The outlook is positive for London’s commercial real estate market thanks to a thriving local tech and digital media sector and low industrial availability rates in the city, according to CBRE Southwestern Ontario.
The local office of the real estate brokerage and investment firm held its annual Southwestern Ontario Market Outlook event on Tuesday with more than 200 in attendance, said a media release.
According to the firm, London’s industrial availability rate now stands at 7.8 per cent, the lowest it’s been since before the 2008 economic recession. That number is expected to drop further to 7.1 per cent during 2017, said Peter Whatmore, Senior VP of CBRE Southwestern Ontario.
“The good news is the availability is down dramatically and opportunities are bountiful right now, quite frankly,” he said.
Looking at London’s tech and digital media sector, more than 1,000 new jobs in the sector were created in the city last year alone, and several firms and companies have leased large amounts of new office space in the city, Whatmore said.
“The media and tech sector here is very interesting,” he said. “The growth over the last number of years has been quite impressive, all driven, or most of it driven, by local entrepreneurs.”
In particular, he said, the significant growth of companies including Digital Extremes, Voices.com, Autodata, ZTR Controls, and Start.ca has resulted in more and more space being needed.
“In the last year alone, there’s probably been 150,000 square feet of office space that has been leased in that particular sector,” Whatmore said, noting that the number of post-secondary institutions now offering digital media programs, in particular, Fanshawe College, has resulted in an expansion of the city’s talent pool.
“The good news is that there is more employment than there was a year or two ago,” Whatmore said, of what the optimistic outlook meant for the London area.
“The further good news is that there’s demand for more industrial which will help drive the market, and we believe there’s an opportunity for some new construction projects in the city of a speculative nature, which we have not seen in a significant number of years.”
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