“Our deal flow remains significant despite the market headlines”
Jake Levy,
Pier 4
“The two most important things for us, in any space, is we want to find a quality asset with a quality manager”
Dylan Bredo, Bilyk Financial Private Client
“You’re diversifying from a portfolio standpoint, and you’re seeking that diversification benefit, without necessarily sacrificing long-term return potential”
Randal Warrington,
Pier 4
“You want to get multiple asset classes that are ideally weakly or negatively correlated, so that you can, by combining them, get a better risk-adjusted return in aggregate than you could if you didn’t use as many asset classes”
John De Goey,
Designed Wealth Management
In Partnership with
How Pier 4 reads risk in real estate
Pier 4 executives and two advisors on the discipline it takes to earn a lasting place in client portfolios today
Read on
Randal Warrington
Pier 4
Jake Levy
Pier 4
Dylan Bredo
Bilyk Financial Private Client
John De Goey
Designed Wealth Management
Industry experts
Real estate has spent the past few years absorbing the same rate shock that hit every other asset class, and private REITs have not been exempt from the fallout. Advisors who once viewed private REITs as a relatively straightforward diversifier found themselves spending more time discussing liquidity, governance, and manager quality with clients than distributions or returns.
Wealth Professional chaired a roundtable with Randal Warrington, VP of national sales at Pier 4, and Jake Levy, VP of finance at Pier 4, alongside Dylan Bredo, partner and portfolio manager at Bilyk Financial Private Client, and John De Goey, portfolio manager at Designed Wealth Management. The conversation covered how private REITs differ from public ones, how the group has adjusted to a harder rate environment, and what advisors should actually be checking before they put client capital into the space.
Why it earns a spot in the portfolio at all Warrington starts from the same point he leads with in client meetings: real estate’s value is in what it doesn’t give up. “It’s the opportunity to have an asset class that is uncorrelated to the public equity markets,” he said. “And I think at the same time, yes, you’re diversifying from a portfolio standpoint, and you’re seeking that diversification benefit, without necessarily sacrificing long-term return potential.”
At Pier 4, we believe real estate is more than buildings—it’s about creating spaces where people and communities thrive. With 4 offices across Canada - Toronto, London, Cambridge, Moncton - we invest in multi-family apartments across Canada with a clear purpose: to deliver consistent, long-term returns for our investors while enhancing the quality of life for our residents. With a portfolio of over 2,000 units and a trusted network of more than 4,000 investors, Pier 4 is committed to revitalizing properties and reimagining neighborhoods through sustainable redevelopment. Every acquisition reflects our dedication to environmental stewardship, social responsibility, and strong governance—principles that guide us as we build brighter, more resilient communities. Our vision is simple yet powerful: unlock opportunities, foster connection, and create lasting impact. By purchasing and transforming existing buildings responsibly, we aim to shape a future where value and purpose go hand in hand.
As the vice president of national sales at Pier 4, Randal Warrington brings extensive leadership experience and strategic insight to drive growth and performance across diverse markets. With a background in sales, and proven track record in building high-performing sales teams and forging strong client relationships, Warrington is known for his results-driven approach and commitment to excellence. His expertise spans sales strategy, business development, and operational execution, making him a key force in shaping national sales initiatives.
Pier 4
Randal Warrington
Jake Levy is the vice president, finance at Pier 4. He oversees the accounting and financial activity of the REIT, showcasing his proficiency in financial management and accounting. Prior to joining Pier 4, Levy gained experience in public accounting, specializing in auditing and accounting advisory services, further honing his financial skills. He holds an honours commerce degree and a graduate diploma in accounting from the University of Guelph. Levy is also a member of the Chartered Professional Accountants of Ontario, underlining his years of experience and expertise in the field.
Pier 4
Jake Levy
Dylan Bredo, CFA, MBA, is a portfolio manager at Bilyk Financial Private Client. He works with families, professionals, and business owners on investment strategy, portfolio construction, and long-term financial planning. His work focuses on asset allocation, portfolio analytics, risk management, manager selection, and clear client communication. Bredo earned both his MBA in business analytics and finance and his bachelor of commerce from the University of Alberta.
Bilyk Financial Private Client
Dylan Bredo
John De Goey is a respected veteran with over 30 years’ experience as an advisor. A portfolio manager since 2009, De Goey helps retirees and pre-retirees gain financial independence while using a pension style approach to portfolio management. He has written three books and is the host of the Make Better Wealth Decisions podcast.
Designed Wealth Management
John De Goey
Share
Published Sep 7, 2026
The way he puts it to advisors, the objective is to reduce reliance on daily public-market movements while seeking income and long-term return potential.
