At A Glance

• In the last 18 months, more than $6 billion of Canadian apartment REIT capital has been taken private. InterRent went private in 2025 for about $4 billion (CLV Group plus Singapore's GIC). Minto Apartment REIT is mid-process on a $2.3 billion deal with Crestpoint Real Estate Investments.
• If you are thinking of selling: Public REIT units have been trading well below the underlying value of the buildings they own. Private buyers willing to pay closer to net asset value can offer a meaningful premium and still be doing a good deal.
• New private capital is filling the gap. Peakhill Capital launched a private REIT in January 2026 specifically to acquire apartments at "below replacement cost." Family offices are buying directly: a Montreal investor and a French family office paid roughly $67 million for a 148-unit Midtown Toronto building this spring.
• The surviving public REITs are rotating capital. CAPREIT acquired six properties in late 2025 totaling $659 million. Boardwalk REIT is selling at "private market valuations" to fund higher-return reinvestment.
• Smaller markets are also seeing this.  For example a 23-unit walkup in Sudbury sold this January at $143,478 per unit, a 52% gain over the building's last trade in 2022.
• For owners thinking about a sale, private market depth is showing increasing demand.  
  
  

$6 Billion Move From The Public Market

For a long while, Canadian apartment REITs were seen as clean easy to grasp investments on the TSX. They offered would be landlords predictable cash flow and professional management all without having to deal with tenants and the other headaches of actual ownership.  Moreover the policy tailwind of housing demand made them a natural choice for pension funds, retail investors, and income-focused portfolios. As a result, public REITs accumulated some of the largest residential portfolios in the country.

That trend has reversed. The two largest take-private deals in Canadian apartment history have happened in the last 18 months.

• InterRent Real Estate Investment Trust agreed to go private in 2025 in a deal valued at roughly $4 billion. The buyer was a partnership between Vancouver-based CLV Group and Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, GIC. The deal closed mid-2025.
  
  
• Minto Apartment REIT announced in January 2026 it had agreed to go private in a $2.3 billion deal with Crestpoint Real Estate Investments. Unitholders are scheduled to vote on the transaction. Assuming approval, Minto will join InterRent in the private column.

That's more than $6 billion in publicly traded apartments removed in less than two years.

So Why The Move?   

The driver is the gap between net asset value (NAV) per share and the price the market is paying for it.  

Let's start with a quick refresher on what Net Asset Value is.  NAV is what a REIT's real estate is actually worth, minus its debt, expressed per unit. It's actually pretty easy: 

1. Take the market value of every building the REIT owns,
2. Add cash and other assets,
3. Subtract all mortgages and other liabilities, and then, 
4. Divide by the number of units outstanding.

Then, bingo, you end up with what each unit would receive if the REIT sold off all their buildings tomorrow.

So far so good but why does this matter?  Well it comes down to any "gaps" between the NAV which we just figured out and the public unit price that you buy and sell.  

When public REIT units trade significantly below NAV, a private buyer can offer a premium to the public price and still acquire the buildings below their private-market value. Both sides walk away thinking they got a good deal.  Think the share price of ABC widget-making corp is trading below what the factory is worth.

Let's look at a simple example.  

Say NAV per unit is $14, but the units are trading on the TSX at $10. That's a 29% discount to NAV. A private buyer offering $12 per unit pays a 20% premium over the public price while still buying the underlying real estate at roughly 14% below its private-market value. The unitholders take the premium. The buyer takes the discount. That gap, applied across millions of units, is what's driving the wave of Canadian apartment REIT take-private deals.

For most of the last few years, Canadian apartment REIT units have traded at a meaningful discount to the NAV implied by underlying property values. That means a unitholder selling stock receives less than the per-unit value of the buildings the REIT owns. For an institutional buyer with the capital and patience to buy the whole REIT at a price closer to NAV, the arithmetic is straightforward: pay a premium to the public price, still buy assets below private-market replacement, and deploy capital into a sector you wanted exposure to anyway.

There are a number of reasons for the NAV gap - and you no doubt have heard a lot of these. Higher interest rates pressured REIT cash flow. Rent control limited the visible growth path. Operating costs (insurance, utilities, repairs) rose materially. And public market sentiment cooled on sectors carrying political risk around housing affordability.

