Entity-dense portfolios, refinancing cycles, and the passage of the book across generations.
The portfolio assembled deal by deal, reviewed as a single position.
Real estate principals build their book the way the market permits: one acquisition at a time, frequently inside a new corporation or limited partnership, often co-owned, financed against the property itself, depreciated under capital cost allowance, refinanced on a schedule of its own. Over fifteen or twenty years the result is an architecturally rich and structurally complex portfolio — thirty entities, forty mortgages, a half-dozen joint-venture partners, a CCA position approaching recapture exposure, a passive-income line creeping toward the small-business deduction grind under s. 125(5.1) of the Income Tax Act.
Each property is, in isolation, well-managed. The portfolio as a single position rarely is — not for lack of capability, but because the next deal is always more urgent than the architectural review of the deals already done. The structural questions accumulate quietly. Which entity holds which property, and is that the entity that should hold it now? Which mortgages are due for refinance, and what does the consolidated debt service look like across the cycle? Which holdings are owned with partners, and is the buy-sell funded? What does the eventual passage of the book to the next generation look like, and is it possible without a forced sale of half of it?
Senatus serves as the architectural mandate that holds the portfolio in coherent relation. Property management, legal counsel, mortgage brokerage, and the family’s tax counsel each continue to do what they do best. The architectural view — the consolidated balance sheet, the entity hygiene, the refinancing cadence, the generational position — is held at one table, on a regular cadence, with the family’s long horizon in front of every decision.
Four reviews the next deal tends to defer.
Each is the kind of work that requires the family to step back from the operating cadence of the book. Each, attended to in time, materially shapes the portfolio’s position a decade hence.
Entity hygiene, against the portfolio that exists today.
The corporation set up in 2012 for a single building, no longer the entity it should be. The limited partnership formed for a specific tax position that no longer obtains. The dormant holdco that ought to have been wound up years ago. The disciplined consolidation of entity structure — coordinated with corporate counsel and tax counsel — reduces operating cost, simplifies refinancing, and clarifies the position for an eventual transition.
The refinancing cadence, viewed across the cycle.
Mortgage maturities laddered across years, debt service modelled across the rate cycle, fixed and floating exposure managed against the family’s broader liquidity rather than property by property. Senatus convenes the lender relationships, the mortgage brokerage, and the family’s treasury under a single view — so that what gets refinanced when, and at what term, is a consolidated decision rather than a sequence of unrelated ones.
Joint ventures and the agreements that govern them.
Buy-sell mechanics for co-owned properties, exit provisions, partner default scenarios, and the funded coverage that makes a buy-sell into liquidity rather than a claim on operating cash flow. The agreements are reviewed against the partners as they exist today — their generations, their successors, their changing risk tolerance — rather than the partners as they existed when the documents were last drafted.
The passage of the book, sequenced years before required.
For most real estate principals, transition is a generational decision, not a sale. The estate freeze on the holding company, the rolling freezes on individual properties, the trust structures for the next generation, the funded insurance for deemed disposition obligations under s. 70(5) of the Income Tax Act, the principal residence exemption on personal-use properties — all sequenced and documented years in advance, so that the book passes intact rather than under duress.
The consolidated view, then the operating rhythm of the book.
The engagement begins with a documented consolidated view of the portfolio — every entity, every property, every mortgage, every co-ownership, every existing agreement, the consolidated tax position, and the next decade of refinancing windows. The view is circulated to the family’s existing tax and corporate counsel before any consolidation work is recommended.
From that foundation, the relationship operates on the rhythm the book requires: a quarterly working session against the refinancing calendar, an annual structural review, and proactive coordination ahead of every consequential acquisition, disposition, or generational decision.
“My grandfather acquired the first three buildings. My father added the next eleven. By the time the book reached me there were forty-two entities and a refinancing schedule no single person held in their head. The architectural review consolidated what could be consolidated, refreshed the agreements that needed refreshing, and laid the calendar for the freeze. The book is the same. The view of it, for the first time in my generation, is not.”
If the book has outgrown the architecture composed for it, the next step is a private conversation.
Senatus accepts a limited number of new relationships each year, predominantly through private referral. A member of the Private Office will respond, in confidence, within twenty-four hours.
Request a Private ConversationTwelve adjacent audiences.
Most principals belong to more than one. The architecture is composed for the family in front of us; the descriptions below are how families most often arrive.