The Commercial Real Estate Licensing in Alberta is at a booming stage again after COVID’s suppression. The Summer Re-opening Project in Alberta is a taking up heights even in the Real Estate Industry. Commercial Business Owners are coming up with innovate solutions of redevelopment and improvisations to modernize their office spaces to offer better facilities once things are back to normal. Office owners are getting pro-active to surge the market for their upcoming commercial clients.

David Routledge, The VP of Real Estate Management for Western Canada suggests that the culture of working in an office space can never be completely dead and quoted,

“It’s just the way many people work. Especially with technology and a younger workforce.”

Let’s jump right to the topic, then.

WHAT IS COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE?

There are multiple types of properties that would fall under this Commercial Real Estate Category. But what exactly is Commercial Real Estate? How can we define a Real Estate Property as a Commercial Property in Real Estate terms? Let us jump in to dive deeper in the topic.

Commercial real estate is a property type that allows you to do business, and which is not used for residential or habitual purposes. There are 5 divisions to Commercial Real Estate Property types.

1. Institutional: This will include your office towers and corporate business complexes, or basically, buildings intended for business use.
2. Retail: The definition of retail would be buildings used to promote commerce (or business) with consumers for goods and/or services. The retail would consist of your storefronts, the type of buildings you would find in regional shopping centres or strip malls.
3. Industrial: Properties used for processing raw materials and manufacturing goods as well as their storage. Here we are looking at building such as warehouses, factories, manufacturing plants, etc. All of these would fall under the category of industrial real estate.
4. Multifamily: Buildings used for dwelling that is comprised of more than four premises, so multifamily commercial would be anything that is bigger than fourplex. Any building that has more than four units would be considered multifamily and in this, we can get small buildings with six units or 10 units all the way up to hundreds of units. In this category we have things like school, personal care facilities, government buildings hospitals, all of these would fall under institutional real estate.

So basically, fourplexes and other complexes smaller than that would fall under residential real estate, and you can sell that for the residential real estate license.

A Note for new learners: It is important to note that to sell commercial real estate, you need a commercial real estate license. If you have a residential license, you cannot sell commercial real estate.

SAMPLE QUESTIONS

Now let us look at some of the exam questions you may see related to this topic.

Example 1:

A building used for processing raw materials and manufacturing goods as well as their storage describes which of the following types of buildings?

A. commercial
B. industrial
C. recreational
D. institutional

The correct answer here is B. Any building that is used for processing raw materials or manufacturing goods would fall under the industrial category.

Example 2:

A building with a specialized use aimed at serving the public or private clientele describes which of the following types of buildings?

A. multifamily
B. industrial
C. office
D. institutional

The correct answer here is D. Any specialized type of building would be called an institutional building. These would include your school’s personal care, facilities, hospitals, etc.

These are some sample questions with solutions and reasoning to get you understand the basic concept of Commercial Real Estate.

If you feel this interesting and can think of making a specialized career as a Commercial Real Estate Agent, get in touch with us at 587.936.7779.

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Good luck with your Commercial Real Estate Career!