By Alex Akman, Chief Operating Officer, Shindico
Mid-year is a good moment to check the numbers. Half of 2026 is behind us, and the question is simple: how is Winnipeg commercial real estate performing, and how does Shindico measure up against it? This piece answers that sector by sector, setting the independent brokerage benchmark for retail, office, industrial and multifamily beside our own portfolio results. Where the age of a figure matters, we say so.
As of December 31, 2025, Shindico owned or managed 171 properties totalling 8 million square feet of building area, split across 3.1 million square feet of retail, 3.5 million square feet of multifamily, 900,000 square feet of industrial (on 11 million square feet of developed industrial land), and 500,000 square feet of office. Holding a position in every major asset class lets us read the market from the inside, and the read at mid-year is steady. Winnipeg avoids the boom-and-bust swings seen elsewhere, and that steadiness runs through everything that follows.
The demand story starts with people. The metropolitan population is about 940,000 and has been the main factor driving absorption across every asset class. Right now, two things are reducing growth: less overall immigration across the country, and uncertainty about the business environment: taxes, tariffs, regulation, foreign exchange and interest rates. The provincial economy has generally held up well, and our portfolio continues to perform.
Supply is the other half of the story. Winnipeg didn’t get the condominium surge Ontario and B.C. saw, so we have little unsold inventory, nor do we have a shadow rental market via investor condos. Most of the new rental stock here is purpose-built. High construction costs keep new supply limited, which holds vacancy down, though rent growth has slowed. Non-combustible builds are hard to make the numbers work on, but they rent well, and their rents grow faster than average.
Industrial is the tightest corner of the market and one of the tightest in the country. Depending on which brokerage you read, vacancy sat between 2.9 percent (Colliers) and 3.6 percent (CBRE) at the end of the second quarter, and the gap comes mostly from the two firms tracking different sets of buildings, not from any disagreement about demand. The two brokerages also count net absorption differently. Colliers reports about 86,000 square feet of positive absorption, while CBRE reports roughly 278,000 square feet of negative absorption. That difference isn’t about demand either. CBRE’s figure reflects a few large new buildings coming to market and registering as available space before they lease up, rather than tenants giving space back. Average net asking rents are approximately $11 per square foot, and Winnipeg led the country in industrial sale-price growth over the year, up more than 16 percent. The investment side points the same way. CBRE’s Q2 2026 cap rate estimates show industrial yields falling again nationally, which it puts down entirely to Edmonton and Winnipeg, the only two markets where rates fell, with Winnipeg sitting around 6.0 to 6.5 percent for Class A and 6.75 to 7.25 percent for Class B. When yields fall and prices rise together, that points to strong demand in a market with little for sale.
Two Q2 2026 transactions reshaped Winnipeg’s industrial ownership. RFA Capital closed on about 600,000 of the roughly 1.3 million square feet Artis REIT brought to market, a $79.8 million deal that ends the market-share position Artis held for decades. Separately, Skyline Industrial REIT sold its 319,481-square-foot cold storage facility on Chevrier Boulevard, fully occupied by Congebec, and exited Manitoba altogether.
Part of what keeps industrial tight is a shortage of serviced employment lands, though more is coming online around CentrePort; land, servicing and municipal charges keep pushing costs up. Against that backdrop, our industrial vacancy reads 11 percent, or 54,384 square feet of our roughly 500,000 square feet of leasable industrial space, but the number needs unpacking. Nearly all of it, 49,681 square feet, sits at a single asset in Regina, Saskatchewan, which we’re repositioning to add more grade and dock doors. Set that aside, and our core Winnipeg industrial space is effectively fully occupied. We recently leased the final available space at Plessis Business Park, capping a strong leasing run over the last six to nine months, and once Plessis phase four is completed in the back half of 2027, we move to the industrial component of the Water Tower District. We are also active on the build side now, with 84,000 square feet of tenant fit-up underway in an existing building at Plessis Business Park and pre-construction on a 105,000-square-foot, 32-foot-clear building across the street. Industrial outdoor storage is a segment we want to grow nationally, and we have written offers on IOS assets in Ontario and Alberta.
Retail looks softer on the headline than it is underneath, and Winnipeg’s experience mirrors Canada’s. Overall, Winnipeg retail vacancy has risen to about 5.5 percent from the low-3-percent range a couple of years ago, but most of that traces to one event, the closure of Hudson’s Bay downtown, which took roughly 2 percent of the city’s retail footprint out of use, almost all of it enclosed-mall space. A Q2 2026 Retail Insider report describes a national market in a scarcity phase, with about 17 million square feet of former Bay and related space returning across the country and owners commonly subdividing it into grocery, value, fitness and service space. Set Hudson’s Bay aside and the Winnipeg picture is healthy: enclosed malls carry the highest vacancy at just over 10 percent, power centres sit near 5 percent, and needs-based formats run around 3 percent. Almost no net new retail has been built here in a generation outside the Outlet Collection project, and that scarcity keeps upward pressure on rents.
