The COVID-19 pandemic may cut both ways on office space leasing activity. Landlords may face more office downsizing from tenants, but it may also increase demand for less densely crowded suburban office markets.
And the D.C. area has a lot of that.
A new report from CommercialCafe analyzed data provided by commercial property data and listing service CommercialEdge, and it found that the D.C. area currently has the most office space in suburban areas — 230.6 million square feet, or about 58% of the region’s 400 million square feet of total office space.
That includes submarkets in both Northern Virginia and D.C.’s Maryland suburbs.
The largest suburban submarket in the D.C. area is now Tysons, Virginia, by far. With 28.3 million square feet of office space, it is the seventh-largest office submarket in the U.S.
Dallas-Fort Worth ranks second for suburban office space, with 229 million square feet, but suburban office space accounts for more of the Dallas area’s total office space than the D.C. area, at 73%.
The San Francisco Bay Area ranks third for suburban office space, at 223 million square feet, and it is even more dependent on the suburbs, at 85% of total office space.
New York City’s New Jersey submarket ranks fourth for square footage of suburban office space, followed by Chicago.
The D.C. suburbs rank fourth in the nation in terms of total office space delivered in the last decade in suburban areas, adding 15.8 million square feet. Most of that new space was added in Tysons.
The national study included only office properties larger at 25,000 square feet located in suburban locations from 66 office markets.
Read CommercialCafe’s full report..
