Iain Dobson’s Quick Facts — Thoughts on the Toronto Office Market
2009 – 278,000 sq. ft. growth in Financial Services.
The Financial Services Sector grew in 2009 in the Financial Core by a quarter of a million sq ft. Toronto may be the only financial services centre in the world which experienced office space growth. We trust the leadership in our community can leverage this in the new year to attracted more business to Toronto.
2009 – 6.1% Vacancy Rate in the GTA.
The expectation of high vacancy rates in the GTA and the downtown simply did not materialized. The vacancy rate is calculated on all buildings over 10,000 sq ft and does not include the government sector. This is a very strong indicator of how well positioned landlords were going into the recession.
2009 –10.4% Availability Rate GTA.
The completion of several major buildings in the core may affect the availability rate in the new year but we do not see any statistical reason, based on tenant moves, to indicate that this rate will go substantially higher.
2010 – 200 million sq ft.
With a three more completions in the GTA in 2010 the total amount of office space (including the public sector) will top 200,000,000 sq ft effectively doubling the amount of office space in the market in 25 years.
2010 – 8.0% Vacancy Rate projected Financial CORE.
Despite the continued rationalization of office space with the completion of the new buildings we project that the overall vacancy rate will not top 8%.
2010 – 100 Million sq. ft.
100 million sq ft of office space mostly in the 905 lies over 1 KM away from any mass transit and all planned mass transit. Unless we address this stark reality, approx. 500,000 employees will be forced for many years to come to drive a single car to and from work every day.
