Montreal's Short Supply of Class A Properties Is Shrinking

NEW YORK CITY-The vacancy rate for Downtown class A and B buildings in Montreal at the end of last year fell to a decade low of 8.2%, a decline of about 2% from 1999, according to a new market study published by Devencore, a Canadian real estate broker and advisor. The number of class A properties for firms requiring at least 50,000 sf of contiguous space are in increasingly short supply. The vacancy rate has dropped from 7.8% last year to 6.5% at the present.

Over the next two years, the firm expects that the vacancy rate will move up between 2% and 3% due to the delivery of more than two million sf of office space. Despite this influx, however, net effective rents are not projected to level off in the near future.