Posted on 08/05/2023 6:30:01 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
For many across the U.S., hour-long transit rides and traffic jams to work have been replaced by roll-out-of-bed commutes and stand-up desks at home, leaving vacant offices behind.
Long story short, more and more offices in major U.S. cities are empty.
As Visual Capitalist's Avery Koop details below, at the end of March 2023, the national average vacancy rate of U.S. offices had climbed as high as 18.6%.
So how have different cities in the U.S. been impacted? This ranking uses data out of fDi Intelligence to rank the top 10 cities that have seen the biggest increases in office vacancy rates from Q4’2019 to Q1’2023.
It is anticipated that by 2030, over 300 million square feet of U.S. office spaces will be obsolete.
According to Pew Research Center, around 35% of U.S. workers who can work from home in 2023 are already doing so all the time. In short, unless trends begin to reverse, offices in many cities will stay empty or continue getting emptier.
Here’s a closer look at the cities with the fastest growing vacancy rates in percentage points (p.p.) terms since just before the COVID-19 pandemic:
San Francisco has been hardest hit, with vacancy rates climbing by 19.8 p.p. in just over three years. Meanwhile, New York City has added over 16.8 million square feet, equivalent to 293 football fields, of new office space since Q4’2019 between its three most vacant neighborhoods.
However, not all of the cities with the most vacant offices are huge metropolises. Urban areas like Austin, Columbus, and Raleigh-Durham have also seen massive increases in their office vacancies, but their increasing rates may be blamed more on new construction and oversupply than to falling demand.
At the national level, the supply of new office real estate has been dropping steadily since Q1’2022, down by a whopping 67% year-over-year.
Overall, it looks like U.S. office buildings are not as bustling as they once were, but there still may be opportunities for the office real estate market in growing cities.
All democrat?
I hope Austin crashes and burns.
SF rates make it near impossible to do business there
I would guess many of the non vacant office space is still pretty empty with people working from home.
What city(s) AREN’T Democrat because for some reason, the Left takes them all over?
Same ones with the most vacant brains.
Telworking and technology killed much of the demand for commercial offices. TeamCenter, Zoom, and other virtual office work combined with AI will destroy much of the need for people to go into work
Already much of your IT support, reservation call center and sales centers are routed to people’s homes. No commute, no office heating/cooling. No need for food services, janitorial of utilities.
Is it better? Some yes; some no.
There is nothing Liberals cannot destroy. Prosperity and drive to do better is among the first sacrifices
These vacancy rates are likely to escalate rapidly as more and more leases come up for renewal.
Wait until more leases expire.
Or they just quit paying like in SF.
Y nought [Y0] include all office vacencies in the City in one bar on the graph?
Yup. These numbers will only get worse,
The plan is to fill the big cities with immigrants, causing them to collapse, which will push the liberal Americans now living there out into the red states/counties, to make them purple.
Excellent point. Just like the interest on the national debt is set to explode, as soon as all those T-bills that were bought at low interest rates expire over the next couple of years.
Yup. NYC for example still has a lot of buildings going up. Many of those buildings are hotels in the outer boroughs.
Who the heck would travel to NYC and stay in a hotel in the outer boroughs?
As you say, they will be future homes for immigrants, built with our inflated dollars, BTW.
Where they will be given drivers licenses, and the ability (not right) to vote.
Even the vacant office space will house them, according to some I’ve heard.
The World Trade Center in New York City is owned by a government agency of New York and New Jersey. That agency just got approval to use office space as low income housing:
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/affordable-housing-coming-to-world-trade-center-gov-kathy-hochul-announces/
Make no mistake. This government agency is aiding and abetting illegal alien invaders; if not housing them directly, adding government owned units for American low-income residents while freeing up housing for the invaders.
Anustin has a rip-roaring growth in homeless camps, however!
Why aren’t these self-righteous sanctuary cities using these empty office spaces for the homeless border jumpers?
One company I know is dropping the lease on half of its buildings, across multiple cities, within two years.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.