That case rests on a well-established piece of portfolio theory. Combining asset classes that have historically exhibited weak or negative correlation may improve a portfolio’s overall risk-adjusted return. It’s the logic behind Harry Markowitz’s Nobel Prize-winning work on modern portfolio theory.
“With real estate, the cardinal rule of investing is that you should diversify,” said De Goey. “You want to get multiple asset classes that are ideally weakly or negatively correlated, so that you can, by combining them, get a better risk-adjusted return in aggregate than you could if you didn’t use as many asset classes, or if you used asset classes that were very similar.”
Real estate has historically demonstrated relatively low correlation to traditional stocks and bonds, De Goey added, which is what makes it a useful way of extending a portfolio’s efficient frontier.
Bredo agreed that diversification is central to the investment case but said it isn’t the only reason real estate earns a place in client portfolios. His team starts with a strategic asset allocation that reflects each client’s existing exposure, then adjusts it as the macro environment changes. Income is the second pillar.
For retirees, distributions from rental properties can help fund ongoing cash flow needs. For clients still accumulating wealth, those same distributions can be reinvested into other opportunities. “There’s multiple benefits in how we use it within a portfolio,” he said.
Levy sees that same durability from the operator’s side. Multifamily assets, he said, continue to generate rental income, covering expenses and producing operating income that supports a fund’s cash flow “through distributions, capital expenditures and overall general business operations,” even when conditions get harder. Deal flow has held up too: “Our deal flow remains significant despite the market headlines,” Levy said, with Pier 4 currently underwriting between 10 and 15 new deals a week.
The gating conversation Pier 4’s REIT, like most private REITs, is valued quarterly by independent third-party appraisers rather than marked to market daily. That’s part of why NAV can behave differently from publicly traded securities because assets are independently appraised on a quarterly basis.
The last two years have tested liquidity across the private market, and Warrington highlights the number: roughly 40% of the private sector in Canada, across private equity, private debt, and private REITs, has dealt with some form of restricted redemption or gating since the stress cycle began.
“I don’t necessarily see gating as a negative,” Warrington said. “I think it’s prudent from some firms’ standpoint to protect the value for those investors.” The liquidity question, he added, comes up much earlier in conversations than it did a year and a half ago.
De Goey drew a distinction between gating and a standard redemption window. Some private REITs offer periodic redemption opportunities, subject to their governing documents, available liquidity, and applicable restrictions.
This, De Goey has found, isn’t a meaningful hurdle for advisors planning RRIF withdrawals. Gating, where redemptions are temporarily suspended, is different. Even then, he argued, much of the concern is psychological. The underlying value remains, distributions may continue, “it’s just that you can’t sell it.”
Bredo sees the bigger risk elsewhere. The recent market has exposed the difference between managers navigating a normal stress cycle and those whose valuations or portfolio risks may not have reflected reality. That’s why he keeps coming back to the same test: “The two most important things for us, in any space, is we want to find a quality asset with a quality manager.”
A more attractive entry point Both advisors see today’s market as presenting a more compelling opportunity than it has in several years.
De Goey said he’s already at his target allocation, but for advisors who remain underweight or have yet to add private real estate, he believes the second half of 2026 could prove to be an attractive entry point. He traces that back to the interest rate cycle. Decades of falling rates supported real estate values before inflation forced central banks to tighten policy, pushing up cap rates and weighing on prices.
With some assets now trading below net asset value, Bredo sees an opportunity for investors deploying fresh capital to enter at more favourable valuations than they’ve seen in recent years.
Levy said navigating the cycle has come down to discipline rather than dramatic changes in strategy.
Pier 4 has continued to manage its debt conservatively, maintain reserves for capital projects and distributions, tighten operating costs, and carefully screen prospective tenants as rental demand has strengthened.
De Goey’s optimism also reflects how he views today’s equity markets relative to real estate. He pointed to two valuation measures he follows closely: Robert Shiller’s cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings (CAPE) ratio and the Buffett Indicator, which compares total stock market capitalization with GDP. Both, he argued, suggest US equities remain expensive by historical standards, while real estate has already absorbed much of the impact of higher interest rates.
“Real estate, while it’s not cheap, is not anywhere near as expensive as traditional stocks are,” he said. For investors seeking additional diversification and long-term return potential, he believes that makes the asset class increasingly compelling.
Looking beyond returns The recent market has put far more emphasis on due diligence, according to Levy. Rather than focusing on returns alone, advisors need to understand the fundamentals behind the portfolio.
