e1\u1e35w Phase I \u2014 an Indigenous-owned rental development set to welcome occupants on June 1, and Fitzrovia\u2019s first property management<\/a> venture in B.C. <\/p>\n Owned by the Squamish Nation, Nch\u2019\u1e35ay\u0313 Development Corporation, and OPTrust, the three-tower, 1,409-unit complex sits at the foot of Burrard Street Bridge in Vancouver\u2019s Kitsilano neighbourhood. As one of the largest First-Nations led development projects in Canadian history, Sen\u0313\u00e1\u1e35w is a huge deal \u2014 one that Fitzrovia\u2019s CEO and Founder, Adrian Rocca, says was the ideal project to enter the B.C. market with. <\/p>\n \u201cWe had the ability to get into the Vancouver market with two excellent institutional partners, that we could continue to grow with over time, on a flagship project that had a lot of visibility,\u201d he says. \u201cSo for us, it checked almost every box.\u201d<\/p>\n But expansion into B.C. was always the goal. \u201cWe\u2019ve wanted to be a coast-to-coast platform for a while now,\u201d says Rocca. \u201cYou want to have exposure in the three largest markets: Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. We’re already in two of those three, so Vancouver was the natural next entry point.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Right now, the company is focused on ramping up their Sen\u0313\u00e1\u1e35w Phase I property management team, which will include 28 site team members, but Rocca says they are also currently looking into a number of development deals in Vancouver. This includes potential purpose-built rental projects, but also seniors housing opportunities, says Lisa. He says seniors housing is a \u201csmall but growing\u201d segment of Fitzrovia\u2019s portfolio, but one that they see flourishing.<\/p>\n “We see seniors housing as a natural extension of our rental platform across Canada because our aging population is growing rapidly, the market remains structurally undersupplied, and there is an opportunity to create hospitality-driven communities focused on wellness, service, and social connection rather than traditional institutional retirement models,\u201d says Lisa.<\/p>\n But since opening in 2017, purpose-built rentals have largely been the name of the game for Fitzrovia. In total, they have acquired, developed, or are in the process of constructing 19 rental buildings, including projects like Sloane and Elm-Ledbury in Toronto. More recently, they launched a subsidiary company called Maddox, which purchases older rental buildings and modernizes them. In total, they have over 12,500 suites completed, acquired or in development across Canada and are on track to deliver 2,300 new homes by 2026 and an additional 3,700 by 2030.<\/p>\n Fitzrovia\u2019s growth over the last decade is emblematic of what RBC Economist Rachel Battaglia once called a purpose-built rental “renaissance.” Since the mid-2010s, rental construction in Canada almost quadrupled thanks to our rising population, the deterioration of homeownership affordability, rising rents attracting investors, and government policy initiatives that made rental development more enticing.<\/p>\n The result has been record levels of purpose-built rental projects coming online over the last few years. This influx of rental supply, alongside high condo completions and immigration cuts, is largely credited with declining rents over the last year and a half. In fact, in April, average asking rent fell for the 19th month in a row, according to Rentals.ca<\/a>. But Rocca says he isn\u2019t worried.<\/p>\n \u201cWe think we’ll be completely undersupplied in Vancouver and Toronto,\u201d he says. \u201cWe have a significant amount of condo starts that broke ground at the tail end of COVID and are delivering right now, and so we’re seeing downward pressure on rents and lease velocity. But if you look at the level of new starts, we are significantly below the long-term average.\u201d<\/p>\n Rocca expects this supply-demand imbalance will hit over the next 18 to 25 months, and he plans to take advantage of it via Fitzrovia\u2019s westward expansion. \u201cWe are very bullish on B.C.,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was just nine years ago that Fitzrovia, now Canada\u2019s largest purpose-built rental developer, opened the doors of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[59,49,48,60,58,124979,55],"class_list":["post-692993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-british-columbia-alberta","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-featured","tag-real-estate-news","tag-renting","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}