H&R Real Estate Investment Trust spent much of 2025 testing whether someone would buy the company as a whole. Its special committee eventually reported that a full sale process generated multiple bids for individual properties, but no en bloc offer for the REIT.
Nine months later, H&R has found a different way out: sell essentially everything to several buyers at once.
The Toronto-based REIT announced a transaction carrying an approximately $6.7 billion enterprise value that would divide its portfolio among GO Residential REIT, Blackstone, Crestpoint Real Estate Investments, PSP Investments, and a company controlled by members of CEO Tom Hofstedter’s family.
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When the transactions close, H&R expects its units to be delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange and the REIT to cease being a Canadian reporting issuer.
H&R holders are set to receive $4.28 in cash and 0.5688 GO units for every H&R unit, giving the package an indicated value of $12.01 per unit using GO’s August 10 closing price and the exchange rate specified by H&R. The transaction implies approximately $3.4 billion of H&R equity value.
H&R says the value represents a 14.5% premium to its June 10 unaffected closing price, immediately before market reports emerged that the REIT was discussing a potential transaction with Blackstone.
The largest piece is going to GO Residential. GO will acquire 27 H&R properties valued at approximately US$2.8 billion, including 23 Lantower apartment properties across US Sunbelt markets, a 50% interest in the Jackson Park apartment complex in New York, a 50% interest in River Landing in Miami, New York’s Gotham Centre office building, and Lantower’s Dallas headquarters property.
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GO will issue 134.2 million new units and approximately US$30 million in cash, while assuming $550 million of H&R debentures and approximately US$1.1 billion of property-level debt.
The result is unusual for what is nominally an acquisition of H&R. Existing H&R investors are expected to own approximately 66.9% of the enlarged GO REIT, while two H&R nominees are expected to join GO’s board.
GO would emerge with 35 residential properties and more than 13,300 suites across eight US markets, compared with its current ten-property, 3,034-suite New York City portfolio.
The remaining assets are divided rather than transferred into the new residential platform.
Blackstone will acquire certain Canadian industrial properties for cash. Crestpoint and PSP Investments will acquire Canadian industrial properties in which they already hold co-ownership interests. CRAL, a company controlled by members of Hofstedter’s family, will acquire H&R’s remaining non-core assets.
Hofstedter declared a conflict of interest and abstained from the H&R board vote. Trustee Juli Morrow also abstained because she had provided legal advice on real estate matters to H&R. The remaining board, acting on the unanimous recommendation of the independent trustees, concluded that the transaction was fair to H&R unitholders and in the REIT’s best interests.
The CRAL relationship extends beyond the asset purchase. Under ancillary agreements disclosed by GO, the family-controlled entity will commit up to approximately $51 million of payments to certain GO subsidiaries during the first two years after the arrangement, provide indemnification for certain liabilities, and bear certain costs associated with River Landing, which CRAL and GO will jointly own.
The breakup follows an unusually long attempt to determine what H&R was worth to outside buyers. The firm disclosed in November 2025 that its independent special committee had initially responded to an unsolicited expression of interest for all the REIT’s assets.
After months of talks, those proposed prices and terms were rejected. A subsequent full sale process attracted offers for particular assets, but no bidder submitted an acceptable offer for H&R as a whole.
