Who will define Canadian real estate’s next cycle?

Has Canada’s commercial real estate market reached its bottom? What will it take for borrowers to navigate an impending refinancing wave? Where will rising defence spending create new demand for industrial land? As demographic shifts push baby boomers into their 80s, who is positioned to solve the operational demands of senior housing? And which companies are converting AI adoption into measurable business value?

Canada isn’t recovering as one market. It’s recovering as many. Valuations are resetting, and investor sentiment toward buying has hit a 15-year high. But this optimism comes with qualifiers. Amid shifting Canadian real estate market conditions, growth opportunities are concentrated rather than broad-based, and rising operating costs continue to squeeze margins. Converting this reset into growth requires more than capital. It demands operational discipline and the ability to solve the unique constraints facing each asset class and region.

PwC Canada and the Urban Land Institute’s annual Emerging Trends in Canadian Real Estate report analyzes emerging commercial real estate trends and how they’ll define the next cycle, based on hundreds of interviews with developers, investors, asset managers, and other industry professionals from across the country. What emerged is an industry reinventing itself. The organizations positioned to lead are looking past traditional asset boundaries to connect real estate with enabling infrastructure. They’re embedding AI into core workflows to drive measurable performance gains. And they’re directing capital to areas where demographic and technological shifts are creating durable, long-term demand.