TORONTO-TCN Worldwide, a Dallas-based consortium of independent commercial real estate firms, has brought on its second Canadian company with locally based Smith Co. In July, TCN partnered with its first firm in this country by joining with Barclay Street Real Estate in Calgary.
Smith Co. has been representing tenants and landlords in the local area for more than 20 years. Clients have included Cockfield Porretti Cunningham, Viacom, RSM Richter and Mint Canadian Specialty, and the firm leases out buildings such as the 106,000-square-foot 40 Eglinton Ave. E. and the 163,000-square-foot Victoria Tower here.
Paul Smith, president of the firm, tells GlobeSt.com that commercial real estate fundamentals are doing very well in Toronto. “The office market is swinging from a tenant’s market to a landlord’s market,” he says. “There’s a great demand for investment income properties. They tend to get put on the market without a price and get a number of bidders. We’ve been able to lease up a number of empty buildings for clients.”
He says he just attended the SIOR’s Fall World Congress in Chicago on Friday, and was surprised when he saw the rates for the Trump Tower condos downtown. “It’s the dominant building in downtown Chicago, but rates were at $600 per square foot, that’s down from $900 per square foot a year or so ago,” Smith says. “Our condos in Toronto are at more than $1,000 per square foot, and they’re selling out before being built. Our residential vacancy is somewhere around 1%, if all that tells you something.”
H. Ross Ford, president and CEO of TCN, said in a statement that his firm has partnered with eight more companies this year. His firm has more than 800 brokers handling more than 80 million square feet of space in more than 200 markets.
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