You Live on the Island. Your Commercial Unit Is in Vancouver. How to Get It Leased Without Being There

Island owners of Metro Vancouver commercial space: why self-listed units sit, what the MLS changes, and what it should cost to have it leased.

Plenty of Island business owners and retirees still hold a bay in Richmond, a storefront in East Vancouver or a strata office in Burnaby. When the tenant gives notice, the owner is two ferries away from every showing. Most post the space on Craigslist, put a sign in the window and wait.

The wait is the expensive part. David Siccia Properties, a Vancouver property manager that specialises in getting commercial space leased for private owners, tracks every live commercial listing in Metro Vancouver daily. As of September 17, 2026 that is 1,216 spaces, and 38% of them are posted by the owner directly. The median asking rate is $28 per square foot per year on a median unit of 1,400 square feet. That is about $3,270 of base rent lost for every month the unit sits empty, before property tax, insurance and strata fees that keep coming whether or not anyone is paying rent.

THE ONE CHANNEL AN OWNER CANNOT USE

An owner can post on Craigslist, Kijiji, Spacelist and LoopNet. An owner cannot post on the MLS or realtor.ca. Those are open only to members of a real estate board, and they are where tenant representatives and most established businesses begin their search. Most property managers cannot list there either, so they hand leasing to an outside brokerage.

This is the main reason self-listing owners call David Siccia. He has his own MLS access, so a space that has only ever been on the classifieds can be on the MLS and realtor.ca right away, with the same person then handling showings, tenant screening and the negotiation. His page on commercial leasing services for owners, linked below, sets out the six steps.

WHAT IT SHOULD COST

The market norm for a commercial leasing commission in Metro Vancouver is 4 to 6 percent of the total lease value, or roughly one month's rent per year of term. On a five-year lease that works out to about 2.4 to 5 months of rent. David's leasing fee is typically the first and last months' rent on the lease: two months.

The arithmetic that matters for an absentee owner is simpler than the commission. Self-listed commercial space commonly takes 90 to 180 days to lease. If MLS exposure and a properly run process take two months off that, the fee has paid for itself. You can run your own numbers in his free vacancy cost calculator, which compares holding out, cutting the rent and hiring help on the same basis.

WHAT AN ABSENTEE OWNER SHOULD INSIST ON

Pricing evidence. A written rate opinion against live comparables, not a guess. The monthly Metro Vancouver lease rates report is public and free.

A named person. You should know who answers the phone, who does the showings and who negotiates. David and John Moody have 37 years of combined experience in commercial real estate, and the owner deals with them directly.

Screening you can read. Financials, business history, deposit and guarantee, summarised before you sign anything.

Your own lawyer on the lease. BC has no standard commercial lease form. Whoever leases the space, the document should be drafted or reviewed by your lawyer.

A plan for after move-in. If you are not local, someone has to collect rent, reconcile operating costs and handle the 2 a.m. roof leak. His commercial property management in Vancouver page sets out what that includes.

If you are not sure a small specialist is the right fit for your building, his guide on who should lease my commercial property in Vancouver compares national brokerages, local brokerages, management firms and doing it yourself, and says plainly when a big brokerage is the better call.

David Siccia Properties, 110-2490 Birch Street, Vancouver. 236-998-5841. Property sales are executed by Lawrence Siccia, REALTOR, Engel & Völkers Vancouver.

Disclosure: the publisher of this directory also works with David Siccia Properties.

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