On September 25, 2025, Canadian Family Offices hosted an online panel discussing real estate.
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The expert panel featured Fred Cassano, Partner & National Real Estate Leader, PwC Canada; Michael Beaupré, Managing Director, Institutional Mortgage Capital (IMC) and Quinntin Fong, Senior Vice President & Fund Manager, Fiera Real Estate.
The topics they dug into include: Are family offices continuing their love affair with real estate? Will the Build Canada initiative produce any results? Plus, a look at data centers and purpose-built rentals.
It was an engaging conversation, moderated by CFO managing editor Joe Chidley, that really looked at the economy as a whole, including factors such as tariffs that are straining the Canadian economy.
Cassano sheds light on what he’s seeing when it comes to real estate and family offices:
Real estate and family offices
A few highlights from the real estate portion of the PwC report that Cassano mentions are:
Since mid-2024, family offices have re-oriented their investment strategies towards real estate, which now constitutes 39 per cent of their portfolio allocations (which Cassano mentions). This strategic shift reflects a preference for more stable investment options over riskier ventures such as startups and private equity.
While family offices remain key investors in sectors like venture capital, debt financing, and real estate, their participation in global M&A transactions is relatively modest, accounting for only 5 per cent of overall deal value between July 2024 and June 2025. This relatively small share of activity underlines their strategic shift towards more stable and secure investment alternatives.
Build Canada
The Build Canada Homes program is a new federal agency launched by the Canadian government in late 2025 to accelerate affordable housing construction by using public lands, modern construction methods like factory-built housing, and flexible financing to build non-market and community housing at scale.
The program prioritizes sustainable construction using Canadian materials and works with provinces, territories, municipalities, and Indigenous communities to create housing for diverse needs and reduce homelessness, according to their website.
Since it’s newer initiative, it’s hard to say if it will be successful or not. But the panelists all agreed that investment in housing is positive, and more homes are needed for Canadians across the country.
Here’s Cassano’s take on the Build Canada initiative:
Data Centers
Data centers, as the moderator noted, are interesting because they’re where infrastructure meets real estate. And there is a lot of activity around data centers and energy and infrastructure.
There are various ways that family offices participate in data center developments—through structured financing, strategic partnerships or early days in the development. For instance, a family office might co‑develop with an experienced operator by funding land, power procurement, and pre‑development in exchange for a promoted interest; alternatively, it could provide mezzanine or construction‑to‑permanent financing to fill gaps left by traditional lenders in power‑constrained markets. Another practical path is a programmatic JV with a hyperscaler‑focused developer, where the family office supplies patient capital and the developer contributes pipeline, design standards, and lease‑up execution.
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Cassano says when he thinks of adjacent sectors, data centers come to mind. Here’s what else he says:
That could be an adjacent area because if we’re focused on also elevating AI and the use of technology on prefab modular, again, that’s just more to the story of who’s going to help fuel the environment for data storage and data centers. So now you have EVs, to decarbonization, to Bitcoin, to AI and gen AI.
There are opportunities in data centers and certainly we’re seeing a lot of club deals being formed where family offices are participating alongside institutions to invest in data centers, which has a long-term investment horizon.
Fred Cassano
Club deals, according to the PwC report, is a dominant and growing investment model for family offices. In fact, the share of club deals in their transaction flows rose from 58 per cent in H2 2015 to a peak of 75 per cent in H1 2023. In H1 2025 club deals remained the dominant deal structure, accounting for 69 per cent of family office investments.
Some of the advantages of club deals, where family offices invest alongside others, are that smaller syndicates of aligned capital can move faster, terms are customized and risk is spread in a volatile market.
For example, a three‑sponsor club acquiring a logistics portfolio can negotiate bespoke rollover equity and asset‑level covenants without the timeline drag of a large fundraise; similarly, a club can pre‑agree on capital calls to accelerate closing in a competitive process. A contrasting example would be a broad JV where consensus requirements slow approvals and dilute accountability during development risk phases, Cassano noted after the panel.
Purpose-built rentals
When the panelists were asked about purpose-built rentals, they all had their own unique spin on what their impact will be.
Here’s what Cassano says:
After the panel, Cassano noted that institutional renters increasingly value new‑build quality, energy efficiency, and amenity packages, while municipalities in high‑growth corridors face persistent for‑rent housing shortages. For example, build‑to‑rent communities near job nodes with limited for‑sale inventory have seen strong lease‑up velocity and lower turnover; similarly, markets with high mortgage‑rate lock‑in are seeing households opt for high‑spec rentals rather than stretch for ownership.
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In terms of professional management, Cassano sees them preferring private outdoor space and predictable maintenance costs, and that’s encouraging their preference toward purpose‑built rentals over scattered single‑family rentals.
Overall, real estate remains a priority investment for many family offices across the country. In fact, in this year’s upcoming Canadian Family Offices survey, real estate tops the ranking of private investments that multi-family offices recommend to clients.
