PRESS RELEASE
Toronto, ON / February 6, 2025 / Forum Asset Management (“Forum”) is pleased to announce a strategic investment from Brookfield Asset Management (“Brookfield”) in support of Forum’s acquisition of Alignvest Student Housing. Brookfield, through its real estate solutions strategy, will invest up to $ 100 million in Forum’s private REIT, the Forum Real Estate Income and Impact Fund (“REIIF”).
REIIF is a $2.4 billion institutional quality, private REIT that is the leading owner and investor of purpose-built student accommodations across Canada. The fund serves top university markets and is addressing the growing demand for attainable, high-quality housing, and leverages ESG principals for enhanced risk-adjusted returns. REIIF is comprised of 31 institutional-quality properties and approximately 10,500 beds.
Broofield’s existing global portfolio of student accommodations is valued over $7 billion with 60,000 beds across Europe, the US, UK and now, in partnership with Forum and REIIF, in Canada. Brookfield’s investment in REIIF is underpinned by attractive Canadian long-term supply demand-fundamentals and the institutional quality of REIIF’s portfolio.
Richard Abboud, Founder and CEO of Forum, said, “This important investment by Brookfield into REIIF is validation of our strategy and underscores the opportunity for large scale institutional investment in Canadian student housing. Brookfield’s capital will enhance REIIF’s financial exibility, support portfolio growth, and strengthen our ability to deliver critically needed, professionally managed student housing across Canada.”
FACT SHEET
ABOUT REIIF
REIIF invests primarily in institutional-quality purpose-built student accommodations, as well as multi-family rentals and furnished apartments, in supply-constrained markets. REIIF is committed to delivering impact and Extraordinary Outcomes™ to investors, enhancing yields and total returns while creating dynamic communities for students and renters across Canada.
At MFG, our Mission Statement is to be “Always improving”. Over the past 15 months, we have been refining the process of how we can better deliver our investment platform to our clients. Utilizing partnerships and data collected over the years, we’ve come up with a solution that we believe will improve our investment platform and improve our clients overall experience with MFG.
We are transitioning to an investment model platform. Working with your Portfolio Manager, it will be determined which model is appropriate for you. Once this has been determined, you will own one or more of the new MFG Investment Models – Aggressive, Growth, and/or Balanced. These new Model Funds are built using the best investment managers and strategies that our team has researched. The platform utilizes the same investment philosophies of delivering an institutional quality portfolio to our clients.
1. Increased Performance
– Via enhanced portfolio construction and efficient management capabilities
2. Time spent with your Portfolio Manager
– Spend more time focusing on other value add areas of your financial lives – IE: financial planning, insurance analysis, tax work, etc.
3. Communication will be improved through detailed Quarterly Reports
– These reports will include facts about the Model Fund, general market commentary and additional information that our PM Division finds relevant to our clients
We are very excited to be able to deliver this new and improved platform to our clients. There has been a lot of work put in by our team to get us to this point. As we approach April 1st, you can expect to receive multiple communication pieces from our team diving into deeper details on the upcoming changes. If you have any questions on the upcoming change and what it might look like for you personally, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your MFG Portfolio Manager.
We want to thank you for your continued trust and support of MFG. Without you, none of this would be possible.
Stay tuned.
On Monday, Canada announced that it is capping the number of international students for two years, with the cap for 2024 at 360,000 students, a decrease of 35% from 2023.
In addition, post-graduate work permits will no longer be available for students in schools under a private-public partnership model and work permits will only be offered to spouses of students enrolled in masters, doctoral and professional programs.
The full news release is available at “Canada to stabilize growth and decrease number of new international student permits issued to approximately 360,000 for 2024 – Canada.ca”.
In the media, the Immigration Minister, Marc Miller, has said, “the main reason for the cap is to protect students who attend colleges, which are often private-public partnerships, that provide inadequate services at high costs, but also to ease pressure on housing and services. Some private institutions have taken advantage of international students by operating under-resourced campuses, lacking supports for students and charging high tuition fees, all the while significantly increasing their intake of international students.” [Source: Canada to cap international student permits amid housing crunch | Reuters]
OUR ANALYSIS
The cap represents a limit on the number of study permits that will be issued to students who want to come to Canada in the future, not the total number of international students in Canada. There are already an estimated 900,000 international students in Canada that can continue their studies.
While the cap represents a material cut in comparison to 2023, it is still substantially higher than the 256,000 study permits issued in 2020. Over the past three years, the number of permits issued annually has ballooned – this has been fuelled by both growth at universities and also due to rapid growth of colleges operating under private-public partnerships. It is really the latter scenario that Canada is seeking to control.
In fact, the University of Toronto welcomed the announcement and said it would work with all levels of government on the allocation of study permits. The changes are “focused on addressing abuses in the system by particular actors and are not intended to adversely impact universities such as ours,” the university said in a statement. [Source: Canada to cap international student permits amid housing crunch | Reuters]
HOW WILL THIS IMPACT US?
In summary, we remain confident that the high quality of our portfolio will continue to attract university students. The changes announced by the Canadian government will have an immaterial impact on our portfolio and we will continue to build and deliver Canada’s leading student housing platform.
Grand Prize:
Two night Staycation at your local Alt/Germain Hotel with a dinner or breakfast on us!*
Four Weekly Prizes: to be showcased on our social media pages
How to Enter:
Run a personal insurance quote on our website: Insurance | Meckelborg Financial Group (mfgltd.com) under the “get a quote” section to be eligible. Be sure to include your full name and email address, limit one entry per person per week*. You will be entered to win that weeks prize as well as the Grand Prize Staycation. Contest is starting April 5th 2021, with the winner being drawn on April 29th, 2021.
For Additional Entries:
• Like & follow both of MFG’s Instagram and Facebook pages
• Share and tag us in this post on both Instagram and Facebook
• Tag 3 friends
Official Site | Alt Hotel Saskatoon (germainhotels.com)
*up to a maximum of $500.00 for a two night stay, $50.00 for dinner/breakfast
*eligibility will be based off legitimacy of insurance quotes
Click the link below to read the full article
Self Storage Article
March 17, 2020
We are carefully monitoring the current novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. We must take appropriate actions to limit the impact of the virus on our community, particularly by focusing on the safety of our clients, employees and their families.
We have instituted our business continuity plan with a view to proactively anticipate and respond to any potential for business interruption, including restricted business travel, work from home protocols where appropriate, and encouraging the use of video and teleconference for interactions. We are also implementing social distancing measures that will also help reduce the spread of infectious diseases, such as reducing face to face meetings and ensuring our employees can work from home as required so we have a healthy workforce able to maintain our high standard of service. The same applies to our operational specialists who maintain the integrity of our systems and processes. Equally important, we maintain strong safeguards on information and identity.
We want to ensure that there are no interruptions or delays in contacting any of our MFG team members. Please find below our mobile #’s:
Trade instructions will not be accepted via email or text, therefore please ensure you contact us by phone to verbally confirm your order.
Should there be further developments with COVID-19 that prevent access to our physical premises or disruptions with mail delivery by Canada Post, courier or messenger services, this may impact our ability to receive physical cheques. As a reminder, you can set up an “electronic bill payments” with your applicable banking institution should you wish to make an online deposit.
While the COVID-19 situation is ongoing, we are increasingly aware of its impact on both the global and local markets in which our clients operate. Our efforts will ensure that we are able to provide the highest level of client service while positioning ourselves to take advantage of the market opportunities that lie ahead.
We wish you all health and safety throughout the coming weeks.
For informational purposes only; not intended to provide tax, legal or financial advice.
For your individual situation, please consult your financial advisors. (306)933-9993
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