Canadian REIT education
Learn Canadian REIT analysis
Guided learning paths
Beginner
AvailableSix short courses that build the foundation for reading and analyzing a Canadian REIT under IFRS.
Intermediate
AvailableSix courses that turn REIT vocabulary into craft — opening a real disclosure package and doing the analysis yourself, from reconciliations to a normalized peer comparison.
Advanced
AvailableWorkbook-style courses for finance professionals that add the two dimensions intermediate analysis holds still: time — forecasting, scenarios, and stress — and combination — sizing many REITs against each other as a portfolio.
Sector guides
Coming soonProperty-sector economics, operating metrics, and cycle signals.
Reference
Canadian REIT glossary
Search 130 definitions from the Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced curriculum and jump directly to the course where each term is introduced.
Beginner courses
Take the track in order or open the topic you need now.
What a REIT Is — and Why Canadian REITs Are Trusts
Why REITs exist, what the .UN in a ticker means, the SIFT rules and the REIT exception, and how a Canadian REIT is actually structured — including the exchangeable units you'll meet on real balance sheets.
Reading IFRS REIT Financials: The Fair Value Model
IAS 40 fair value accounting, why Canadian REIT balance sheets show current property values while US REITs don't, and the exchangeable-unit quirk that makes net income swing wildly — decoded with Choice Properties' real Q1 2026 numbers.
FFO and AFFO: The Numbers REITs Are Actually Judged On
Why net income fails for REITs, how the REALPAC FFO and AFFO definitions rebuild an operating earnings figure, and how to read payout ratios — walked through with Choice Properties' real reconciliation.
Reported, Real Estate, and Market-Implied NAV
What net asset value means for a REIT, why one NAV number is never enough, how cap-rate sensitivity drives huge swings, and how to read premiums and discounts — using dated CHP.UN and CAR.UN cases.
Distributions: Safety, Payout, and What the Tax Slip Says
How REIT distributions work, how to judge whether one is safe, and the tax character breakdown — other income, capital gains, return of capital — that makes two REITs with identical yields very different after-tax investments.
Debt and Leverage: Reading a REIT's Balance Sheet Risk
The five leverage metrics that matter — debt-to-assets, debt-to-EBITDA, interest coverage, the maturity ladder, and the unencumbered pool — with Choice Properties' real numbers as the worked case.
Intermediate courses
Take the track in order or open the topic you need now.
Reading REIT Filings — A Field Guide to the Disclosure Package
Every document in a Canadian REIT's disclosure package and which numbers each one owns, how to pull filings from SEDAR+, a repeatable 30-minute first pass, and NI 52-112 as a non-GAAP quality screen.
Rebuilding FFO and AFFO from the Notes
Walk a real issuer's FFO and AFFO reconciliation line by line, size the AFFO wedge, classify REALPAC departures, and restate a divergent issuer onto a REALPAC-consistent basis so peers become comparable.
Units, Dilution, and Getting Per-Unit Math Right
Inventory every class of unit, apply IAS 32 to the denominator, keep numerator and denominator consistent, separate per-unit growth from dilution, and compute market cap, Reported NAV, and leverage without the exchangeable-unit distortion.
Interrogating Fair Value — Cap Rates, Sensitivity, and Real Estate NAV
Dissect the investment property note, run three staleness tests on disclosed cap rates, convert the sensitivity table into Reported NAV-per-unit risk with leverage amplification, and build your own Real Estate NAV and market-implied cap rate.
Same-Property NOI and the Operating Engine
Audit an issuer's same-property pool, read cash versus IFRS SPNOI, work the four operating dials (occupancy, spreads, retention, WALT), apply sector-specific standards, and decompose NOI growth into durable and one-off components.
Comparative Analysis — Building a Peer Comp Table
Assemble a defensible comp set, run the full normalization pass, build the ten-row comp table, and decompose a valuation gap into definition artifacts, structural discounts, and the residual that is the only part worth arguing about.
Advanced courses
Take the track in order or open the topic you need now.
The Liability Stack — Debt Structure in Depth
Take a Canadian REIT's liability stack apart instrument by instrument — CMHC-insured mortgages, conventional mortgages, unsecured debentures, facilities, and construction loans — rank every claim, read covenants from the indenture and compute headroom as a distance to breach, turn the maturity ladder into a refinancing-erosion schedule, and read real rate exposure from the IFRS 9 disclosures.
The Full Model — Forecasting FFO, AFFO, and Reported NAV
Build a NOI-driven forecast model for a fair-value IFRS REIT: the same-property engine run forward, the transactions layer, the A-1 financing stack, and a per-unit gate — then roll the issuer's Reported NAV forward with cap-rate marks isolated as scenario inputs, and back-test the whole machine against disclosed quarterly history.