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http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Realtor+lose+Montreal+listings/9285009/story.html Realtor.ca to lose Montreal listings BY ALLISON LAMPERT, GAZETTE REAL ESTATE REPORTER DECEMBER 13, 2013 7:10 PM Starting Jan. 1, Montreal brokers will only be able to list homes for sale on Centris.ca, a real estate website unique to Quebec. Photograph by: DAVE SIDAWAY , The Gazette MONTREAL — The Canadian Real Estate Association’s popular Realtor.ca website — widely known as the MLS — will no longer list Montreal homes for sale. The Greater Montreal Real Estate Board said Friday its brokers have voted in favour of separating from CREA. Starting Jan. 1, Montreal brokers will only be able to list homes for sale on Centris.ca, a real estate website unique to Quebec. Real estate brokers who favoured separating from CREA won by 66 votes out of 3,826 votes cast. Montreal’s 9,700 brokers will no longer be able to list homes for sale on Realtor.ca — also known as the Multiple Listing Service — or on CREA’s ICX.ca, which features commercial properties. “We were disappointed when we saw the decision,” said CREA spokesperson Pierre Leduc. Leduc could not say how many listings were generated by CREA’s Montreal membership. Quebec’s 17,000 brokers currently generate 80,000 listings on Realtor.ca. Brokers from four real estate boards located in Montreal, Quebec City, Granby and Drummondville have voted to leave CREA, while brokers from the Saguenay and the Laurentians will make a choice on whether to separate next week. The votes follow a lengthy dispute over rising fees for members, duplication of services like the Realtor and Centris websites, along with a brewing turf war over the listing of Quebec homes for a flat fee by out-of-province brokers. The Montreal board has objected to instances of brokers from Ontario — who are not subject to Quebec’s strict professional rules — listing a home in the Belle Province for a flat fee. CREA said it cannot stop its members from Ontario, or other provinces, from listing homes for sale in Quebec. Citing October data, the Montreal board said Centris was the fourth most popular real estate website geared at buying or renting a residential property in Quebec, with Realtor.ca ranked ninth. The most popular site was Kijiji. However, several Montreal brokers told The Gazette they were concerned about the decline in visibility that comes with losing access to Realtor.ca at a time of a softening Montreal real estate market. Leduc said Montreal-area brokers who are unhappy with the “yes vote” can join one of Quebec’s eight boards that are still members of CREA. He said he’s also heard of a “partitionist” movement among brokers who want to set up a separate Montreal real estate board that would remain part of CREA. “CREA will support these endeavours.” alampert@montrealgazette.com Twitter: RealDealMtl

Montreal Real Estate Pushes Ahead By DORN TOWNSEND Published: June 11, 2010 MONTREAL — When Patrice Groleau began selling a proposed condo development this spring, he thought it would take about a year to sell all 100 units — even though the site is in Montreal’s historic old city and the project will have all the latest amenities. Half the apartments sold in the first month on the market. “The last few years have been mostly good for real estate, but this year has been phenomenal,” said the 33-year-old broker, who works for McGill Immobilier. “Some of the buyers are from elsewhere but 95 percent are local young professionals. A lot of them will buy several units or whole blocks of apartments.” Real estate markets in many cities around the world are still in the doldrums, but in Montreal, Canada’s second largest city, with 1.9 million residents, the downtown area is experiencing a boom and buying frenzy last seen more than a generation ago. Brokers say that new listings in desirable central neighborhoods can receive multiple offers within hours of going up for sale. Since 2003, when the present rush began, 5,500 to 7,000 new condo units have been hitting the market each year. Many of these homes are downtown in new mid-rise developments. According to the Montreal Real Estate Board, the median price of downtown condos has risen about 9 percent over the period, to 210,000 Canadian dollars, or about $198,000. While some downtown addresses can command as much as 1,000 dollars a square foot, in May the average price per square foot in the central city was about 350 dollars. “A lot of the new units downtown are for people in the suburbs looking to downsize, but you also get about 8 percent of sales going to foreigners,” said René Lépine, president of Groupe Lépine, one of the largest developers of downtown residential housing in the city. “I haven’t seen this kind of activity in the city center since the 1970s, when we had the Olympics.” Montreal’s real estate board reported that prices were up 8 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, with sales up 54 percent. While there is disagreement over whether such growth is sustainable, demand is being driven by historically low interest