Canadian pension funds are seeking to boost their real estate investments, betting the slumping property market will recover as the COVID-19 pandemic recedes and office workers and city dwellers return to downtown properties.

The mortgage deferral cliff has flattened out.

“The slow rollout of the vaccines and the still-raging pandemic continue to depress consumer confidence despite the prospect of further fiscal aid and a brighter health situation,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief U.S. financial economist at Oxford Economics in New York.

Stock market darling Dye & Durham Ltd. 

In many years, the Toronto-area real estate landscape feels glacial in January, but this year, sellers are quick to list and bidding contests are flaring up in some spots.

The number of condominiums put up for rent in Toronto more than doubled in the fourth quarter compared with a year earlier, a sign of a growing exodus of people from the city’s downtown to more spacious accommodations in the suburbs.

Canada’s apartment vacancy rate climbed during the pandemic, with job losses and a glut of new condos doubling vacancies in downtown Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Ottawa.

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board will invest US$350-million in apartments in the U.S., an attempt to capitalize on the pandemic-fuelled real estate downturn and housing shortages south of the border.

Brookfield India Real Estate Trust, backed by Canadian asset manager Brookfield Asset Management Inc., is seeking to raise as much as $522 million in an Indian initial public offering, adding to the growing number of listings from the sector in the country.

One key factor behind the ailing rental market is the exodus of people leaving London — especially the highly paid and economically mobile — due to both the pandemic and Brexit. The Office for National Statistics estimates that, in the summer of 2020, 893,000 non-U.K. residents left the country. The government-funded Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence reckons the outflow was even higher, at 1.3 million, with more than half departing from London. That’s equivalent to around one in 12 leaving the city.

A promising sign of a bounce back in the pandemic-ravaged economy has stalled: Fewer borrowers are resuming mortgage payments.