New York-based property research firm Reis has released a report that states that the US has gained 3.7 million square feet of occupied office space in the last three months up to June.
View examples of New York Office Space here
A full nine out of the ten main office markets in the US showed vacancy rates either dropped or stayed the same. And in more than 50 per cent of the 79 metropolitan areas surveyed, vacancy rates have dropped.
However, it was also noted that the take-up of office space dropped in the second quarter of the year compared to the first, a sign that the recovery of both the office space market and the economy as a whole has a way to go yet.
There is much ground to make up, as between January 2008 and September 2010 138 million square feet of office space across the US was vacated according to Reis. This pushed the vacancy rate from 12.6 per cent to 17.6 per cent.
And since October last year occupied space has only grown by 11.9 million square feet.
Nevertheless, slow though the rebound may be it does continue. And much of the rebound has been caused by rising demand from technology companies the research from Reis found.
Ryan Severino, an economist at Reis, stated that the number of new leases was not a large amount “relative to the overall inventory.”
However, he added: “We are generally trending in the right direction, even if it is a slower, more inconsistent recovery than market participants would like to see.”
Editor’s notes: In Q1 2023, the US nationwide vacancy rate was 16.4 per cent and rates had increased quarter-on-quarter in the majority of US cities.
The highest office space vacancy rate in the US in Q1 2023 was in San Francisco with a figure of 26.8%, followed by New Jersey with a rate of 25.8 per cent.
The lowest office space vacancy rate was in West Palm Beach where it stood at 10.3%, followed by Grand Rapids MI where it stood at 13.2%.