It was just nine years ago that Fitzrovia, now Canada’s largest purpose-built rental developer, opened the doors of its Yonge-St. Clair office in downtown Toronto. In under a decade, the company has delivered 3,500 rental units, hired 400 employees, and opened a second office in Montreal.
Now, they’re putting down roots on the West Coast.
This month, they opened their first B.C. office in downtown Vancouver, headed by Oscar Lisa. Lisa was Director of Investments on the Toronto team before moving cross-country to assume the role of Vice President, Investments and Vancouver Head.
The move coincides with the opening of Sen̓áḵw Phase I — an Indigenous-owned rental development set to welcome occupants on June 1, and Fitzrovia’s first property management venture in B.C.
Owned by the Squamish Nation, Nch’ḵay̓ Development Corporation, and OPTrust, the three-tower, 1,409-unit complex sits at the foot of Burrard Street Bridge in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood. As one of the largest First-Nations led development projects in Canadian history, Sen̓áḵw is a huge deal — one that Fitzrovia’s CEO and Founder, Adrian Rocca, says was the ideal project to enter the B.C. market with.
“We had the ability to get into the Vancouver market with two excellent institutional partners, that we could continue to grow with over time, on a flagship project that had a lot of visibility,” he says. “So for us, it checked almost every box.”
But expansion into B.C. was always the goal. “We’ve wanted to be a coast-to-coast platform for a while now,” says Rocca. “You want to have exposure in the three largest markets: Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. We're already in two of those three, so Vancouver was the natural next entry point.”
Right now, the company is focused on ramping up their Sen̓áḵw Phase I property management team, which will include 28 site team members, but Rocca says they are also currently looking into a number of development deals in Vancouver. This includes potential purpose-built rental projects, but also seniors housing opportunities, says Lisa. He says seniors housing is a “small but growing” segment of Fitzrovia’s portfolio, but one that they see flourishing.
"We see seniors housing as a natural extension of our rental platform across Canada because our aging population is growing rapidly, the market remains structurally undersupplied, and there is an opportunity to create hospitality-driven communities focused on wellness, service, and social connection rather than traditional institutional retirement models,” says Lisa.
But since opening in 2017, purpose-built rentals have largely been the name of the game for Fitzrovia. In total, they have acquired, developed, or are in the process of constructing 19 rental buildings, including projects like Sloane and Elm-Ledbury in Toronto. More recently, they launched a subsidiary company called Maddox, which purchases older rental buildings and modernizes them. In total, they have over 12,500 suites completed, acquired or in development across Canada and are on track to deliver 2,300 new homes by 2026 and an additional 3,700 by 2030.
Fitzrovia’s growth over the last decade is emblematic of what RBC Economist Rachel Battaglia once called a purpose-built rental "renaissance." Since the mid-2010s, rental construction in Canada almost quadrupled thanks to our rising population, the deterioration of homeownership affordability, rising rents attracting investors, and government policy initiatives that made rental development more enticing.
The result has been record levels of purpose-built rental projects coming online over the last few years. This influx of rental supply, alongside high condo completions and immigration cuts, is largely credited with declining rents over the last year and a half. In fact, in April, average asking rent fell for the 19th month in a row, according to Rentals.ca. But Rocca says he isn’t worried.
“We think we'll be completely undersupplied in Vancouver and Toronto,” he says. “We have a significant amount of condo starts that broke ground at the tail end of COVID and are delivering right now, and so we're seeing downward pressure on rents and lease velocity. But if you look at the level of new starts, we are significantly below the long-term average.”
Rocca expects this supply-demand imbalance will hit over the next 18 to 25 months, and he plans to take advantage of it via Fitzrovia’s westward expansion. “We are very bullish on B.C.,” he says.
