Real Estate News 
This week at Vancouver’s annual real estate forum, the office panel discussion was lively and filled with speculation about what office landlords and tenants would be doing with their spaces.
The panel was chaired by Jocelyne Legal from Cushman & Wakefield, and included Matt Carlson from Colliers, Jeff Rank from Quadreal, Jeff Lim from Bentall, Stephen Smith from Manulife.
Notable Comments from the Panelists
- All panelists agreed that very few employees were in-office at the time, and almost every company was rethinking their space in some respect.
- Bentall and Quadreal were both seeing in-building occupancy levels around 20%.
- The panelists seemed to agree that extremely discounted subleases wouldn’t last forever, at some point they would be cheap enough, or demand would increase, or both.
Notable Quotes from the Panelists
- “What is interesting, and we’ve only seen it in the last few weeks, is more large companies are talking about subleasing, not because they’re doing poorly financially — but simply because they don’t have people in the space.” Matt Carlson ~ Colliers
- “Is the market strengthening, stagnating or declining? I think it’s declining. The question we can’t answer is for how long. If a space was $40 (per foot), you might do it at $36 today. Wait longer and it might be $28, if the pandemic continues and the lack of demand continues — or you could be proven wrong if the market is to strengthen.” Jeff Lim ~ Bentall
- “But I think a lot of companies will come through the other side of this, and go, ‘It’s capital-intensive to right-size and to reconfigure my space. I can deal with flexibility pretty easily, that doesn’t really cost me anything. But I’m not going to do a lot around my office because I’ve got bigger priorities now, and the pandemic is behind me’.” Stephen Smith ~ Manulife
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