Major Canadian pension funds stick with USreal estate as the world’s largest, most liquid market
US President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs may have “shook” the sector, but Canada’s biggest pension investors are not backing away from US real estate – they are tightening their view of risk and focusing harder on exits.
According to the Financial Post, Pierre Cherki, executive managing director of real estate at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, told a Toronto conference that “The United States remains by far the largest investment market, and by far the most liquid market.”
He said this even after Trump imposed a 10 percent baseline global tariff on imports.
He said it would be tough to imagine where Ontario Teachers’ would deploy the $30bn it now owns in real estate without being present south of the border, given its roughly $270bn in total assets.
Cherki said the tariffs did not cause the fund to “move money around dramatically” but did trigger a reassessment of how it establishes risk, as reported by the Financial Post.
He noted “a dynamic between Canada and the US,” but stressed that the plan remains focused on providing pensions to teachers in Ontario and treats trade policy as an added layer of risk rather than a reason to exit the US.
Other asset managers echoed the view that strategy, not geography, is shifting.
According to the Financial Post, Andrew Croll, managing director and head of global real estate investments at TD Asset Management, said the tariff environment has forced a refocus on exit strategies because relying on property valuations to drive returns might not work when valuations are “out of your control” and may not rise.
He argued that confidence around getting trade deals and the “emotional response to the chaos that has come out of the US” may actually create opportunities.
Scale and data have become central tools in managing this uncertainty.
As per the Financial Post, Janice Lin, head of real estate in Canada for Blackstone, said the firm’s 40-year track record gives it access to information that helps it better understand markets.
She said that when “the US government shut down and stopped providing government altogether,” Blackstone leaned on operating results from its 12,000 individual assets and 60 real estate portfolio companies rather than macro signals.
Insurers are using the current environment to upgrade portfolios.
The Financial Post reports that Randolph Brown, chief investment officer and head of insurance asset management at Sun Life, sees an opportunity to acquire “good assets at low prices,” particularly in the office sector.
He said Sun Life recently picked up its first Canadian office asset in a long time and later described it as a “quality” office building in Vancouver, not an older B- or C-class property.
Brown called it “the right asset at the right price in the right market” and noted that Vancouver has “one of the lowest vacancies in North America,” even though Sun Life has not bought an office in years, preferring to develop in Toronto.
