Maybe it’s just because it’s relatively fresh in my mind, but my favourite stories for SooToday this year would have to be the crumbling real estate empire linked to SID Developments.
The saga of the insolvent, out-of-town landlords recently surfaced in the news a couple of weeks ago, when this reporter learned the sale of more than 300 properties — many of them located across northern Ontario — had been approved in Ontario Superior Court as part of ongoing insolvency proceedings under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA).
In all, 120 properties in Sault Ste. Marie are expected to have new owners through this process.
When all of the sales are finalized, the landlords’ portfolio will consist of just 84 properties — a small fraction of the rental properties that a group of nearly a dozen corporations linked to SID Developments acquired amid falling house prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The insolvent landlords — Dylan Suitor, Ryan Molony, former YTV child actor Robby Clark and his wife Aruba Butt — collectively owned more than 600 rental units across Ontario, including in Sudbury, Timmins, and Sault Ste. Marie.
As many readers are probably aware, some of the rental properties acquired by SID Developments right here in the Sault have caused more than a few headaches for tenants, neighbours and contractors — not to mention the municipality itself, which made repeated attempts to crack down on the insolvent landlords by way of bylaw enforcement.
This has been an ongoing story arc throughout the calendar year, spurred on by the landlords filing for protection from numerous lenders back in January 2024, claiming they had accrued $144 million worth of debt and had less than $100,000 in the bank.
I dug up some pretty crazy material in the court documents that followed: An investigation by KSV Restructuring Inc. conducted during CCAA proceedings found the landlords “diverted, misused or misappropriated funds” borrowed from lenders — with some of it covering a number of extravagant purchases such as private jets, luxury hotels and a $5,000 tab at a Miami strip club — while struggling to pay municipal taxes, utility bills and contractors.
While the landlords disputed those findings — at one time, they paid a ‘crisis communications’ specialist to proliferate messaging to the media — one thing became increasingly clear: There was little faith in their ability to manage the day-to-day affairs of the real estate business.
The impacts of this were felt here in the Sault, where a number of rental units sat vacant, placing an even greater strain upon an already tight housing market.
And the saga of the insolvent, out-of-town landlords isn’t quite finished, either: Big North Capital Inc. — a vehicle created by a group of secured lenders to finance and hold numerous properties — has reached out to SooToday after scooping up several of the rental properties hemorrhaged by the insolvent landlords locally. Be on the lookout for that story sometime in the new year.
While I have the floor for a moment, I would like to sincerely thank our readership for bringing these landlords to the attention of SooToday in the first place. I’ve been tracking their movements since the summer of 2022, and it was all because of your support.
I would also like to thank the crew at SooToday and Village Media for giving me the opportunity to do a deeper dive on this story, as many reporters in smaller cities and towns nowadays are simply not afforded the time and space required to dig through hundreds of pages of documents and records.
My favourite stories of 2024 were truly a team effort.