The Second Report - October 15th

SRRA has completed its review of occupancy prior to September 1st, The Data was obtained from building access card reports and from interviews with tenants from large financial services companies to midsized tech and non-financial services companies.

All figures are calculated by taking the number of employees who attended in the weeks following the late March shut down over the normal number of employees who attended the offices on a weekly basis in January of 2020. The importance of this methodology is that it recognizes that currently collected data using card access information and other property management tools and interviews with tenants is only about those who attend the office. This number can not be divided by total employees at the company because there is a normal number of employees who do not come to the office due to holidays, sick days, pre-COVID work at home permissions, business travel and other normal course of business reasons.

The sample size used by SRRA to collect the data was less than 10% prior to September but is considered to be accurate within 20%. The sample size of building data and tenant interviews since September 1st has increased to between 20 and 30%. This sample size also has few data points which vary from the average by any significant amount. For example, no tenant reported that more than 25% of their employees had returned to the office and the vast majority of tenants reported some essential services employment required to be in attendance.

For the period October 1st to October 15th there were no material changes to the Index. The next report will include occupancy results post Thanks giving weekend and the increase in cases reported.

Introduction to the Index

The downtown office employment cluster has been hollowed out by COVID 19. Knowing how many have returned and when will help the economic ecosystem recover, tenants to plan better and transit agencies to provide important service amendments to support the commute. The Occupancy Index by SRRA includes data submitted from three sources: tenant interviews, landlord interviews and direct data input from building managers.

There are 771 office buildings in the downtown area representing 91,682,001 sq. ft. of office space. As of January 1st 2020 the estimated number of office workers in the study area was approximately 418,000 based on industry standard density figures and data acquired through interviews of tenants over a four year period.

Prior to the COVID pandemic not everyone commuted every day. Further study of industry metrics indicates that only 78% of those people employed in office buildings came to work on a daily basis.  Holidays, sickness, hoteling and pre-COVID work at home arrangements indicate that an average of 326,000 workers made the daily commute to the downtown. Some days this figure could easily have been higher or lower depending on the time of year, or the day of the week and lastly the impact of weather.

SRRA will publish bi-monthly reports beginning on October 1st. These reports will include the number of office workers who have returned to work as a percentage of those who would normally have commuted to work pre-COVID and comments from interviews with tenants about the use of transit and other modes of commuting, the future impact of work at home arrangements and the economic impact of these changes.

The First Report - October 1st

For September 2020, the numbers of tenants and landlords reporting occupancy increased to the point where the sample size exceeded our minimum of 10%. Building managers submitted data representing 24% of buildings in the study area. Tenants interviewed for the study occupied 8% of the office space. While every attempt was made to get an even representation from large buildings and small and from tenants who represented different types of business the process of obtaining a complete balance is still underway and will be reported on in greater detail in future reports.

Buildings reporting represents                               21,657,013 sq. ft. or 24% of all buildings

Returned to work in those buildings as a percentage of normal occupancy

Sept 1st                       Sept 15th                      Oct 1st

    7%                               10%                             9%

31 Tenants interviewed represents                        7,586,456 sq. ft. or 8% of all tenants

During the interviews questions related to;

·         working remotely pre-COVID during COVID and post COVID

·         current number of employees who work in office

·         conditions in premises to allow for return to work

·         use of transit pre-COVID and currently

Responses:

Pre-COVID employees working remotely was 4%. During September companies with all their people working remotely was less than 20%. Companies planning a gradual return was approx. 40%. Companies not planning a significant return before January 2021 was approx. 40%

All companies were reporting compliance with Government regulations and recommendations.

Go to Publications