Thank you for your question.
I don't know if you've had a chance to read the appraisal report. I understand that it's very long and full of information.
Obviously, the chief appraiser of Canada can't be an expert on real estate in every country. We seek out independent, local experts to help us determine the value of assets that we're asked to have appraised.
My information on the market in Manhattan, and in the neighbourhoods where the properties being discussed today are located, comes from the appraisal report provided to me. I didn't go double-check the specific market trends affecting this building. We hired an independent expert to conduct a market analysis and, as you and I can both see, its focus moves from the general to the specific. The expert begins by analyzing the New York State real estate market, and then moves on to the New York City market in each of the five boroughs. He focuses first on Manhattan and then on two neighbourhoods—the Central Park South residential submarket, immediately south of Central Park, where the building of interest is located, and Midtown Manhattan, where comparable properties are up for sale.
Like you, I appreciated the appraiser's analysis. He used information sources routinely consulted to gather these kinds of statistics. He conducted a socio-economic analysis of the neighbourhoods' residents. We also see annualized and monthly data on sales volumes and average sale prices. The report even includes information showing market changes over time, as well as data on recent years and forecasts.
We also see that the markets seem to respond differently according to the type of co-ownership involved. Co‑operatives and condos are covered, and note that a separate analysis was performed for both these market segments.
That's what I notice. There are some similarities in the behaviour of those markets and real estate market trends here. Obviously, we are facing the same, or at least a similar socio-economic phenomenon. Demographically, we note a degree of stability. We see no major population increases in Manhattan or in these neighbourhoods. Forecasts indicate that population numbers could increase slightly over a five-year timeline. As far as I know, the report doesn't contain information about vacancy rates—