Canada Now
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Canada Now
Inside the Policy and Investment Decisions Shaping Canada's Housing Supply — with Cynthia Jagger
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Canada needs more housing. So why is it so difficult to get new homes built — even when the need is clear?
In this episode of Canada Now, Ashley Smith sits down with Cynthia Jagger, Executive Vice President of Capital Markets with CBRE’s National Investment Team in Vancouver. Cynthia has spent more than two decades working in commercial real estate, with particular expertise in multifamily housing and development sites. She also serves on the executive committee of the Urban Development Institute’s board and as vice chair of its Rental Housing Issues Committee.
Together, they look inside the decisions that shape housing in BC: what makes a rental project financially feasible, how changing rents and costs affect plans for future construction, and why long approval timelines change the picture. They also discuss the people who own Vancouver’s existing rental buildings, tenant protections, the movement of investment capital, and what it might take to keep building homes that work for the people who need them.
IN THIS CONVERSATION
• Why the housing we see today reflects decisions made years earlier
• How land prices, financing, development charges and operating costs affect a project
• Who owns Vancouver’s older rental buildings — and what shapes decisions to sell or redevelop
• How uncertainty influences where large-scale commercial investors put their money
• The potential role of federal funding, partnerships, and factory-built housing
• Cynthia’s hopes for housing, jobs, and family life in B.C. over the next decade
CONNECT WITH CYNTHIA JAGGER
Website: https://cynthiajagger.com
National Investment Team (NIT) Vancouver: https://nitvancouver.com
Cynthia’s CBRE profile: https://cbre.ca/people/cynthia-jagger
Find Cynthia on LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/cynthia-jagger-0979178
LEARN MORE
Urban Development Institute: https://udi.bc.ca
⏰ EPISODE CHAPTERS
0:00 Why housing decisions take years to show results
0:13 Episode intro and meet Cynthia Jagger
2:22 What makes building more housing difficult?
3:27 Investment decisions and the changing rental market
5:58 Why lower rents are welcome—and what happens next
7:48 Development costs, incentives and project feasibility
10:03 Who owns Vancouver’s existing rental buildings?
14:08 How the real estate market has changed
18:30 The role of retail, office and industrial space in communities
21:41 Could Build Canada Homes help move projects forward?
23:28 Factory-built housing and differing building codes
24:42 Why certainty matters to housing investment
27:20 Finding common ground on getting homes built
29:00 Building homes that fit people’s needs
31:11 Cynthia’s hopes for Vancouver and B.C.
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Buildings that are completing today, those decisions were made in some cases seven to ten years ago. So part of the issue is that it it has historically taken a really long time to get through the process.
SPEAKER_01Welcome back to Canada Now, where we explore the ideas, leaders, and innovations shaping Canada's future. I'm your host, Ashley Smith. Canada knows it needs more housing, but beyond the headlines and loud, often simplified opinions, we rarely get into the nuance of what it takes to get that housing built. Today I'm joined by Cynthia Jagger, one of Vancouver's leading commercial real estate brokers and someone who spent more than two decades inside the data and the decisions that impact investment, development, and housing across our region. Cynthia is executive vice president of capital markets with CBRE's national investment team in Vancouver. She's completed more than $2.2 billion in commercial sales, including some of the city's most complex and high-profile transactions, and has built particular expertise in the multifamily sector. She began her career as a commercial appraiser with Altus Group, and that analytical foundation has remained a defining part of her professional perspective. Beyond transactions, Cynthia has become an active voice in conversations around rental housing and development. She serves on the executive committee of the Urban Development Institute's board and as vice chair of its rental housing issues committee, where she works with industry stakeholders and policymakers on some of the biggest challenges facing housing and development. She's also spent years writing, speaking, and contributing to the public discourse around what it actually takes to get housing built. And that's what I want to unpack today. Because between saying Canada needs more housing and actually delivering it, there's an entire system most of us never see: land, capital, development economics, regulation, investor confidence, and a lot of competing priorities. So we're gonna go inside that system. Cynthia, welcome to Canada now.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for having me.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I'm I am really excited. I think this is a conversation that so many people care about. I think a lot of people have different ideas on what the solution looks like, competing interests from whether people delivering the housing, people trying to fund it, people hoping to live in it and the government and what its role is. And so it's obviously very complicated and nuanced. I just want to take a step back a little bit. What is it that you see has made creating more housing in Canada a challenge?
