Our guest today is Charlie Deeks, Chief Investment Officer at PIRET (Pure Industrial Real Estate Trust). PIRET is a Blackstone and Ivanhoe Cambridge portfolio company headquartered in Toronto.
Industrial assets performed very well through COVID-19, so Charlie discusses this trend and talks about some deals his company has transacted during the pandemic. He talks about how screening tenants will change in reaction to recent events and the many other expected changes.
Topics covered include:
- The most important aspects of a deal to PIRET.
- Why PIRET has not yet sold any assets.
- Transactions that the company has been involved with during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- New entrants to the industrial market.
- The lagging rent prices previously seen in Toronto.
- Corporate takeovers that Charlie has experienced in his career.
- A rundown of PIRET and their organizational culture.
- Industrial being the preferred asset class during the pandemic.
- Tenant criteria that COVID-19 brought to the forefront.
- What Charlie thinks is the perfect industrial asset.
- How Charlie got into real estate and ended up where he is today.
- Working with the community and facing NIMBYism.
- How much value Charlie places on e-commerce buildings.
- Buying industrial buildings based on the land.
- Two story industrial
- The growing popularity of industrial condo conversion.
- Maximum potential rent in Canadian cities.
For more commercial real estate content, visit the First National Commercial Resource Centre.
More about our guest….
Charlie Deeks is the Chief Investment Officer at Pure Industrial Real Estate, one of Canada’s fastest growing owners of distribution and warehouse real estate. Pure Industrial owns approximately 20 million square feet and was founded in 2007 as a REIT, until taken private by Blackstone and Ivanhoe Cambridge in 2018. Charlie’s responsibilities include sourcing and executing both investment and development opportunities in Canada’s core markets, to which he has completed over $2.0 billion of transaction volume since joining in 2016, solidifying Pure as one of the most dominant pure-play industrial owners in the country. Charlie has over 14 years of real estate experience, having previously worked in appraisal and asset management roles at some of Canada’s foremost institutional real estate companies.
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