September 2026 Hires: What Northcrest and Allied Properties Are Building Toward
Emily Valentini started September 2026 as Director of Investments at Northcrest Developments, and Carley Balian joined Allied Properties REIT as a Portfolio Operations Manager. In the same month, Jessica Summers moved to Mattamy Asset Management as a Communications Specialist, and Lorrie King joined Elysium Investments. On their own, these are career updates. Read together, they show how large real estate companies are positioning themselves in a market that has cooled but not stalled.
Two different jobs, two different signals
Northcrest is the company redeveloping the 370-acre Downsview Airport Lands in Toronto, one of the largest urban renewal projects in the country. A Director of Investments decides where money goes: which land to buy, which partnerships to form, which phases to fund first. Companies tend to fill that seat when they expect to deploy capital, not when they plan to sit still.
Allied's hire points somewhere else. Allied owns and runs urban office buildings in several Canadian cities, including in Alberta. A portfolio operations role is about the buildings the company already has. The work is keeping tenants, controlling operating costs and making older properties compete with newer ones. A landlord that adds people here is saying the next stretch of returns will come from running existing space well rather than from buying more of it.
These are two very different bets. One company is preparing to grow. The other is tightening what it owns. Both are reasonable responses to the same conditions.
The conditions they are responding to
The national numbers explain why. CREA reported a national average sale price of $668,219 in August 2026, with 4.8 months of inventory. That level of supply sits close to a balanced market, where neither buyers nor sellers hold much of an edge. Sales activity has slowed, down 6.7% from a year earlier as of the end of September. The broader economy has held up better than many expected, with real GDP growing at an annualized 3.3% in the second quarter.
Slower sales with steady growth give a well-funded developer room to buy land and plan without competing in a frenzy. The same conditions push a landlord to protect occupancy, because tenants have more choice.
Interest rates sit underneath all of it. Developers and REITs borrow heavily, so their plans move with the Bank of Canada's decisions and with bond yields. A fully staffed investment team can still pause a project if borrowing costs jump. A new hire tells you about intent, not about a shovel in the ground.
Why this matters from Edmonton
Most of these decisions get made in Toronto. Still, the companies involved, Mattamy among them, build and own property here, and capital that national firms commit tends to look for regions where population and job growth support demand. Alberta has been one of those regions. When it does reach a specific Edmonton neighbourhood, the effect usually shows up a year or two after the hiring news, not the following month.
The Mattamy hire is a good example of keeping expectations in proportion. A communications role at the asset management level is about how the company presents its holdings and plans. It may come before announcements about new phases, or it may not. It doesn't mean construction is about to start.
For the people I work with, the practical meaning differs by goal.
First-time buyers: Balanced inventory means more time to compare and less pressure to waive conditions. Large builders that are actively investing may also be more willing to work on incentives for new builds.
Move-up buyers: A balanced market cuts both ways. You may buy with less competition, but your current home may also take longer to sell, so the timing between the two sales matters.
Investors: Allied's emphasis on operations is a useful reminder at any scale. In a market with more choice for tenants, how well a property is run often matters more than when it was bought.
Hiring news is one small piece of the picture. It shows where experienced people expect the work to be. Those decisions still depend on rates, financing and local demand, the same factors that shape a single family's mortgage.
Emily Valentini started September 2026 as Director of Investments at Northcrest Developments, and Carley Balian joined Allied Properties REIT as a Portfolio Operations Manager. In the same month, Jessica Summers moved to Mattamy Asset Management as a Communications Specialist, and Lorrie King joined Elysium Investments. On their own, these are career updates. Read together, they show how large real estate companies are positioning themselves in a market that has cooled but not stalled.
Two different jobs, two different signals
Northcrest is the company redeveloping the 370-acre Downsview Airport Lands in Toronto, one of the largest urban renewal projects in the country. A Director of Investments decides where money goes: which land to buy, which partnerships to form, which phases to fund first. Companies tend to fill that seat when they expect to deploy capital, not when they plan to sit still.
Allied's hire points somewhere else. Allied owns and runs urban office buildings in several Canadian cities, including in Alberta. A portfolio operations role is about the buildings the company already has. The work is keeping tenants, controlling operating costs and making older properties compete with newer ones. A landlord that adds people here is saying the next stretch of returns will come from running existing space well rather than from buying more of it.
These are two very different bets. One company is preparing to grow. The other is tightening what it owns. Both are reasonable responses to the same conditions.
The conditions they are responding to
The national numbers explain why. CREA reported a national average sale price of $668,219 in August 2026, with 4.8 months of inventory. That level of supply sits close to a balanced market, where neither buyers nor sellers hold much of an edge. Sales activity has slowed, down 6.7% from a year earlier as of the end of September. The broader economy has held up better than many expected, with real GDP growing at an annualized 3.3% in the second quarter.
Slower sales with steady growth give a well-funded developer room to buy land and plan without competing in a frenzy. The same conditions push a landlord to protect occupancy, because tenants have more choice.
Interest rates sit underneath all of it. Developers and REITs borrow heavily, so their plans move with the Bank of Canada's decisions and with bond yields. A fully staffed investment team can still pause a project if borrowing costs jump. A new hire tells you about intent, not about a shovel in the ground.
Why this matters from Edmonton
Most of these decisions get made in Toronto. Still, the companies involved, Mattamy among them, build and own property here, and capital that national firms commit tends to look for regions where population and job growth support demand. Alberta has been one of those regions. When it does reach a specific Edmonton neighbourhood, the effect usually shows up a year or two after the hiring news, not the following month.
The Mattamy hire is a good example of keeping expectations in proportion. A communications role at the asset management level is about how the company presents its holdings and plans. It may come before announcements about new phases, or it may not. It doesn't mean construction is about to start.
For the people I work with, the practical meaning differs by goal.
Hiring news is one small piece of the picture. It shows where experienced people expect the work to be. Those decisions still depend on rates, financing and local demand, the same factors that shape a single family's mortgage.
Sources
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