Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Commercial Rent Data

Question

I am helping a student who is looking for information on the average price of commercial rents in Montreal (by borough ideally).

I know that Statistics Canada has a survey on commercial rents: the Commercial Rents Services Price Index <http://www23.statcan.gc.ca/imdb/p2SV.pl?Function=getSurvey&SDDS=5123>.

Looking at the questionnaire, one would assume that the survey would gather geographically detailed information, but the only data that seems to be released is a price index at the national level. Is there any way to obtain something better or is out of bounds for confidentiality reasons?

The only other source of information I have been able to dig up so far is from Colliers International <http://www.collierscanada.com/en/Commercial-Property-Research> that seems to make some of their basic reports freely available.Any other ideas? 

Answer

Unfortunately the information you are requesting is not possible due to the sampling method utilized in the index construction. We don’t collect enough data at this level of detail to be able to release city indexes. Your best bet would be to look at asking rents from some of the big real estate companies like Colliers or CBRE.