SPEAKER_00I would say there are many factors at play here. One of the biggest difficulties, especially in BC, is just regulation. We've got um municipal governments, the provincial government, and also our federal government governments all putting in place policies that at times contradict each other and at times go um, you know, incentivize and help development happen. But uh regulation is one of the most challenging parts of building in BC. And it's why we've had such a scarce market for so long. Yeah, for such a long time.
SPEAKER_01I I want to try to examine a little bit about how this plays out in real life. You're in a lot of conversations with people looking at where to invest money, for example. Your background in appraisal probably helps people understand how to make a sound decision and from a financial perspective and risk perspective. How do you see the landscape right now with decision making, I guess?
SPEAKER_00I mean, I spend most of my time um selling properties. So that's investment property. I focus a lot on multifamily, that's existing vintage stock, new, newly built product, a lot of development site sales. And then our team also has um office industrial retail. So, you know, there's a huge breadth that we can cover there. In terms of decision making in BC today, I think everything's on its head. The groups that were successful, say purchasing land and building and selling either condos, for the most part condos, and then it switched to rental. That whole program is effectively over. We're in an environment where you know interest rates increased substantially. If you were building condo, pre-sales went away. And that's a huge part of how you get these projects moving. A lot of groups moved to rental housing, which for a time worked, and that was because of you know great financing options, CMHC money, land costs. There weren't many land sales available for rental, so it was scarce. We had a 40-year gap, so 40 years of no rental housing built between say the last maybe in the 80s, and then we started again in the early 2010s. All that has now kind of gone away. And it's a function of rental rates declining, and that's partly supply, but also a lot of people left. It's a demand side equation. So vacancies are up, operating costs are still increasing, and then investor sentiment isn't great. There's not a lot of certainty, and this capital chases certainty and wants, for the most part, low risk when they're investing in multifamilies. So it's an interesting time and uh decision making is difficult. It takes longer. Groups need more information, they need better, again, certainty. And we're trying to de-risk deals in a bunch of different ways.
SPEAKER_01That touches on some of these pieces that a lot of, you know, regular everyday Canadians don't recognize or know about or understand. I think it's very easy to make housing a polarizing issue, right? And so the idea about rental rates being having come down a bit, I'd love for you to help paint the picture of what someone trying to think about what they might do. What's that look like? Like what are those obstacles? And how might we start thinking about them from more of an aligned point of view when we bring together like the public, the governments, sure, and and the people that can actually bring the product?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I take your point. Rental rates coming down is actually a good thing. And that was the goal because forever and ever we had a 1% or lower vacancy rate, which created a lot of strain for the existing vintage stock. And it made it so that people couldn't move around. They were kind of stuck, and that's not a good thing long term. So, this new supply coming is a good thing, and increasing vacancy rates, that was the goal. The buildings that are completing today, those decisions were made in some cases seven to 10 years ago. So part of the issue is that it has historically taken a really long time to get through the process. So taking a piece of land to rezoning can be two years, it could be four. I've heard of 10. 10 years. And you're holding that, you know, you're paying interest, it's it's a significant um undertaking, and and uh you need a huge team to get it through. If the rental market is now not sufficient to support, in terms of a feasibility process, a new development starting. We're just thinking about what is the next wave? What does it look like? Are we going to be back to a very scarce environment in you know 20, 2028, 29, 2030? That's not the goal, in my view. I mean, some people may argue with me, but I think a sustained level of rental construction is a good thing long term for British Columbians and for Canadians. Um, I do think there's a it's good to have a balance and you know, having condominiums and for sale product is also a good thing. But I'm I'm happy to see that we've we've brought on new rental housing and I'm hoping it can continue. But we need a lot of incentives to get this next wave going. And that's where there's uh an issue. And when you say incentives, do you have an example of what that might look like? The city of