Ottawa Office — Q1 2026

The Quarter in Brief

Five brokerages published Ottawa office data for the first quarter of 2026 — Cushman & Wakefield, Colliers, Avison Young, CBRE and JLL. The headline numbers differ, but the firms tell one story underneath them: net absorption was negative in every report, vacancy rose to multi-year highs, and the whole quarter turned on the federal government. The negative absorption traced, across the reports, to a handful of large, long-signalled blocks of suburban space returning to the market as Ottawa's dominant tenant continues to shed and consolidate its footprint; whether that telegraphed return amounts to genuine demand weakness is where the firms part ways, as set out below.

The five firms read citywide vacancy from 12.9 percent to 16.1 percent and put net absorption between negative 372,170 and negative 666,314 square feet. Yet net asking rents barely moved: the four firms that quote a comparable net rent clustered between roughly 17.08 and 17.72 dollars per square foot, and every firm described landlords holding face rents steady even as space came back. The tension between rising vacancy and firm pricing runs through the quarter, and the firms attribute it to the same things — landlord confidence, telegraphed rather than distressed move-outs, and tenant inducements that sit outside the face rate.

The federal government is the through-line. The negative absorption traces to government-occupied buildings such as 1550 Carling Avenue and 59 Camelot Drive; JLL reported that employment in the National Capital Region fell about 4 percent over the year, which it said was more than any other city in Canada; and a new federal mandate requiring public servants back in the office at least four days a week — with executives full-time from May — is the event every firm is watching. CBRE characterized the mandate as a source of optimism that could lift leasing in the second half of 2026, while also noting the federal real-estate plan still points toward a smaller, more consolidated office footprint over time. Those are CBRE's and Avison Young's characterizations, relayed here as such.

This report relays what the five brokerages reported for the quarter, alongside the national capital-markets context their parent surveys provide. It is descriptive: where the firms disagree on a number or its direction, the disagreement is surfaced rather than resolved.