Downsizing by the provincial and federal governments and the closing of Microsoft’s development office has pushed Victoria’s office vacancy rate to a 16-year high.
“The Victoria office market is over-supplied with limited demand,” summed up Marc Foucher, market analyst with Colliers International’s Victoria office.
For all of 2013, Greater Victoria experienced negative leasing of 23,400 square feet and the current inventory of vacant space is at an all-time high of 793,000 square feet. The current vacancy rate is 8.69%.
Much of the office space shoved back onto the market was in Class B and C buildings, Foucher said, due to “the provincial and federal government’s continued push to downsize.”
Microsoft closed its game design studio on Wharf Street, considered Class B space, in December 2013, just two years after it opened.
