The general view of the office market is that it faces trouble. And that is true from an average view of vacancies, rent growth, falling valuations, and  loan performance. WeWork's intention to renegotiate most of its leases with property owners shows the types of pressure that are bearing down.

However, average performance is deceptive as it doesn't show distributions that may be important in an analysis. For example, in the first half of this year, there were markets in which sales of smaller to mid-sized office properties, between $5 million and $25 million, increased and others where they decreased on a half-year basis between 2022 and 2023. In the top 20 metros by sales in this range, six saw growth while 14 fell.

Moody's Analytics CRE made this point of a need for more detail in a new report that looked at office properties in two categories: skyscrapers with 20 or more floors, and then low (five or fewer floors) and medium-sized (six to 20 floors).