Office Listings Fall in June While Vacancy Ticks Up

Charlotte was the top performing market for price growth for the fourth month in a row.

The average US office listing rate hit $37.58 in June, falling 2.6% year-over-year, while the national vacancy rate ticked up 20 basis points over the same period to 15.2, according to CommercialEdge. 

Charlotte was the top performing market for price growth for the fourth month in a row, logging a 15.% increase year over year to hit $33.45 per square foot. Miami also performed well, increasing by 8.4% year over year to $47.23 per square foot, while Boston posted a 12% year over year increase thanks primarily to the city’s life sciences sector. Boston is also the only market among those surveyed by CommercialEdge to boast an office vacancy rate below 10%

Nearly 151.7 million square feet of new office space was under construction as of June 2022, while national office sales volume reached $43.7 billion in the first half of the year. Just a third of that sales activity was in gateway cities, which comprised 41.5% of national sales volume five years ago.

On the construction front, “projects that had shovels in the ground in June represented 2.2% of the national office stock, with an additional 6.2% in the planning stages,” CommercialEdge analysts note. “However, it remains to be seen how much of that planned inventory will actually move forward, considering rising interest rates, plateauing vacancies and the solidification of hybrid and work from home models.”