Vancouver's actually done a few uh viability reports. They have in some cases it's pilot projects, they're bringing down development cost charges. Metro Vancouver has rolled back their development cost charges to 2025 levels. These sort of little um tweaks that help to move the needle, especially if someone's already purchased their property and want to build rental and they can't get it going, um, these are the sorts of things that we need more of. Um, so we're taking kind of baby steps on that side. The other thing is hard costs. I think by now we anticipated there would be a significant drop-off and we just haven't seen it yet. So when I think about um a development, it's there's the revenue side. So if you that's a condo building, what is it worth selling the units to individual groups? If it's a rental building, it's rental rate minus operating costs. And then, you know, using your cap rate to come up with a value and then taking all the costs, including all the municipal fees, DCCs, all the hard costs, financing costs, and then what is left over, that is what you can pay for land if you are buying now. If you bought the land five years ago, that is fixed. So you've got to make some changes elsewhere to try and make it work and be able to get financing to move it forward. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Can you just give me a general overview of what is a DCC for someone who's listening and maybe has never heard about it?
SPEAKER_00Sure. So let's say City of Vancouver, they have a cost per use. So in terms of commercial, there would be a rate per square foot for residential. In some cases, it will be a price per square foot or a price per unit. Depends on the municipality. But those are charges, effectively taxes that come off of a project, and they helped fund the city's initiatives.
SPEAKER_01So they're contributions that are being made by the developer to the municipality. I'm curious, you mentioned about how this intersects with sort of the existing rental stock. You've spent a lot of time in that multifamily environment. I'd love to understand a little bit around like who owns these types of properties here in Vancouver and how might that impact the inventory that we have today?
SPEAKER_00So the existing stock, again, it cut it falls within sort of the 1920s, 30s, you know, 50s to 80s built. And a lot of it is very small. So most of say Vancouver is three-story wood frame product. It was built on 66 by 120 foot lots. You know, they're they're small buildings, and that's one of the reasons why we actually haven't had a ton of large investors come into BC because it's very fragmented for ownership, number one, and it's very small. You know, that is changing now. But those buildings traditionally are owned by a lot of families. You know, these are multi-generational families that have acquired buildings over time, in some cases, you know, pass them down to different, you know, siblings. And uh, that's who my clients a lot of the time are for this product. And they, for the most part, really love providing this housing. You know, they take a lot of care. They really put a time a lot of time and effort into the buildings, keeping them up. They know that in some cases they live in the building, they treat their tenants like family. Like it really is this universe that's um unlike I don't think any other asset class in commercial real estate. On the news side, um, most of the product, if it's wood frame, might be 50 units plus. So they're bigger. And then the towers, you know, those are going to be built by some of the biggest developers in our province. And typically they will partner with, say, a private equity equity group or an institution or, you know, in some cases the government, First Nations groups. There's a lot of players in that space.
SPEAKER_01I feel like there's a natural tension with thinking about multifamily from that older existing stock because it does tend to be lower density, likely has repairs and costs. If there's room to create more density on those lots, people maybe feeling that they could be displaced and that sort of thing. When you're talking to owners of these types of properties, what's guiding their decisions on whether or not to say maintain the property in terms of maintain their ownership, pass it down, have some sort of succession, as you said, or maybe seeing signals that they ought to sell. What is the thinking that happens behind those sorts of scenarios?
SPEAKER_00I find in terms of decision making, every owner is different. And for the most part, they've owned these buildings for 10, 20, 50 years. These decisions aren't taken lightly. And in in a lot of cases, it's actually because something sad's happened, really. You know, there's a death in the family, a sickness, like there is some catalyst because when you've owned something for so long, our country has capital gains. And that is a significant tax if you do decide to sell. So these decisions don't just come because you're going to recycle cash and and go do something else. It's really because something, something's happened. So that's where I typically come in.
