The work from home trend is crushing Toronto's office occupancy rates

Working from home comes with its perks (like staying in pyjamas all day) but as more people stay put, Toronto's office vacancies have just smashed another record — and not in a good away.

According to the latest numbers from Coldwell Banker Richard Ellis (CBRE), some Canadian downtown office vacancy rates have recovered, but not Toronto's.

The brokerage reported that the the city's vacancy rate had risen to 11.9 per cent in the second quarter.

The national downtown vacancy rate sits around 16.9 per cent, the report confirmed.

"Toronto office conditions slipped as economic and tech-sector uncertainties heightened and the national vacancy rate for downtown class B office towers sits at 21.0 per cent as occupiers rebuff commodity space," read the brokerage's latest report.

Those this rate is worrisome, it has improved from the 13.7 per cent reported just nine months ago.

While Vancouver actually saw some positive increases, due to tech companies spurring activity in suburban part of the city, Toronto "saw a slow down with tenants putting new leasing on hold amidst heightening economic and tech-sector uncertainty."

As a result, CBRE said these uncertainties have caused vacancies to reach 60 basis points (bps) downtown as tenants put new leasing "on hold."

Tenants "that have stayed the course," are now working to secure personalized and new working spaces over commodity office space.

But it's not all bad news; that same report confirmed the national amount of office sublet space fell in the second quarter, which CBRE has interpreted to show a "growing confidence among businesses using office space."

"The total amount of sublet space available, 14.3 million sq.feet., is now the lowest since Q4 2020."