Senior director, canada real estate research & strategy

Senior Director, Canada Real Estate Research & Strategy

The Senior Director for Canada Real Estate Research & Strategy will work with the global co-heads for research and strategy for real estate private markets. The role will require interfacing with the entire real estate leadership team; the Transactions, Credit and Asset Management teams; and other groups within Manulife Investment Management who engage with the Research & Strategy team for support on executing the Manulife Investment Management Real Estate (“MIM RE”) strategy through commercial and multifamily real estate transactions and asset management. This role will serve as the lead point of contact and expertise for Canada institutional real estate market research, leveraging in-house data resources, external/third party sources, and alternative datasets in support of growing our Canada market-share and refining our Canada House View.

Responsibilities:

• Lead Canada market research & intelligence, identifying market trends and extracting insights across the portfolio to aid in strategic decision-making.
• Translate market-intelligence views into MIM RE’s Canada investment strategy, including acquisitions and asset management, and across the capital structure in equity and credit.
• Drive the development, authorship, documentation and execution of the MIM RE Canadian House View.
• Serve as a key Canada research point of contact our team as an expert of market-level economic and commercial real estate trends, with the ability to articulate impact on the MIM RE Canadian investment strategy.
• Provide key support to our acquisitions and asset management teams, including market overviews; rent growth forecasts, with the ability to contribute to modeling efforts and offer subject matter expertise in adjusting rent growth at the market and submarket levels for House View and for underwriting assumptions; and independently develop IC Memo content creation.
• Lead Canadian market selection and sector selection process, identifying key markets and submarkets for potential outperformance and underperformance, to be used in the House View; and to drive acquisition strategies, geographic and sector allocations and portfolio diversification efforts.
• Work closely with the MIM RE CIO to craft and develop Strategic Client Plans, specifically offering subject matter expertise in regards to fund diversification and allocation.
• Research, collect and aggregate internal and external data to model, chart and incorporate into various reports, including our House View; identify new potential resources.
• Leverage evidence-based research to critically evaluate investment themes and identify opportunities to improve investment performance.
• Independently prepare, present, and report research output results, present and future initiatives, to leadership.
• Contribute to and drive thought leadership with ideation and content creation to differentiate our platform and underpin our investment thesis.
• Other ad hoc projects and initiatives as needed.

Qualifications:

• Minimum 12 to 15 years’ experience in research and strategy; preferably with buy-side exposure, providing support for both equity and credit markets, and asset management, including transaction and underwriting support from a market research standpoint.
• Track record of working effectively with Transactions SMEs, Asset Managers, Portfolio Managers and other investment process collaborators to produce relevant research for both internal and external clients.
• Expertise creatively combining first party and third-party data sources to support the investment decision-making process, and translate research findings into investment thesis and strategy.
• Ability to quickly respond to ad hoc requests and proactively manage programmatic, regular workflow; meet tight deadlines and propose new ideas and solutions for work output.
• Multi-disciplinary experience across commercial real estate asset types and markets; with an experience in and emphasis on alternatives (self storage, single-family rental (“SFR”), data centers, etc.) and identifying potential new areas of commercial real estate investment.
• Ability to independently craft and develop strategic research reports, memos, market intelligence and thought leadership.
• Familiarity with standard economics and real estate research and data platforms (e.g., CoStar, Oxford Economics, MSCI, Preqin).
• Experience articulating and defending research output to senior management and industry collaborators: the role may require external representation.
• Bachelor’s degree from a 4-year institution (key areas of focus: economics, urban planning, real estate); post-graduate degree in relevant subject areas highly desirable.
• Ability and willingness to travel to help support a global team.

Manulife Investment Management (“MIM”) is the global wealth and asset management segment of Manulife Financial Corporation. MIM's global real estate platform provides investment solutions globally as part of its comprehensive private markets’ capabilities, offering core, core-plus, and value-add strategies.

Manulife is an equal opportunity employer that embraces diversity and inclusion in the workplace.