Downtown office towers are slowly emptying

More businesses are leaving their lower Montreal offices, according to a study released today.

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The vacancy rate in office towers is now 12.4%, up 2.6 percentage points in six months, revealing downtown Montreal’s second position.

It is a quarterly report on socioeconomic activity in downtown Montreal, launched by the Urban Development Institute of Quebec (IDU) and the Society de Development Commercial (SDC). Montreal Downtown.

“Things are neither worse nor better than the majority of city centers, we compare with the average, which is slightly better than New York, the standard in this regard,” confirmed Glenn Caston‌hira, general manager of the SDC Montreal Center. Ville.

Business departures mostly affect Category B and C buildings, which account for 40% of downtown supply.

“This means that companies with very prestigious buildings are more resilient to crises than companies with lesser buildings and these are usually smaller companies or startups,” said former Liberal Jean-Mark Fourier, CEO IDU.

Before the epidemic, in the fourth quarter of 2019, the downtown office vacancy rate was 10.3%, according to data from the Altus Group.

The declining trend for Moriband businesses and teleworking

In the case of businesses, more than half of the office towers are closed. The commercial complex on Saint-Catherine Street is 23% vacant, up 5 percentage points in six months.

Activities in the city center have been minimal since the majority of office workers have left home since the outbreak began.

In the last three months of 2020, 7 out of 10 people working in the neighborhood spent at least three days a week at home.

Teleworking has begun to show its limitations, however, indicating the results of the survey conducted for the report. If 76% of people want to continue working from home after the epidemic, they are now only 67%.

More than half (51%) believe that, for example, televerking makes work relationships more difficult.