Garry Marr
Garry Marr is a columnist at the Financial Post who covers real estate and personal finance with a focus on how property markets affect investors, homeowners and everyday savers. His coverage connects commercial real estate structures, public-market investment vehicles and household decisions into a single narrative about risk, income and long-term value. He draws on decades of reporting on Canadian real estate and finance across national newspapers and a dedicated commercial property news service, which gives his columns context that reaches beyond a single deal or headline.
Commercial property tactics for hesitant homebuyers
Marr writes about how strategies borrowed from commercial property are being used by homeowners to persuade reluctant buyers to complete a purchase, examining the mechanics of these arrangements and the implications for both sides of the transaction.
He brings a commercial investor’s lens to residential stories, informed by years spent writing about Canadian commercial property for a specialized news organization. In that role he covered landlords, developers and major transactions, building a detailed understanding of how income-producing property is financed, traded and managed.
His Financial Post columns on real estate now apply that knowledge to consumer-facing issues, explaining how market structures and deal terms filter down to the experience of individual buyers and sellers.
Condo developers, vacancies and market dynamics
Marr’s recent work includes columns on condo developers and accusations of “hoarding” units, where he asks whether leaving properties vacant with no income can make sense in the context of pricing and future sales. He uses that debate to examine how developers balance the risk of a fire sale against the pressure to keep inventory moving, and what that means for investors and would-be buyers.
The analysis focuses on incentives, cash flow and market timing, rather than rhetoric, and steps through why a developer might hold units back, how that interacts with broader housing supply, and where the line lies between prudent strategy and distortion of the market.
REITs and the evolution of real estate investments
Marr has a long-running interest in real estate investment trusts and their role in investor portfolios. Earlier work tracked how REITs outperformed the benchmark stock index over multiple years, highlighting income, diversification and sector exposure as key features of the structure. More recent columns show the sector shrinking through take-private deals and consolidation, and explain why a wave of transactions can still be positive for investors if weak players are removed and portfolios are streamlined.
In covering deals such as the sale of a major retail landlord to a consortium of buyers, he breaks down transaction values, the number and type of properties involved and the strategic motives of the acquiring groups. His writing links those headlines to practical questions such as liquidity, yield and access to real estate for individual investors, reinforcing his broader theme that property is both a place to live and an asset class with specific risks and rewards.
Personal finance, retirement savings and inheritance
Alongside real estate, Marr writes regular personal finance columns that focus on retirement savings decisions and intergenerational wealth transfer. In one recent piece on registered retirement savings plans, he warns about the hidden cost of “free lunch” offers, tying promotional incentives to long-term impacts on investment choice and retirement income.
Another column explores the pros and cons of giving an inheritance “with a warm hand,” weighing the benefits of helping family members earlier in life against the risks to the giver’s own financial security.
These personal finance pieces share the same methodical approach as his property coverage: they start from a concrete scenario, lay out the mechanics of the products or strategies involved, and then move to the trade-offs facing ordinary savers. His background includes many years as a real estate and personal finance reporter at a national business newspaper and as a commercial real estate correspondent, and that experience underpins the way he connects balance sheets, market cycles and day-to-day money decisions in his current column.
Across his work, Marr occupies the intersection of property markets and personal finance, treating homes, condos and shopping centres as both physical assets and financial instruments. He focuses on how choices by developers, landlords and capital markets shape opportunities and risks for individual investors and households, making his beat especially relevant to stories that sit between consumer real estate and the investment side of the sector.
4 more real estate journalists.
Addie Morfoot
Addie Morfoot covers how real estate, culture and media meet, focusing on people, rules and the way homes shape a life. She reports for The New York Times on housing and lifestyle, from personal narratives about finding a home after loss to features on how short-term rental policy affects everyday owners and renters. She writes real estate stories that connect laws and regulations to the choices available to ordinary residents in specific towns and cities. She is a regular contributor to the Sunday Routine franchise, following actors, comedians and designers through a typical day and showing how settings like homes, studios and subway cars shape daily experience. She also has a long track record covering documentary film and the entertainment business, including legal questions around fair use, changing docu-series formats, festival premieres and financing. Her portfolio spans more than two decades of work for The New York Times, Variety, The Wall Street Journal and Crain’s New York Business.
Alcynna Lloyd
Alcynna Lloyd is a real estate reporter and economic journalist at Business Insider whose work is distinct for treating housing as a core economic system people must navigate. She covers how housing markets, costs, and mobility shape everyday life decisions, connecting data on rents, home prices, and city trends with stories of people managing debt, multigenerational living, and moves abroad. Her beat centers on housing costs, renters, and household strategies, following renters pushing back against landlords and tracking “desperate home sellers” using concessions in unaffordable markets. A second strand of her coverage focuses on relocation, remote work, and cheap cities as everyday economic strategies. She regularly uses rankings and lists, such as best and worst states to buy a home and Rising Stars of Real Estate, and reads city housing and migration shifts as signs of broader economic change.
Alec Lazenby
Alec Lazenby covers how provincial politics and government decisions shape housing, real estate and the wider social fabric. He reports for The Vancouver Sun from the provincial legislature. His work examines HousingHub, middle-income rentals, affordability, stalled projects, empty condos, developer layoffs, municipal housing targets and land use. He also covers health, addiction, safer supply, involuntary care, water rights, resource management, Indigenous rights and Crown land. Lazenby connects policy language to specific buildings, rents, projects, services and people. He explains financial, regulatory and market pressures, then follows how institutions, professionals, developers, municipalities and affected communities respond. His reporting tests government goals against practical outcomes and shows how policy reversals, construction costs, interest rates and political accountability shape housing and public life.
Amir Ali
Amir Ali links housing, disputes, and oddball neighbourhood stories in case-based, street-level reporting for Daily Hive. He holds a senior editorial and writing role, listed on the masthead as part of Vancouver leadership and described as a staff writer. His core beat is real estate, especially the rental market and housing affordability, tracking rent ranges, market shifts, and how pressures land on people trying to stay housed. He also covers crime, civil tribunals, and mental health, explaining decisions and conflicts in plain language that focuses on timelines, behaviour, and outcomes. Ali writes offbeat hyperlocal features, traffic and transport disruptions, business, food, and general local news, often turning infrastructure, small businesses, and civic systems into tangible stories. A former radio producer, he brings tight pacing and clear stakes to written pieces and maintains an active social media presence as a broadcaster and writer.