None of that has fundamentally undermined the underlying real estate. The buildings are still leased and the rents are still collected.  It's just that the public market priced the equity for risk in a way private buyers thought was overdone.

Where The New Capital Is Coming From?

If you'd been watching institutional capital exit the public side and wondered who would replace it, the answer is now visible. Four broad sources.

Take-private partnerships.

Crestpoint (Minto's acquirer) is a Vancouver-based real estate investment manager. CLV plus GIC (InterRent's acquirer) is a Canadian private operator paired with sovereign capital. In both cases, the structure is deep-pocketed private money taking ownership of large existing portfolios.

New private REITs.

Peakhill Capital, a Toronto-based real estate firm, launched Peakhill Opportunity REIT in January 2026. The mandate, in their own words, is to acquire apartments at "below replacement cost" while public REIT valuations remain pressured. Several other private REIT structures are similarly active.

Family offices.

This is the quieter side of the story. A Montreal-based investor partnered with a France-based family office to buy Minto's 148-unit "The Roe" at 150 Roehampton Avenue in Midtown Toronto, generating net proceeds to Minto of about $67 million. Family offices aren't filing press releases for every transaction, but they're a meaningful share of bid activity, particularly in well-located mid-sized buildings.

Surviving public REITs reinvesting.

CAPREIT, Canada's largest apartment REIT, acquired six properties in the last weeks of 2025 totalling $659 million, including assets in Laval, Regina, Vancouver, and Victoria. CAPREIT publicly described the strategy as buying newer assets while selling older ones. Boardwalk REIT sold four properties across Quebec City and Edmonton in April 2026 as part of a "capital reallocation" program, with stated intent to redeploy at private market valuations.

So while the public REIT count is shrinking, the activity level in apartment transactions is not.

What Of Smaller Markets?

The take-private deals dominate the headlines, but smaller transactions tell the same story.

A small private REIT called Virtus Diversified REIT bought a 23-unit walkup at 38-52 Pearl Street in Sudbury in January 2026 for $3.3 million. That's $143,478 per unit. The same building last sold in July 2022 for $2.175 million, or $94,565 per unit. Per-unit pricing rose about 52% over a roughly three-and-a-half-year hold.

Sudbury is not a market that gets a lot of national institutional attention. The Virtus deal is meaningful precisely because it isn't a Toronto trophy. Private capital is reaching into secondary and tertiary Ontario markets in a way that didn't characterize the public-REIT-dominant era.

What This Means For Buyer and Sellers.  

Sellers:

For private apartment owners (and most Ontario landlords are private), the takeaway is direct. There are more buyers competing for your building than there have been at any point in this cycle. The combination of public-REIT take-privates (forcing institutional capital to look for new deployment), new private REIT launches, family-office acquisitions, and existing REIT portfolio rotation means the bid is unusually deep.

Public-market valuations are not the right comparable to use right now. If you've been quoting yourself against a public REIT cap rate (which a lot of owners do as a mental shortcut), you may be marking your asset down relative to what a private buyer would actually pay.

This doesn't mean every building is worth what its owner thinks it is. It means the marginal building, the one where you've been waiting for the "right moment," may be looking at the right moment right now.

Buyers:

The other side of the same coin: opportunities to acquire older buildings from REITs that are pruning their portfolios.

CAPREIT and Boardwalk are both publicly stating they're selling older assets to fund newer ones. That implies a pipeline of older apartment buildings coming to market through institutional sellers. Private buyers with the patience to add value through operational improvements, modest capex, or repositioning have a clearer acquisition path than they did in 2022 or 2023.

The competitive set is different too. Without the giant public REITs (InterRent already gone, Minto on the way) bidding for the same buildings, mid-sized private buyers face less institutional crowding. Pricing on second-tier assets in secondary markets may be more accessible than it has been.

Terry Riddoch

If you would like to talk through how any of this applies to a building you own or one you are considering, I am always happy to walk through the numbers.

Terry Riddoch
Real Estate Broker -- Multifamily and Investment Properties, Ontario

Phone: 519 591 1725
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.terryriddoch.ca

Sources: Public filings by Minto Apartment REIT, InterRent REIT, CAPREIT, Boardwalk REIT, and Peakhill Capital. Investor communications and press releases. Sale comp data from public commercial real estate databases.