The Industrial Strategy with Kevan Gorrie of Granite REIT

Joining us at the RealREIT conference today is Kevan Gorrie, who is the President and CEO of Granite REIT. The company is industrial-focused and holds property across Canada, the United States, and Europe.

Kevan shares what Granite’s portfolio looks like today, along with changes that have been made to it in the past few years. He tells us about the high amount of value that can currently be found in the US compared to Canada, and also discusses the ever-changing cap rates of today’s market.

Topics covered include:

• The acquisition of Kevan’s former company, Pure Industrial, by Blackstone.
• An overview of Granite’s portfolio, including geographies and finances.
• The thought process behind selling some of assets over the past few years.
• Why Kevan decided to grow the company’s presence in Europe.
• Rental growth of industrial spaces, especially in the GTA.
• Going to the US to get better deals.
• Maintaining liquidity and focusing on development.
• The difficulty of figuring out how much cap rates have moved.
• How expected yields have changed throughout the pandemic.
• What Kevan thinks about the recent trend of aiming for shorter terms.
• The demand from tenants for building to be energy efficient.

Kevan Gorrie serves as Granite REIT’s President & Chief Executive Officer and has over 20 years of leadership and corporate real estate experience across Canada, the United States and Europe. Since joining Granite in August of 2018, Mr. Gorrie has successfully raised over $4B in equity and debt capital and deployed more than $3.5B towards strategic acquisitions and development. Mr. Gorrie most recently served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Pure Industrial Real Estate Trust (“PIRET”) where he successfully grew and led the business until its strategic sale to Blackstone Property Partners and Ivanhoé Cambridge in May 2018. Prior to joining PIRET, Mr. Gorrie led the industrial business for Oxford Properties Group, the real estate investment arm of a major Canadian pension fund, where he built a platform comprising 13 million sq. ft of income producing properties and development projects across major Canadian industrial markets, encompassing acquisition, asset management, leasing, operations and development.

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