Downtown Montreal is slow to come out of its torpor into which the COVID pandemic has plunged it. The few positive news comes mainly from the residential sector.
This is what emerges from the update on the state of downtown, prepared by Montreal center-ville and the Urban Development Institute of Quebec (IDU) in partnership with the provincial and municipal authorities.
Sales of new condos and resales of existing condos have been on the rise since mid-2020. More surprisingly, median prices are on the rise. [de 8 à 10 %] and that the inventory of properties for sale is holding up despite an increase in housing starts.
“These are signs of a dynamic market,” the document’s officials wrote in a statement.
As for housing starts, we see a strong increase in the Ville-Marie borough, with a slightly stronger surge in condominiums (+ 65%) than in rental housing (+ 53%), by comparing identical twelve-month periods.
In other sectors of activity, on the other hand, it is not far from disaster. The hotels were 45% full this summer. It is obviously better than the previous summer when the city center was closed to tourists, but we are far from returning to normal.
Offices were not spared with a significant rise in the vacancy rate for towers. In category B buildings, the increase is 5.1 points in the rate of available premises. In the most beautiful and modern category A buildings, the vacancy rate is 10.9%, 1.7 points higher than before the pandemic.
We note that 53% of leases signed downtown between April and August are renewals. Among tenants who have left their premises, 50% have chosen to re-let elsewhere in the city center. Finally 38% of new tenants come from outside the city center.
Jean-Marc Fournier, President and CEO of the IDU in the same press release
Often postponed, the massive return of workers to office towers is now hoped for in January 2022.
An encouraging sign for downtown business people, the popularity of teleworking is slowly fading. The proportion of 100% home-based workers rose from 56% to 47% in just over a year.
Another positive factor, students have returned to campuses, but a portion of foreign students are still missing.
Finally, the business situation remains dire. One in five stores is closed on Sainte-Catherine Street. The vast majority definitively. In comparison, Ste-Cath ‘had 13% of vacant premises in 2019. The hecatomb is worse in shopping malls, often underground, and in the commercial spaces of office towers.
This edition of theState of downtown Montreal presents an update of data for the third quarter of 2021 on the level of activity in six categories of indicators: offices, shops, housing, higher education, tourism and transport. The data are notably taken from a web survey carried out at the beginning of September 2021 among 1,000 residents of the Montreal metropolitan area.