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Research Outline

Prepared for Stephanie P. | Delivered February 12, 2020

Market Size for Office Leasing

Goals

To find the market size for immediately available commercial office leases (either available on the open market or as subleases) in the US and Canada.

Early Findings

  • According to the CBRE report, tech offices are responsible for 21% of major office-leasing activity in the US and Canada.
  • JLL found that tech companies were responsible for 23,583,278 sq ft in leasing activity by the end of Q4 2019.
  • Commercial leasing as a whole in the US is worth $209.2 billion, with a predicted -0.6% CAGR for 2020.
  •  Statista lists the asking rate per sq ft in several major US tech markets. For example, NYC is $78.87, Bay Area is $68.88 and Washington DC is $42.22. The top Canadian market is Vancouver at $33.40.
  •  Newmark Knight Frank's Q4 2019 report found that asking rents rose 1.3% YOY and vacancies declined 20 base points. The total US office inventory is 4.9 billion sq ft. They also conclude that the sublease market size is 102.7 million sq ft, or 2.1% of total inventory.
  • As a rough approximation, this means tech would account for around 21.57 million sq ft in current available subleases (21% x 102.7 million sq ft).
  • Pages 4-5 of the Newmark Knight Frank report contain robust data about current inventory, vacancy rates and asking rent rates for dozen of major US markets.
  • The report specifically profiles Denver as a rising opportunity in the tech office leasing market.