A new report shows Canada’s downtown office vacancy rate marked its first, if slight, improvement since the start of the pandemic.
The CBRE Group Inc. report shows the national downtown office vacancy rate dipped to 19.9 percent in the first quarter after hitting a record high of 20 percent in the previous quarter.
The report says both Toronto and Vancouver saw declining vacancy rates despite the overhang of tariffs, but that the overall market remains in limbo and the effects of trade tensions will become more clear next quarter.
New supply coming onto the market has been helping push vacancy rates up in recent years, but the first quarter was a rare one when no new supply was added downtown while some 400,000 square feet were taken off the market for conversion or demolition….