As we start a new year, the office outlook is still mixed. Although more companies are requiring employees to be in the office some days per week, we are far from the high occupancy that many central business districts enjoyed before 2020. Companies are still figuring out their workplace strategies – how often to bring in employees and how to better use their space for the reality of work today.
As the office sector undergoes transformations in response to evolving work trends and the flight-to quality movement, businesses continue to seek the best office spaces that can suit both their needs and their budgets. For most, the perfect choice may lie in a compromise between location clout and asset quality.
This year has continued to be one of recalibration and reevaluation for office space usage across the U.S. What does the data show about office usage now and what’s ahead? In a recent NAIOP webinar, the authors of the recent office space demand forecast published by the NAIOP Research Foundation explained their research findings.
Adaptive reuse architecture presents a creative and specialized challenge. Understanding basic concepts of conversions is critically important for development professionals, city officials and local communities. Each potential property needs to be evaluated on its own merits to determine the probability of success, and whether the location, costs, timing and existing building layout make sense for a conversion.
In a recent NAIOP webinar, Gensler Principal Steven Paynter, OAA, ARB, explored the firm’s data-driven process for analyzing underused office spaces and determining how to transform them into vibrant and livable residential buildings.
Read the full list of what captured the attention of industry professionals this year on Market Share, the official blog for commercial real estate.
Although many in the industry had assumed that the office market would stabilize in 2022 – and perhaps even begin to recover pandemic losses – this stabilization did not occur. Rather, wider economic changes; repeated interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve; the further establishment of work-from-home and remote office arrangements; and increasing numbers of office footprint reductions by businesses caused vacancy rates to continue to rise throughout the year, according to the latest CommercialEdge report.
“We cannot possibly talk about the overall economy without first discussing inflation,” opened Michael Seiler, DBA, during a NAIOP webinar this week. Seiler and Hany Guirguis, Ph.D., author the NAIOP Office Space Demand Forecast.
With remote work in play, the office needs to provide employees with a value proposition that invites them in. In JLL’s 2022 Future of Work Survey, 77% of companies said that they are investing in quality office space to incentivize employees to work from the office. Our research forecasts a flight to quality over the next three years, calling it “a clarion call for employees to take action” – and companies are willing to pay extra for it.
Converting existing buildings to new uses is a growing trend in commercial real estate. A session during NAIOP’s CRE.Converge 2022
