We are welcoming back Derek Lobo for his third appearance in today’s episode. He is the Broker of Record at SVN Rock Advisors, having expertise in apartments and apartment construction.

 

Derek gets into the coronavirus pandemic and explains in detail why apartments have been such a resilient asset class. He shares his thoughts on building apartments to attract a certain demographic and talks about some challenges and victories his company has had during this unprecedented year.

 

Topics covered include:
• What Derek has seen over the last few months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Four reasons why the apartment space has been solid in Canada.
• Tenants re-evaluating what they want to pay.
• How landlords are managing the situation.
• The speeding up of apartment development.
• Solving the affordability problem.
• Building to sell versus building to keep.
• The lack of pain points in the apartment space compared to other asset classes.
• Designing buildings based on the tenant you want to attract.
• Examining tenants and relying on data.
• Transparency that has occurred between competitors during the pandemic.
• Challenges that Derek has seen in his own company.
• Positives and negatives of using Zoom for meetings.
• Advice that Derek has for young people.