Greater Montréal Retail — Q1 2026

The Quarter in Brief

Greater Montréal remained one of the tightest retail markets in North America entering 2026 — a characterization JLL applied explicitly — and the quarter's signal was less about the overall level than about where it moved. JLL, the lone broker publishing Greater Montréal retail fundamentals in this set, reported an overall vacancy rate of 2.1 percent, up from 1.8 percent a year earlier, with the bulk of the increase concentrated in enclosed regional and super-regional malls. JLL traced that mall vacancy to Hudson's Bay store closures, the same anchor-driven dynamic reshaping retail availability across Canadian markets this cycle.

The investment side told a parallel story. CBRE marked Montréal regional-mall cap rates higher in Q1 2026 and identified Montréal as the sole market behind the first increase in the national average regional-mall cap rate in seven quarters. CBRE's other Montréal retail subtypes — power, neighbourhood, and strip — were reported unchanged on the quarter, and CBRE's national survey placed Montréal's 7.2 percent regional benchmark as the highest among Canada's six largest metros. Underlying leasing demand stayed firmly skewed to luxury, dining, and apparel, with a run of marquee openings at Royalmount, the Montréal Eaton Centre, and along Sainte-Catherine Street.

A note on vintage shapes how these figures should be read. JLL's fundamentals in its Q1 2026 report are full-year 2025 prints — the 2.1 percent vacancy rate, the 2024-versus-2025 category breakdown, and the effective-rent-growth figure all describe calendar 2025 — while the CBRE cap-rate readings are current Q1 2026 survey marks. This report relays what the brokers reported. It contains no forecasts or recommendations of its own; where a broker's outlook or characterization is described, it is attributed to that broker.