A lifetime achievement award might be a signal to slow down, but Ugo Bizzarri doesn’t sound like he’s quite ready to retire just yet.
Recognized with the Rental Housing Canada Lifetime Achievement award this month, the long-time developer recently handed over the daily reins at Hazelview Investments to a pair of co-CEOs, but is staying on as executive chair of the company he co-founded in 1999, which has grown to $11.2 billion in assets and 34,000 rental units across six provinces and 21 cities in Canada.
The Financial Post spoke with Bizzarri about how he got his start, his nearly 30 years experience in Canada’s real estate world , and what he considers the key issues in the housing market today.
How did you get your start in the industry?
I graduated from the University of Western Ontario and got a job in the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. They sort of fit me into real estate. I started my career in real estate, and I really liked it, so I just stayed.
How did you get into apartments?
At Teachers’, I really wanted to do some apartment investing, but we couldn’t at the time. Investing in apartments was a very long-term, very stable type of investing. I wanted to do something on my own, and therefore, in 1999, we launched Timbercreek Asset Management (whose equities business was later rebranded as Hazelview) with money from family and friends.
What else drew you to the rental sector?
One of the most important things for Canada is its housing needs. I think rental is a big component of that and it has been ignored for years. Travelling the world, I knew how important the rental market was to other countries and I thought Canada was underdeveloped in rental. I felt there was a real opportunity: The trend was that homeownership was going to go down, and rental was going to go up, and rental was going to be much more of a sustainable way of creating housing.
Why do you think historically this country has favoured home ownership?
I think that’s sort of the immigrant mentality, how Canada was built. A lot of immigrants came from Europe and other countries and they were looking to own a home and to build homes.
Do you think we’ll get to a point where people are just lifelong renters?
There’s a definite trend where people are selling their homes and are happy to rent ; they want more flexibility, more travel, the ability to go south in winter. I think that’s the first time that’s ever happened. People are sometimes selling their houses in Rosedale and Forest Hill and renting. I do think it’s changing. Being a renter is not the stereotype of 50 years ago: people are happy today to rent long term.
We haven’t built this many rental buildings in decades. Is it too much?
I don’t think it’s a lot of supply. Relative to zero, it’s a lot. But if you take into account condos and rentals, yeah, then we’re undersupplied. People were building condos versus rentals for many, many years, and now there’s a transition to build more rentals because the condo market is very, very quiet today.
What do you think has hindered rental supply in the past?
Before 1985/1986, most of the supply in Canada was rental buildings. Rent control came, and that shut down everything. Strict rent controls stopped rental buildings and people moved on to building condos because they didn’t want to take the risk of being captured in a rent control market. Then, in 2001, when the Ontario government changed its policy to vacancy decontrol (which lets landlords set market rents when a tenant moves out), it started spurring rental again.
Are you a renter? Have you been a renter?
I am not a renter. All my three kids are. Look, it’s a flexibility. I was a renter when I was younger. My experience as a renter when I grew up in the 1990s, it was very, very, very tough to find a place. You couldn’t find anything. Rents were a lot cheaper, but it was almost impossible. It took us eight months to find a place. You want people to have choices.
What does this award mean to you?
I got the award because of the team that we have in place, and that means a lot to me. A lot of people have been with me for a long time; it’s pretty nice to see that.
What does your future look like? Will you keep working?
I think you might have talked to my wife. I like what I do. I just made a transition to have two great co-CEOs of the company and to work a little differently. If you love what you do and the people that you’re around, I don’t think you should ever stop working. It’s a different mentality these days.
— This interview has been edited for clarity and length