This is where our portfolio separates itself most clearly. Shindico’s retail vacancy is less than 1 percent, roughly 23,000 vacant square feet across a 3.1-million-square-foot retail portfolio, against a market near 5.5 percent. Our six-centre neighbourhood portfolio, Stafford Square, Tyndall Market, Dunkirk Place, Moore Square, Moore Centre and 3500 Portage, is close to fully leased, with only about 3,000 square feet vacant across its 292,517 square feet. Grocery-anchored retail is the cornerstone of our portfolio and continues to perform well, especially when combined with essential services.
Office continues to struggle. Vacancy is high downtown, though Class A Skywalk-connected buildings outperform. Suburban space is generally more desirable, though even suburban now competes with retail centres, where a Sobeys and a Starbucks in the lot make visits easier for a professional's clients. Class A rents have edged up to about $19 per square foot on CBRE’s measure, and Colliers reported that office leasing recovered from the previous quarter’s negative absorption.
Our office holdings are entirely suburban, and our vacancy is about 8 percent, comfortably below the market, where downtown vacancy remains high. Suburban space has held up better than downtown.
Multifamily continues to be the most desirable investment asset class in Winnipeg by far. CMHC’s 2025 Rental Market Report showed purpose-built vacancy in Winnipeg at 2.8 percent, among the tightest of any major Canadian market and below the national average of 3.1 percent. Conditions softened a little in 2025 as new suburban supply arrived in areas like St. James and West Kildonan and slower immigration cooled demand, but core neighbourhoods stayed tight. More recent Yardi data, as of the second quarter of 2026, adds something worth noting. National vacancy edged down to 4.7 percent on its measure, the first decline in nine quarters, while Winnipeg held at 2.8 percent, second-lowest among major markets after Halifax. On rents, Winnipeg was one of the few markets to buck the national slowdown, with in-place rents up 3.6 percent year over year, second-highest in the country. That is the pattern across the city: reasonable vacancy and disciplined rent growth, rather than the sharper softening some larger markets saw.
Our multifamily vacancy is 3.32 percent, a touch above the market, which reflects units in active repositioning rather than soft demand. Some of our most interesting recent work is on legacy assets we acquired from a family business, the Tweedsmuir and River Heights apartments. We repositioned both with substantial work, including full copper repipes and new drain lines, plus renovated suites with tiled bathrooms, quartz counters, and stainless-steel appliances. On the development side, we have been busy with the Taylor Eddie and 3041 Ness projects, both multifamily, which keep new rental product coming into a market that needs it.
We also own and operate two modern self-storage facilities in Winnipeg through StorageVille, including a four-storey building completed in 2024. Self-storage has performed well in our market over the years, though lease-up on our most recent build has been slower than on previous ones. The main reason is added competition and new supply in the area, since we aren’t seeing much turnover among existing tenants. We have surplus land for further development at both facilities but want to see occupancy firm up first.
Put the four sectors together, and a clear map appears. Industrial and multifamily are tight and likely to stay that way, retail is healthier than its headline vacancy suggests once the Hudson’s Bay effect is set aside, and office is in transition, with quality and connectivity now the dividing line. Our own occupancy is performing well, especially given that we’re bringing on a lot of new space at market-leading rents.
2027 should be a busy year. The Water Tower District moves ahead on all three fronts. The first multifamily building will have more than 200 units, the industrial component follows the completion of Plessis phase four, and the retail space is preleasing now. We also have infill projects across the city that we look forward to announcing later this year. The watch items for the second half of 2026 are familiar: the path of interest rates, how U.S. tariffs land on the local goods and logistics economy, and the effect of slower immigration on household formation. On rates, the Bank of Canada has held its overnight rate at 2.25 percent since October 2025, and the cuts some expected this year have not come amid ongoing geopolitical uncertainty. Capital is still finding Canada regardless. CBRE notes that global and institutional investors are treating the country as a market of safety and stability, which supports pricing across every asset class. We continue to see opportunity in Winnipeg in the right locations with the right projects, even as it gets harder to get projects built. We’re glad to see new players entering our market, and we’re expanding nationally, moving more aggressively on assets in Alberta and Ontario.
Sources and methodology
Market figures: CBRE Canada Office and Industrial Figures Q2 2026; Colliers National Market Snapshot Q2 2026; Capital Commercial Retail Market Snapshot Q4 2025; Retail Insider Q2 2026 Canadian retail report; CMHC 2025 Rental Market Report (Winnipeg CMA); Yardi Canadian National Multifamily Report Q3 2026 (data as of Q2 2026); CBRE Canada Canadian Cap Rates & Investment Insights Q2 2026 (cap rate estimate ranges). Shindico figures are portfolio-aggregate, per tenant and client confidentiality practice, and remain subject to final leadership and legal sign-off before publication. Winnipeg retail vacancy reflects late-2025 data, as no Q2 2026 Winnipeg retail survey was available; multifamily figures follow CMHC methodology; Yardi rent and vacancy figures reflect Yardi tracked stock; cap rates are CBRE estimate ranges, not transacted values.