rates, with a five-year fixed-rate mortgage going for about 3.8 percent. In an attempt to pop what many fear is an expanding housing bubble, the Bank of Canada in April began requiring purchasers to put down 20 percent on investment properties. Brokers, however, say such rules are easily skirted with interim financing. And in the two years since the global economic downturn, Canada’s big-five banking oligopoly has continued granting loans for real estate. But, like in the United States, these banks seldom hold on to the mortgages, instead passing them on to a government entity called the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., which insures buyers against defaults. Since 2005, the agency’s liabilities have grown to around 400 billion dollars from about 80 billion dollars. But many of the new homes insured by this national agency are the tiny studios and one-bedroom units like those in Montreal’s downtown towers. That easy financing helped turn Montreal’s real estate scene into something of a Sleeping Beauty story. For decades the city had a lot of real estate for sale, partly because of the departure of several hundred thousand English-speaking residents from 1976 to 1978 because they feared Quebec might become an independent French-speaking country. Afterward, prices rose slowly, and then took off in recent years. “I’m not one of those annoying people who say that Montreal is the best city,” said Ariane Truong, 30, a Montreal native who spent several years in London working as an architect for SOM. “But there’s this intangible, aesthetic quality here these days and when you’re in other cities, you notice that quality is missing.” Two years ago Mrs. Truong returned to her hometown, paying about 350,000 dollars for a refurbished 950-square-foot, or 88-square-meter, one-bedroom condo in the old city. The building incorporates part of the stone fortifications built from 1717 to 1738 to protect Montreal from native Indians and English attackers. Until recently many residents had spurned the area as a tourist magnet. These days the tourists still are ever-present, but the old warehouses have been converted into apartments with ground-floor cafes and restaurants. A mix of young professional residents has returned to live and work. A small but important part of the market is composed of foreign clients who buy into the city for its particular rhythm. Diane Urbain, 28, a transplant from Paris, is typical of the group. She and her husband spent about 520,000 dollars on a 1,600-square-foot cottage in the Plateau, a large neighborhood of row houses known for its public squares and cafes. The French consulate says about 100,000 French citizens are living in Montreal. “When I first arrived here as a student, I thought I’d never leave Paris,” Mrs. Urbain said “But I’ve come to love the way of life of this city.” She talked about the nearby parks where her children play and about biking to work. Vélo Québec, a cycling advocacy group, says that nearly 20 percent of downtown residents use bicycles as a primary means of transport. Yet the French are not the only people who choose Montreal. This year, almost all the units in one new high-end condo tower downtown were sold to Lebanese. The developer marketed heavily in Beirut, and many purchases were made as investments or as homes for children attending universities in Montreal. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/greathomesanddestinations/11iht-remon.html

Market’s Troubles Echo in a Building’s Vacant Floors Article Tools Sponsored By By CHARLES V. BAGLI Published: November 9, 2008 The elevators work fine, the views are great, the offices have been refurbished and no one is complaining about rats. In so many ways, the green-tinted, 41-story office tower overlooking Bryant Park seems a desirable address. So why are tenants who rushed to rent space a year ago in the building, at 1095 Avenue of the Americas, rushing to break their leases now? The answer says much about the increasingly precarious state of Midtown Manhattan’s real estate market at a time when once-mighty financial companies like Lehman Brothers are disappearing and the slowing economy is driving the vacancy rate up and commercial rents down. Though the building, once owned by Verizon, just went through a two-year, $250 million makeover, several financial firms that signed leases in 2006 and 2007 say they no longer can afford the rents or the cost of outfitting new spaces. Others are laying off workers or reorganizing their offices and no longer need as much room. The first sign of trouble came over the summer when iStar Financial, a real estate finance company, decided not to move into the 100,000 square feet of space that it had rented on the 36th, 37th and 38th floors. Several weeks later, Metropolitan Life Insurance, whose name is now in block letters over the tower’s front doors, quietly began shopping for tenants to sublease 100,000 square feet of its space in the building, a quarter of what it signed up for in 2006. And last month, Centerline Capital Group, a suddenly struggling commercial property finance and investment company, confirmed