Levy pointed to portfolio gap-to-market as one indicator of future growth potential, alongside occupancy, same-store NOI growth, and distribution consistency. A property’s gap-to-market measures the difference between what existing tenants are paying and what those same units could rent for at today’s market rates. For a private residential REIT, a large positive gap means there is room to grow rental income over time as leases expire and are renewed at higher market rents.
Financial measures such as loan-to-value ratios, interest coverage, and payout ratios all help build a clearer picture of how conservatively a REIT is being managed. Just as important is understanding valuations. Reviewing a fund’s weighted average capitalization rate against comparable properties can help determine whether assets are being valued appropriately.
De Goey would add governance to that checklist. Independent boards, credible auditors, and transparent valuation processes, he argued, give advisors greater confidence that reported values reflect underlying market conditions rather than management assumptions. While critics sometimes suggest private assets can understate volatility because managers effectively mark their own portfolios, he believes the answer is understanding how those valuations are produced rather than dismissing the asset class altogether.
The conversation has changed That’s why Warrington says education has become a much bigger part of Pier 4’s approach. He found discussions today spend less time on what private REITs are and more time on how they work. Advisors want to understand redemption mechanics, valuation methodology, and the metrics that distinguish one manager from another before they ever discuss returns with clients.
Rather than leading with product features, Warrington said his team increasingly focuses on helping advisors understand why measures such as loan-to-value ratios, interest coverage, and cost per door matter. Cost per door is a common real estate metric that divides the total property value by the number of apartments or residential units it contains. For private residential REITs, it gives investors a simple way to assess what the portfolio is worth on a per-unit basis and compare those values with the cost of building similar properties today.
For advisors, the message should remain straightforward: start with the role private real estate plays in a diversified portfolio, then explain the trade-off. Clients are accepting less day-to-day volatility in exchange for less liquidity, and the key is making sure that trade-off aligns with their investment horizon.
Warrington doesn’t think private REITs are doing anything different than they were three years ago. What’s different is how early liquidity comes up now, and how specific the questions have gotten. Nobody used to ask about gating terms up front. Now it’s one of the first things advisors want to talk through, right alongside whether the manager and the asset actually hold up. The pitch itself hasn’t moved. What it takes to earn an advisor’s trust has.
Disclaimer:
This is not a formal offering document. Prospective purchasers of this investment opportunity will be provided with a formal Offering Memorandum and will need to be qualified for investment prior to making any investment. No person has been authorised to give any information or to make any representation not contained in the formal Offering Memorandum. No securities regulatory authority or regulator has assessed the merits of these securities or reviewed this Offering Memorandum. Any representation to the contrary is an offence. This is a risky investment. For more information, please refer to Item 10 – Risk Factors within the Offering Memorandum for further details. Please refer to the below and the Offering Memorandum for our advisory on forward-looking statements. Certain statements contained herein as they relate to Pier 4 Real Estate Investment Trust (“Pier 4”, “Pier 4 REIT” or “the REIT”) and related parties and their respective views or predictions about the possible future events or conditions and their business operations and strategy, are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of that phrase under applicable Canadian securities laws. Any statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as “may”, “will”, “should”, “expect”, “plan”, “anticipate”, “believe”, “estimate”, “predict”, “potential”, “targeting”, “target”, “intend”, “could”, “might”, “continue”, or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. These statements are only predictions. Undue reliance should not be placed on these forward-looking statements as there can be no assurance that the plans, intentions or expectations upon which they are based will occur. By its nature, forward-looking statements involve numerous assumptions, known and unknown risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, that contribute to the possibility that the predictions, forecasts, projections and other forward-looking statements will not occur and may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this document are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement and given as of the date hereof. Except as otherwise required by law, Pier 4 does not intend to and assumes no obligation to update or revise these or other forward-looking statements it may provide, whether as a result of new information, plans or events or otherwise. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements as there can be no assurance that the condition, events, plans and assumptions on which they were based will occur. ALL REFERENCE SHOULD BE MADE TO THE OFFERING MEMORANDUM DATED May 1, 2026.
Beyond yield: numbers worth tracking
Gap-to-market – Indicates how much rental income could grow as leases renew at current market rates.
Cost per door – Shows what the portfolio is worth on a per-unit basis and provides context against replacement costs.
Loan-to-value (LTV) – A window into how conservatively the portfolio is financed.
Same-store NOI growth – Separates operational improvement from gains driven by acquisitions.
Capitalization rate – Comparing a REIT’s cap rate with comparable properties can help identify whether assets appear conservatively or aggressively valued.
What separates one private REIT from another?
The quality of the underlying properties
How conservatively debt is managed
The experience and track record of the management team
Independent governance and valuation processes
A consistent investment strategy through different market cycles
