The Canadian market has had a complicated few years. Costs up, confidence uneven, and a workforce that spent the better part of the last three years in near-constant motion. For the people responsible for building teams inside retail, property management, and commercial real estate, the pressure has been relentless.
Shawna Brothers has watched it unfold from a useful vantage point. As Director of Operations and Talent at Foresight Recruitment Group — a national real estate recruitment firm founded by Nik Gandhorkia and David Little, built specifically for an industry that’s too nuanced for generalist recruiters — she works exclusively inside the Canadian real estate sector. She joined the firm in 2025, bringing national HR strategy experience built over a decade inside organizations like Canderel Group. Her team places talent across property management, leasing, building operations, and finance, coast to coast.
What she’s seeing in early 2026 is a market that hasn’t simply slowed or accelerated. It has split.
“Some organisations are being very strategic right now, and I think the rest are being forced into strategy whether they like it or not,” she says. “The volatility in real estate right now is creating an opportunity for entrepreneurial thinking that we haven’t seen since the ’80s or ’90s in Ontario. The larger shops are being deliberate, and on the other side, these new boutique organisations are emerging with real energy. Those groups on the extremities are going to define their success through this cycle.”
The concern is what’s happening between those two poles. “There’s a large group in the middle that’s panic-hiring, poaching from the shop next door, and negotiating compensation down to the floor,” she says. “That approach is going to hurt them — their people and any competitive advantage they have in the market.”
Part of what’s driving that pressure is regulatory. Ontario’s Pay Transparency Act has added a new layer of accountability to how organizations discuss and post compensation. Brothers says enforcement has been light so far, but the cultural shift is already real. “There’s some forced strategy coming for a lot of organizations because of the Pay Transparency Act. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. But you have to be ready for it.”
On the demand side, the ask from her clients is consistent: experienced property managers, residential and commercial, who have demonstrated they can hold steady through difficulty. That last part, she says, has become the deciding factor.
“The challenge is that nearly everyone has changed jobs in the last year to eighteen months. Employers are risk-averse right now. They want to see people who were willing to stick it out when things got hard — through volatile markets, software transitions, change management, all of it. There is less appetite to take on risk, and that is showing up clearly in how decisions are being made.”
Tenure, in other words, has quietly become one of the most valuable things on a résumé. After years of the market rewarding movement, the candidate who stayed put is now the one getting the call.
For those who are searching, Brothers has a piece of advice that cuts against most of what the career-coaching industry has been selling for years. Use AI to prepare for your interviews — seriously and specifically. “If I were heading into an interview and I knew the company and the role, I would be practising with ChatGPT,” she says. “Use it to make sure your answers are concise, that you’re describing yourself the way you intend to. Get that honest feedback — does this land the way I want it to? What am I missing? What does this person actually want to hear? We have an opportunity to use these tools to get feedback in a way that just wasn’t available before.”
Most candidates who struggle in interviews aren’t underqualified, she says. There’s simply a disconnect. “They really didn’t hear what the other person was looking for. Using these tools to prepare and get feedback would genuinely help close that gap.”
Where she draws a hard line is AI doing the evaluating. “Real estate is a relationship business — we say it constantly, but we have to actually mean it. Sitting across from someone, having a real conversation, sharing from your own experiences — that is where trust begins. That is what drives long-term relationships with clients and tenants. Why do third-party management companies lose clients? Because there has been a breakdown in the relationship and the communication. One-sided communication is not going to make that better.”
Brothers is active on the conference circuit — ICSC, the Vancouver Real Estate Forum — and she makes a point of taking the industry’s temperature beyond Toronto. What she’s hearing nationally is notably different from the mood closer to home. “Across the country, no matter who I spoke to, people were reporting strong occupancy and a real sense of optimism. Here in Toronto it has felt heavier lately. But the broader national picture is more active than the local narrative gives it credit for. There is work being done, deals happening, real energy in the market.”
As for the second half of the year, she’s watching Q3 closely. Compensation cycles have settled, her pipeline has picked up noticeably in just the past few weeks, and she says the shift is already tangible.
“I do think hiring is going to pick up — and honestly, it already has,” she says. “But what I think the industry actually needs to stabilise goes beyond a good quarter. We need people going into roles and genuinely committing — not looking for the exit when things get difficult, but deciding to be part of the solution. I worked with a leader earlier in my career who said something I have never forgotten: we are here for the hard stuff. That is what turns a struggling organisation into an excellent one. That is what great hiring actually looks like.”
Dustin Fuhs is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of 6ix Retail, Toronto’s premier source for retail and hospitality industry news. As the former Editor-in-Chief of Retail Insider, Canada’s most-read retail trade publication, Dustin brings over two decades of expertise spanning retail, marketing, entertainment and hospitality sectors. His experience includes roles with industry giants such as The Walt Disney Company, The Hockey Hall of Fame, The Canadian Opera Company, Starbucks Canada and Blockbuster.
Recognized as a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert in 2024, 2025 and 2026, Dustin delivers insider perspectives on Toronto’s evolving retail landscape, from emerging brands to established players reshaping the city’s commercial districts.