SPEAKER_01Do people often come to you and ask about, for example, the opportunity for density in those locations? It I'm sure it depends where they're located.
SPEAKER_00It depends. Yeah. I mean, most of these buildings are very much protected. I mean, everybody who's in these buildings has a residential tenancy that is, you know, a legally binding document and the province oversees that. Some quarters, like say the Broadway plan, have tenant relocation policies that are very strict and very stringent that need to be followed in order to redevelop and as part of the rezoning application. So as much as there may be, there may have been a lot of groups that move forward with rezonings, we actually haven't seen a ton of shovels in the ground. And in other cases, the highest and best use of those properties has actually come back to income. So in that case, you know, nothing's gonna happen. It's trades to a new owner, the checks go to a new um spot, and everything kind of stays the same.
SPEAKER_01I know over the last five, eight years, you've done a lot of writing and speaking, and you've touched on a lot of the issues related to the housing stock in general and some of the challenges that you've already kind of mentioned here. I'm curious if anything in your perspective has changed or evolved over the last decade, for example, with what you've seen, what the key issues are or what the biggest opportunities might be.
SPEAKER_00I think things have evolved incredibly over 10 years, especially in Vancouver and BC. I mean, when 2022 hit, we started seeing, you know, the biggest increases in interest rates we'd seen in a very long time, in a in a short period. Um, that kind of froze up the market. You know, where there were these great taglines of hold on for 24, hold on for 25, it'll be everything's fine in 26. It has taken four years, and we are still not quite there yet. So I think the optimism comes from we've been through it for the last four years. Um, maybe we still are going to go through it for some time here, but I do see a lot of wholesale changes happening. You know, it's a total reset in terms of valuations, in terms of who's active. And, you know, there's been a lot of problems in terms of lenders being involved so much. You know, we never saw that for the 23 years I've been in this business, receiverships and foreclosures and court-ordered sales. It's really been unbelievable. Honestly, I could have never imagined it. I do think going forward, we will, as Canadians, be a different group. I think we understand that we need to be more productive as an economy. We need to create jobs so that people have more to spend. There's a lot that needs to change. And I think going through this difficult time has really put a spotlight on that. And I hope that provides optimism that five years from now we'll look back and say that was really tough. But, you know, we're better for it. In terms of valuations for, you know, and what my business is, forever and ever, Vancouver was different. We, you know, my colleagues in Toronto would say, oh, you guys are 2% cap rates. We can't, we don't even understand. Or in the US, it it was so different. Everybody kind of ignored us and left us alone, and it was a very private market. Now, all of a sudden, you know, I'm on this the national investment team. We have calls with our colleagues across the country every two weeks. And so we're talking about, you know, where's capital moving? What's happening? And all of a sudden, the cap rates are the same across the country. I've never seen that. Same with in the states. I'm really lucky to be plugged in with some um awesome people at CBRE in the US. And again, we're talking about property, you know, these new multifamily buildings. Again, we never had them to start. Now we do, and the cap rates are kind of similar. So we have this homogenous North American market, which we have never seen. And it's taken some of the Eastern and in some cases European, um, American investment groups, they're all of a sudden paying attention again. Well, Vancouver, maybe there's an opportunity, maybe we could finally break into this market we've tried to break into for decades and never had any luck. So I think there's a lot of optimism. Do I think we're still going to have some hard times? Yeah, I do.
SPEAKER_01Do you see some of these changes being primarily due to the landscape in those other regions, how attractive those regions are to invest in, or is it something about how Vancouver has evolved?
SPEAKER_00A lot of investors were leaving Vancouver and BC. A lot of groups that traditionally operated here all of a sudden are looking elsewhere because it's so difficult. It's highly regulated. It's um, and all of a sudden the numbers aren't working. So we have this buyer pool that's shrinking. And so prices naturally go down, which means yields, cap rates have to go up. In other markets, yes, they've also had some similar experiences, less so in maybe Montreal, although perhaps that's coming. And maybe Atlantic's been more favorable given they have some defense spending. But Toronto was ahead of us in terms of they had a steeper decline earlier. And now I think for the most part, they're coming out of it and we're following. But every market's so different. Calgary is another one that's just, you know, up and down and uh, you know, very different from BC. But all of a sudden, cap rates are kind of similar, especially on multifamily.