that it would not be moving into its 100,000 square feet of space on the third, fourth and fifth floors. The company is negotiating with the landlord, the Blackstone Group, to buy out its lease or to sublet the space, said real estate executives who have been briefed on the talks. The companies signed leases for as much as $132 a square foot, when the market was near its peak. Despite the building’s new glass skin, refurbished space and prime location at the corner of 42nd Street, many brokers say they would be lucky to get $95 a square foot today. The difference would translate into millions of dollars a year. Neither iStar nor MetLife have found any takers. For landlords and brokers, the building has become a closely watched barometer of the commercial real estate market in Midtown, where the mercury is clearly falling. Although the rents being asked have hardly moved, brokers say that landlords are providing a menu of concessions that are substantially reducing the effective price. “It’s definitely a microcosm of the last few years in the New York real estate market,” said Peter Riguardi, president of Jones Lang LaSalle, a real estate brokerage and advising company. The problems at 1095 Avenue of the Americas are not hurting Blackstone so far. The combined unused space of Centerline, MetLife and iStar accounts for roughly one-third of the 1.06 million square feet owned by Blackstone in the building, and the three companies are obligated to pay full rent even if they are unable to sublease the space. Brokers say that Blackstone would require the companies to pay dearly to break their leases. But trouble could emerge if any of the companies tumble into bankruptcy court and stopped paying rent. Other tenants seem to be staying put. Dechert L.L.P., a law firm and the first tenant to sign a lease in 2006, is moving onto floors 25 through 31, and Bank of Scotland is occupying its two floors, 34 and 35. MetLife is moving into its space at the top of the tower, even as it tries to sublease its space in the middle. And Robert Alexander, chairman of the New York office of CB Richard Ellis, the real estate brokerage for the tower, said he had pending deals for two other vacant floors, 32 and 33. “We’re signing smaller deals at premium rents, and we look forward to finishing our leasing program,” he said. Brokers familiar with the space offered by iStar, MetLife and Centerline say competition for tenants in Midtown is growing in part because there is ample renovated space available in other buildings. As a result, many companies are demanding rent concessions from landlords or are refusing to take on the cost of adding walls, carpeting and bathrooms to newly renovated space. “What’s missing right now is the demand for raw space,” said one broker, who requested anonymity because he was active at the former Verizon building and he did not want to alienate the landlords or other brokers. The building was constructed in 1974 with vertical white marble slabs and few windows to house switches and other equipment for New York Telephone, which became Verizon. In 2005, as rents and sales prices for commercial buildings were skyrocketing, the company put the tower on the market, with the exception of 234,000 square feet on Floors 6 through 12. Equity Office Properties, one of the largest commercial real estate owners in the country, won a hotly contested auction with a bid of $506 million, more than Verizon had anticipated. At the time, many analysts suggested that Equity Office had overpaid, especially after the new owner started a $250 million renovation that included replacing the marble exterior with a glass skin. Equity Office, however, was betting that the tower would lure prime tenants and generate rents as high as $90 a square foot. And it was right: Rents escalated even higher as the vacancy rate in Midtown plunged and investors clamored to buy properties. Blackstone bought Equity Office for $39 billion in early 2007, at what turned out to be the height of the market. It sold most of Equity’s New York buildings but held on to 1095 Avenue of the Americas. The firm signed leases last year with Bank of Scotland and Centerline for as much as $150 a square foot, brokers active at the tower said. MetLife’s average effective rent, for floors in the middle and at the top, is about $100 a square foot, or $40 million a year, according to real estate executives familiar with the deal. The insurance giant had moved most of its New York employees to Long Island City in 2002, where rents were as low as $30 a square foot. But in 2006, MetLife reversed course, signing a lease to move about 1,300 employees from Queens into the former Verizon building. But this year, the company reassessed how many employees were actually in the office at any one time and determined that it needed only 9 of the 12 floors it had leased in the tower. So early next year, MetLife plans to formally market three of its floors, said John Calagna, a spokesman for MetLife. Mr. Calagna said that the same number of people who moved into 1095 Avenue of the Americas two years ago, about 1,300, are now “moving to less space.”