Concerns are emerging that a building boom of office towers in downtown Vancouver is creating far too much supply.
Only half the 2.18 million square feet of new office space in seven towers under construction downtown — a boom enabled by new zoning bylaws in 2009 — has been preleased, executives at the Vancouver Real Estate Forum said Thursday.
“I am not seeing a lot of office demand right now, and that is concerning to me,” Bart Corbett, senior vice-president of Cushman & Wakefield, said in an interview.
Corbett and other executives discussed office space development and economic trends at a panel discussion titled “The Vancouver Hangover?”
A common theme was that Vancouver’s commercial real estate market is slowing. The panel was asked how eager landlords are to offer inducements to would-be tenants, and which sectors among high-tech startups, resource industry offices, or “slow and steady” traditional businesses, are preferred.
