Commercial Real Estate Industry: COVID Impact and Recovery
Updated: May 12, 2022
The session features leading commercial real estate owners to discuss observations on the state of the industry post-COVID and best practices for re-opening & recovery. Featuring Lachlan MacQuarrie, Head of Platform Service, Oxford Properties Group, and Bob Six, Chief Operating Officer, Zeller Realty Group. Moderator: Wen Sang, CEO, Smarking.
Timestamps:
0:29: Panelist Introduction
4:59: Portfolio distribution and property types of Oxford Properties Group and Zeller Realty Group
8:21: State of the industry, a view from parking data
13:04: The impact of COVID on commercial real estate
23:16: Best practices and challenges for re-opening
39:22: How technology plays a role in re-opening
50:33: Parking's role in recovery
54:36: Looking ahead at recovery
Oxford Properties Group and Zeller Realty Portfolio distribution and property types
Lachlan M, Oxford Properties:
Oxford is the real estate investment arm of Omers pension fund, which is inter municipal Employee Retirement System, it is a $110 billion Canadian asset management fund.
Split approximately half between private investment in these and public assets at the 55 year old entity and has about 500,000 pension numbers.
Oxford has approximately 400 assets around the world, two million customers, what, 100 million sq ft of real estate. Somewhere on 34 development today, and about 40 different partners.
Approximately half of our portfolio is office, quarter is retail, and the rest is hotel, investment and residential
70% of our assets are in North America, 30% European and Asian
Robert Six, Zeller Realty Group:
We are 100% office today. A little bit more of a focus in the CBD (central business district) because of the trends and obviously because of COVID. I think the way companies are going to approach their business, we'll probably be looking to invest more in the suburbs.
North America is, are where we're invested primarily currently in the United States, but we have looked in Canada and in Mexico.
Current state of the industry, a view from parking data

(Shown at 8:21)
Before the pandemic, activity was up almost 20% YOY
Once the pandemic hit, within 1-2 weeks, the entire parking volume decreased by about 79%
Slowly, week-over-week, it's starting to come back, up to about 35% of activity YOY and there are different trends per region
COVID-19's Impact on Commercial Real Estate
Lachlan M: Most of our assets are located in the downtown core, in the business districts and we also saw that dramatic, immediate decline in revenue following the shelter-in-place order.