The combination of pandemic issues still at hand, the potential for worse Covid-19 variants in the wings, changes in attitudes toward how and where work should happen, but also improving conditions makes predicting the office real estate market tricky.

Even so, there have been multiple indications that things are improving, and that the office market may be turning a corner. For example, office leasing is up 50% from the pandemic trough and more tenants are expanding rather than contracting their footprints. Although, year-over-year estimates pit 2021 against 2020, which is like having an Olympic high jump competition in which the task involves leaping over one side of a railroad track. Pretty hard to not to clear the bar.

Moody's Analytics has a new report that offers some additional good news, although one the firm tempers as grounds for "cautious optimism." A natural influence on the office market is corporate default rates, because if many companies go insolvent, there's likely no immediate replacement for property owners and operators to secure.