Playing Field Tilts Toward Landlords

CHICAGO—As the US economy and overall office market continue to improve, more cities have approached the tipping point between a landlord’s market and a tenant’s market, according to CBRE’s latest quarterly OccupierView report, which analyzes the nation’s office markets from the tenant perspective. Tenants in most downtown markets have begun to experience tightening conditions that have curtailed availability and boosted costs, the report finds, though suburban office markets have experienced little change.

“There has been gradually improving demand,” Colin Yasukochi, director of research and analysis for CBRE, tells GlobeSt.com. “Healthy job growth means that companies need more space to put these employees.” In fact, “by virtually all metrics, the second quarter of 2014 was one of the most robust in years in the office market with more than 15-million-square-feet of positive net absorption—the highest quarterly figure since 2007.”