Though still below pre-financial crisis rates, the first quarter of 2011 saw a steady increase in occupancy, the findings from property research firm Reis showed.
Average rents rose by a margin of 0.5 per cent up to USD 22.20 per square foot of office space.
Ryan Severino, an economist with Reis told Bloomberg: “This is the first quarter, at least on a national basis, where the change is strong enough to qualify it as the first quarter of a recovery.
“We have finally gotten to an inflection point where the good is starting to outweigh the bad.”
The report said that predictably New York and Washington are at the forefront of the rise in occupancy rates. However other regions in the country are also starting to see a pick-up.
The cities at the lowest end of the range are Detroit and Phoenix, which tie for the highest vacancy rate in the nation at 26.7 per cent.
Nationally the vacancy rate dropped from 17.6 per cent in the fourth quarter to 17.5 per cent.
The figures are a sign of the US economy’s struggle back to health, but inflation is still outstripping wage increases. For the last few months, consumer prices have been rising at an annual rate of 5.7 per cent compared to average weekly pay rising at an annual rate of 1.3 per cent.
With President Obama recently announcing his bid for re-election, America’s economy will no doubt have centre stage in the election of 2012. Recently the unemployment numbers dropped to 8.8 per cent, a boost for the president.
Obama’s approval ratings have risen in the past few months and now stand at about 50 per cent.
Editor’s notes: In the first quarter of 2023, the national office vacancy rate in the US stood at 20.2 per cent.
In New York City, the vacancy rate was 16.1 per cent and in Washington DC, it was 20.8 per cent.
The highest office space vacancy rate was in San Francisco with a figure of 26.8 per cent, 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 per cent, followed by Grand Rapids MI where it stood at 13.2 per cent.
Average rental rates across the US reached $38.96 per square foot per year in Q1 2023 representing an increase of
0.3 per cent since Q4 2022.
It is believed that the increase was due to landlords maintaining headline rents by increasing tenants’ concessions such as rent-free periods, and also because a large proportion of leasing activity occurred with high-quality space as the flight to quality continued.
In April 2023, the US consumer price index reached an all-time high of 303.36 points. The average rate from 1950 to 2023 had been 121.23 points. The environment of high inflation and supply chain issues were cited as the reason for such a high figure.
April 2023’s figure reflected a rate of annual growth of 4.9 per cent.