Canada’s largest real-estate trust says it will sell about 100 properties in secondary markets over the next two- to three-years.

It’s not known what properties exactly are for sale, but RioCan happens to own one mall of interest locally: the Timmins Square.

RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says the properties have an estimated value of $2 billion and it expects to net about $1.5 billion after expenses.

Some of the money will be used to repurchase RioCan trust units from the open market.

RioCan also plans to invest $300 million to $400-million per year on property development in the six major markets that already account for about 75 per cent of its annual rental revenue.

“Our strategy to accelerate our portfolio’s focus on Canada’s six major markets will streamline our business model, advance the growth profile of RioCan to one of the strongest organic growth models in Canada, and improve the resilience of our portfolio in the ever changing retail environment,” said Edward Sonshine, CEO of RioCan in a press release.

“Under this strategy, we will continue to be Canada’s largest REIT, with an enhanced focus on optimizing the value of our existing properties through redevelopment and intensification, diversifying our portfolio into residential real estate, and advancing our robust development pipeline to deliver distribution growth and enhanced net asset value creation for the benefit of our unitholders while meeting the evolving needs of our tenants and the communities we serve.”

In an email to the Rogers Media newsroom, RioCan’s AVP of Investor Relations and Compliance Christian Green says things are “business as usual at Timmins Square.”

“As we are at the early stages of a two to three year process, we are not providing details about the individual properties at this time,” he adds, “We will have more information as the sales process unfolds, and we will update our stakeholders in the communities we serve accordingly.”

RioCan has owned the property since 2001.

Filed under: Local News