On April 11, 2017 Concert President and COO, Brian McCauley, and Senior Vice President, Investments, Andrew Tong, were speakers at the Vancouver Real Estate Forum, the region’s largest annual conference on real estate investment and management.
In a morning plenary session entitled Growth Development and Infrastructure: Where is Metro Vancouver Headed?, McCauley shared his views on the key issues associated with growth in the region. The comprehensive discussion covered topics ranging from affordability, transit and smart density to NIMBY-ism, the foreign buyer tax and government intervention.
“The amount of local and national pressure that we are seeing today means that growth is inevitable,” McCauley concluded. “We're going to see continued pressure and we have to find a way to get people out to support development. We need to mobilize those that are most affected and left out of the market today to help shape smart growth in the future.”
In the afternoon, Tong was a featured panel expert on the Dragon’s Den-themed breakout session, How Much Will Investors Pay for Real Estate Assets in Vancouver?. Three brokers presented fictional industrial property case studies to the three panelists, who then bid (or passed) on the investment and explained their rationales.
Attracting over 1,100 real estate professionals, the conference focused on the key issues and challenges facing real estate investors, developers, asset managers, brokers and other professionals active in every facet of commercial, industrial, residential and investment real estate.