SPEAKER_01We're obviously talking a lot about housing and growth and development in that way, and in many ways, housing affordability that comes with it. Your team, you have a breadth of knowledge and expertise, and you do work in different parts of the commercial sector. And I think what can get lost on folks sometimes is how the rest of the infrastructure within communities, how it impacts our communities as a whole. So when we think about if retail is thriving versus not industrial as a place where people can have their jobs and have the businesses be successful, where do you see pillars where it's important to the communities as it grows, but also great places for people to be able to have maybe longer-term investments and think about BC or Vancouver as a longer-term place to put their money?
SPEAKER_00We do deal in all asset classes. And I can share, you know, what I I find. What, you know, I'm out in Toronto a lot, meeting with a lot of the capital there who are looking to acquire across the country. You know, in some cases, they're agnostic. They are good with retail office, industrial. And their belief is is really about, you know, an investment thesis, but it is supporting jobs, offices supporting jobs, industrials supporting jobs, and you know, making the economy work. And those are important things. The most interest we have had this year is in is retail shopping centers. There's a ton of liquidity there. Um, there's a belief that I guess we got through the hardest part, which was COVID, and that you know, these shopping centers did very well in terms of grocery anchored, say with a shoppers and uh BC liquor, they those centers really performed well. And there's a sense that they are not risk-free, but there's a history of operating and um a belief that there aren't that many and we won't be building many more. So we've seen a lot of um capital and investors chasing that type of asset. We have seen a lot of funds looking for office buildings, which again, that was not the case a few years ago. That has been downtown best of the best office. So many buyers for that, so much capital for that. And again, it's a belief in the office market in Vancouver. That no, we're not a head office community, but we have a lot of tech. We have a lot of companies that do want to move here. We do have a low vacancy rate. And building office, again, is so expensive, so time consuming. There won't be a lot of competition. If you have an empty office building in the suburbs, that is a different fire pool and less interest there for sure. Industrial, there's always interest for industrial. We just don't, again, don't have a ton of it. And I guess that's Vancouver's history is just scarcity. And so when we no longer have scarcity, if we think about multifamily density, which I would say the province and a lot of municipalities did a great job of rezoning for a ton of multifamily rental and condo density, all of a sudden prices came down. Prices stay up because of scarcity.
SPEAKER_01Clearly, the federal government is thinking a lot about housing with Build Canada homes coming down the pipeline. I think we don't clearly know yet what that initiative is going to look like. But when we're taking a bigger, broader look at our region and we're thinking about how and where new homes can come, where do you see real opportunities and what challenges do you enter? Anticipate are going to get in the way of matching what we want to get done with what can actually get done?
SPEAKER_00Great question. I don't know a ton about Build Canada homes, but I do believe there's a keen interest from the federal government to get involved and provide, I think, some funding, whether that be equity or financing. The last time I saw a speech about it was more on the financing side. But to push some projects that are, you know, really great, say concrete towers in an awesome spot or in a core location, or even, you know, a lower density wood frame building in a suburban location or another area of BC that, you know, there's some dire need for housing. There's a great opportunity to push some projects forward that just need that little boost of equity. And so I'm hoping that's what Build Canada Homes will do. I understand they've transferred, I think, from Canada lands to Build Canada Homes. There's they've transferred all the federal assets, the lands. So it'll be interesting, interesting to see. Are there ground leases that will come up? Will, you know, what type of partnerships will happen with either the private or private and nonprofit trying to move new housing forward in different ways. So that's going to be really creative, I think, and interesting to watch. There hasn't been um concrete info that I've been able to see, but I do know there's several developers who have submitted applications and are looking for that funding.
