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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.