We Sell Apartment Buildings!

ROCK Apartment Advisors Inc., Brokerage, is an Ontario-based commercial real estate firm with an exclusive focus on apartment brokerage services. We take a unique approach to buying and selling apartments. We cooperate with other brokers, we leverage the Internet and technology, and we focus on buyer representation and seller representation depending on the client’s needs. ROCK Apartment Advisors talented team offers extensive experience in brokerage, appraisal and consulting, transaction management, development and ownership. We have a number of sales representatives who focus on different sized deals ranging from $500,000 to $40 million.

The Rock Advantage

We spent two years building a database of every building in the province. It allows us to pinpoint who owns what and to locate geographically any building. For example, if you wanted to buy an apartment building near a university because you were a student housing specialist, you would punch in the postal code for say, McMaster University, and up would come all the apartment buildings close by. Or maybe you think Starbucks always picks good neighbourhoods to open stores in, you could punch in the address of every Starbucks and find the buildings closest to their locations. It’s an invaluable tool to serve our clients both in buying and selling apartment buildings.

The Big Challenge in Buying Apartment Buildings

The most significant challenge faced by growing companies in the Canadian apartment industry is a lack of product to buy. For example, institutional buyers like to buy larger buildings and there simply aren’t that many available to buy in Canada. If a buyer wants to focus in on buildings of 200 units or more, he will find the following market: Ontario - 504 apartment buildings; Toronto - 363; Montreal - 96; Ottawa – 69, Hamilton - 30; Winnipeg - 29; Edmonton - 21; Calgary - 20; Vancouver - 14; and London - 14. As a result, larger owners need to move down-market and buy smaller buildings. With this in mind, we encourage our clients to buy in clusters, i.e. four 50-unit apartment buildings close together can be treated as one 200-unit complex.