SPEAKER_01I am curious if you've encountered one of the things with Build Canada homes, I know is that they do have um an emphasis on like new form, new ways to develop. So they're thinking about like factory-built homes. It seems like a really interesting way to build in a more cost-effective, predictable way, especially when we're thinking about like the West Coast. I'm curious if those sorts of conversations creep into any of the conversations you might be having with people who are thinking about development. Are are you noticing people who are thinking about investment looking at innovation in any way?
SPEAKER_00I'm fortunate to spend a lot of time with really creative uh development company CEOs. I spent a lot of time with the Urban Development Institute. And so brainstorming is a and getting creative is important. My understanding is that modular, yes, I think it can be faster, cost efficient. You know, there's all these potential pluses. What I have heard is that the building code across the country, and especially even in municipality to municipality, is different. And so trying to take a box form or something and put it in places where every every regulation is different is something that needs to be worked out. Right. We don't have a consistent building code.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It seems like the thread between a lot of these things, whether we're talking about getting things built, where to invest, when to sell, when to buy, a lot of this seems to be centered around certainty versus uncertainty.
SPEAKER_00Risk, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I'm curious from your point of view, how all of that uncertainty plays into the types of conversations that you find yourself having with people. Is there any example of how you've seen this play out in the real world where it's pushed someone to a completely different market, for example?
SPEAKER_00Yes. I mean, I think all the way up to 2022, you know, there were so many new changes and taxes and everything just got harder, more expensive, slower over that whole time. But we were lucky in that the revenue side of that equation I was talking about kept going up. So it covered for everyone, including, you know, governments making changes. And it covered for someone whose costs escalated. It covered, it covered for everyone. And we are no longer in that spot. So it's not just one example. I have a million examples of groups who have effectively been caught, but it's not that they've necessarily been caught because they've done something wrong. It's just the entire framework has changed. I'm hoping that we can actually go back. Now we're now that it was adding, adding, adding, can we start to remove, remove, remove, incent? Um, and the city of Vancouver actually has done quite a lot of that. It's not enough. I mean, the GST waiver was huge federally. That was a big push. And at that time when it came out, I remember being on a plane back from Toronto, and I was like, yes, this is the one thing that's really going to help move new rental housing forward. And then the whole market changed. And again, that all of a sudden wasn't enough. At the same time, Metro in here increased DCCs and a lot of that savings was taken away pretty quickly. But yeah, there's a million different examples of how regulation, new taxes, surprise after surprise, you can cover, cover, cover. And then at some point you just can't. And there's there's too many examples of that now.
SPEAKER_01And clearly, um, with some of the work that you do with UDI and when you're talking about rental housing, I can't help but feel that part of the objective is can't how can we find alignment in the narrative around some of this stuff? It's easy to feel like when something's good for a developer as an example, that it's bad for the public. But when nothing gets done, then it's not good for anybody. Is there a core misconception or issue that you feel could be better understood to help us start making changes?
SPEAKER_00So CMHC has come out with several reports about what they believe we need in terms of new housing. And this is a government arm. I mean, I have a great stat here. What was it? BC needs around 570,000 additional homes by 2030 on top of the 376,000 homes expected to be built. So 570,000 in four years. That is an unbelievable level of production. That's a government entity saying we need to do this. I think our starts this year are under 30,000, about 27,000. They were 28 last year and 33 the year before. So we are in a steady decline. So that number we're we're not gonna hit. I totally understand. It's hard to understand it. And I realize I live in a very niche world where it's a lot of numbers and a lot of moving parts, and it feels like excuses sometimes, I think. And incentives feels like a bad word. But as you said, if nothing gets built, if nothing happens, I'm not sure that's a good experience for anyone because the economy suffers, people's jobs are lost, like there's real devastation. So I'm hoping we can get to a better place of understanding and that, you know, building housing provides jobs and provides places for people to live in. And having more of it creates an environment where prices are cheaper and rent, you know, vacancies are higher so that people can start to move around and you're not worried that you just had a baby and you can't move, you know, like that's not an environment I think people really want to live in long term.
