A new industrial insight report from Jones Lang LaSalle suggests that the leasing market in the Greater Montreal Area (GMA) has weakened. Absorption in the Montreal industrial market decreased significantly from 444,325 square feet in the fourth quarter of last year to negative 909,560 square feet in the first quarter of 2014.

The report attributes this in part to the anticipation of April’s highly publicized provincial elections, which it claims had an effect on the industrial market.

“We estimate that pre-election momentum will have lagging repercussions on the industrial market and thus it will take at least two quarters for net absorption to move to positive territory once again,” wrote research analyst Victoriya Gouchtchina.

As a result of this lag, the availability rate has increased to 7.2 per cent compared to last quarter’s 7.1 per cent.

The first quarter saw eight buildings above 40,000 square feet removed from Montreal’s leasing market, totaling more than 500,000 square feet. Despite the slowdown, the report singles out three submarkets that are recording strong leasing performances: Laval, the West-Island, and the North Shore.

According to the report, there is still more than 22.5 million square feet of space available in the GMA. This number can be broken down into multi-tenant buildings (55 per cent), single-tenant buildings (44 per cent) and industrial condos (less than 2 per cent).