Office visits across the country remain 36.3% lower than pre-pandemic levels, which continues a slow start to the office sector’s recovery at the beginning of the year, according to Placer.ai’s Nationwide Office Building Index for February. This trend comes at a time when many corporate mandates have required employees to increase their time spent working in the office.
The office sector is recovering most strongly in New York and Miami, with office visits only down 17.1% and 20% from their February 2019 levels, said the report. Atlanta, Houston, Washington, D.C., and Dallas all had year-over-five-year visit gaps of between 34.6% and 38.4%, which is comparable to the nationwide average, according to the report. Meanwhile, five-year office visit gaps for Boston, Los Angeles and Dever were 43.5%, 45.1% and 46.6% respectively.
For the first time since the firm began tracking post-pandemic office recovery, San Francisco outperformed Chicago with a 47.5% Yo5Y visit gap compared with a 48.5% gap. Placer.ai said this suggests RTO mandates in the technology sector may be starting to have an impact on office recovery.
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On a year-over-year basis, office visits slowed in February even when accounting for an extra day in February 2024 due to leap year. Most cities saw a larger dip in office visits than the approximately 3.5% visit gap attributable to the calendar shift. Miami, Boston and San Francisco were the exceptions, according to the report.
“The dip in office visits compared to 2024 suggests that the RTO mandates are not having a significant impact on office occupancy patterns in most major cities and further underscore the enduring impact of remote and hybrid work models,” said the study.
Placer.ai’s office building index analyzes foot traffic data from about 1,000 office buildings across the country, not including government and residential/commercial mixed-use buildings.
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