SPEAKER_01I'm curious when you think about the housing stock and the types of homes. And I really mean how big are they? Like, okay, are there enough bedrooms? Is there enough space for people? I think a lot of what people feel is so much of the housing stock that came up over recent years felt very small, maybe not built for them. And so I'm just curious if you've have any idea of like how you see that maybe changing as we move forward, what might be important, like if you were giving advice to somebody today, like what they could be thinking about as a product market fit, but also something that's feasible and something that they can successfully build and and where it makes sense for them financially.
SPEAKER_00I do know that whether it's an investment group coming in or and partnering with a developer or developer building for their own, they do so much research. Demographic studies, you know, product studies, they're working with their leasing teams or their sales teams, like they are so knowledgeable and so in tune for the most part with the market that they're building in. So I believe they will build the right product for what the market needs. And the market is such an innocuous word, but what people in that environment would like to live in. Is that gonna shift? Yes, I think it's shifting right now as different, you know, say in the suburbs, maybe it's more end unit focus, user focus, and it's stacked townhouse format or row townhouse. In closer to the core, you know, every time someone builds a tower or any building, you know, we still have buildings that are 100 years old. So if I'm digging a hole, it could be a hundred years before it changes again. So we should maximize how much is there and how many people can live there because it's a one-time decision, especially if it's close to transit, you know, the office core. So naturally, closer to Vancouver and um where people work, it's gonna be a different product. But again, I think I would just go back to I think there's a lot of data now. I think families who are coming into sales centers who are coming into lease are highly aware of what they want and need and are communicating that. And, you know, these these groups are listening and making amendments.
SPEAKER_01I can't help but think over 20 years in the business that you've observed a lot. What's top of mind for you? What would you like to see happen over the next 10 years, for example, here?
SPEAKER_00Well, I hope that we get back to a place where people are excited to live and work and raise families in Vancouver and BC. Right now it feels a bit of the opposite, to be honest. There's a lot of people I talk to day to day who, for various reasons, are leaving. So I hope 10 years from now, you know, we get back to a great place that has an economy that's working. People have jobs, they can afford to live and play, they can afford to raise their families, they can afford to give back. Yeah, I think we're in the middle of a big reset. And I'm hoping 10 years from now we look back and say, 2026, well, we can mark this. Today was the time where, you know, it was really changing.
SPEAKER_01I'd love to give the audience an opportunity to find you, learn more about you. I will make sure to add links, you know, to the best websites and maybe social media profiles to follow you on. I'm wondering if there's anywhere else you'd like to point people to. They've heard what you said and they want to get their finger on the pulse and maybe be more engaged.
SPEAKER_00Sure. No, I appreciate that. Um, our the UDI website has a ton of information. Uh, all the letters that are written, it's a great staff. They work very hard. They work very well with you know all governments. There's a lot of detail there. They also have a great following on social media, so a lot of in info there. For our national investment team, we have a website, NIT Vancouver. I post on uh LinkedIn a lot under my name and our CBRE website. I I speak a lot at conferences, so I'm happy to say hello if anyone's at I'm out in Toronto uh in early September to speak again at the Canadian Department Investment Conference. Um, I think that's it. Yeah. So thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you so much, Cynthia, for coming. This is such an important issue, and there's so many moving pieces, as you say. It's nice to hear from folks who are inside the industry who can bring sort of a grounded, realistic lens to the conversation. And what I hope people listening and watching can take away from this is it's clearly a complex issue, housing. There's a lot of nuance. And while there's maybe some competing interests, there's a lot of aligned interests as well. And I think it's something when we talk about housing, um, when whether we're talking about ownership, rental, um, non-market, I think we can all sort of agree that Canada does need more. Cynthia, thank you for joining me today. Everyone listening, thank you for tuning in to Canada now. Uh, if you're listening on audio, please make sure you've subscribed. And if you're on YouTube, please hit that subscribe button as well. And feel uh encouraged to share this episode. And let's get talking about this topic about more housing in Canada.