With a market size of nearly $900bn, the United States has one of the world’s largest commercial real estate markets, coupled with some of the most desirable business locations to match. This post serves as the first part of our examination into the US market’s performance based on data from Q4 2020 and Q1 2021.
The United States office market is characterized by its wide range of properties, ranging from affordable shared spaces to expensive trophy offices in some of the world’s most desirable business locations. In mid-2020, average gross rates for offices nationwide stood at $35 per square foot with the priciest offices located in New York and California. Within these states, the sub-markets commanding the highest rates are:
Average asking rates in other prime office markets are as follows:
Bolstered by a robust economic performance, the office market in Washington DC delivered a fine performance throughout 2015. Unemployment levels in the DC metropolitan area were at their lowest since 2008, reaching figures well below the US national average (4.3 per cent vs 5 per cent). These conditions have helped shape a real estate market that is predominantly favourable to landlords, as the following trends demonstrate:
Washington DC Office Market: 2015 Key Facts & Figures
During 2015, vacancy rates for all types of office space in Washington went down to 10.5 per cent, pretty much in line with the city’s historical average of 10.7 per cent. At the same time, net absorption levels increased by a staggering 185 per cent, going from 198,000 square feet in 2014 to 398,000 by December 2015. Nearly half of the transactions involved office stock in Washington’s CBD, which clearly outperformed all other sub-markets. This is attributed to the ongoing influx of new tenants relocating from secondary office locations into the CBD. This trend began to be evident in 2014 and has been solidified over the past 12 months. Read the rest of this entry »
Amtrak
Headquartered in Washington, DC, Amtrak is a government-owned corporation that has been providing interstate train travel since 1971. Amtrak is actually the DBA of the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, and it employs 20,000 people throughout the United States and Canada. Amtrak serves over 30 million people on 21,200 miles of track.
AES Corporation
AES is an electrical power utility that both generates and distributes electrical power throughout the world. It is a Fortune 200 company that provides electrical power to over 27 countries, and maintains holdings in most of these companies to help generate that power. Their revenue was over $16 billion in 2010, and resulted mostly from their utilities division. They maintain a workforce of 28,000 employees worldwide.
Kiplinger
Kiplinger, established in Washington DC, specializes in producing business forecasts in a number of different industries. It helps its clients by creating a financial prospectus that takes into account all of the different variables of their respective industries, while projecting possible gains due to certain strategies. In 2007-8, Ethisphere magazine named Kiplinger one of the most ethical companies in America, solidifying its reputation for a very high standard of ethics.
Capital One
Capital One is one of the largest bank holding companies in the United States. They operate a number of different lending programs, and are most well known for their credit card products. Capital One employs almost 28,000 people around the world, and has posted revenues of $16 billion for the year 2010. It is the fourth largest client of the United States Postal Service, and sponsors a number of professional and amateur sports teams. They generally sponsor college football, European soccer, and Canadian curling events.
Fannie Mae
Fannie Mae is the common name of the Federal National Mortgage Association. It was created in 1938 as part of the New Deal during the Great Depression. It had a profit of $14 billion for the year 2010, even after a significant restructuring of the business following the economic collapse of the first decade of the new millennium.
Freddie Mac
Freddie Mac is a publicly sponsored government entity that deals in secondary mortgage bundling. After a significant restructuring after the housing collapse of 2008, Freddie Mac has been turned into a more well-functioning entity that has become more financially viable. They posted revenues of $14 billion in 2010, and employ 5,300 people.
Gannett Company
Gannett Company is the largest US newspaper publisher, with such major national holdings as USA Today and USA Weekend. It was started in 1906 in Rochester, NY by Frank Gannett, and has developed into one of the most financially viable print companies in the United States. It posted revenues of more than $5 billion in 2010, and has been pioneering the move toward digital media with the downturn of traditional print media. Gannett employs more than 32,000 people.
General Dynamics
General Dynamics is a United States defense conglomerate that is headquartered in West Falls Church. During the cold war, the company was highly involved with the development of defense technologies, but has diversified after the fall of the Iron Curtain. They posted revenues of nearly $32 billion in 2010, and it employs over 91,000 people over four major aspects of their business.
Goodwill Industries
Goodwill Industries is a non-profit business that operates a number of thrift stores and job training centers throughout the United States. Their headquarters is in the Washington, DC area, and they are one of the largest non-profits in the world. Goodwill Industries employes thousands of people at more than 2,000 different Goodwill locations throughout North America. While they are a non-profit, there are a number of different paid positions at the headquarters.
Interstate Hotels and Resorts
Interstate Hotels and Resorts is one of the largest hospitality companies in the entire country, with locations scattered throughout the United States, Canada, and 6 other countries throughout the world. They specialize in running up-scale businesses such as resorts and high-class hotels. They are a subsidiary company of the Thayer Lodging Group, which is based in Maryland. They are well known throughout the world as a holder of many reputable brands.
Rockville, MD
Rockville is a small suburb of Maryland that has a population of a little over 50,000 people. While it may not be the biggest place in the world, its location is what makes it such a hotbed of startup activity. Its proximity to a number of major national laboratories makes Rockville specifically a hub of the biotech industry, and it means that there are a lot of funding sources available for the right type of startup.
San Francisco, CA
San Francisco, California, is known mostly for its art and culture, but it also has a bustling economic scene in these tough times. The real benefit of operating out of San Francisco is the convergence of academia and business. There are a lot of established universities out here, as well as a lot of giants in the technology industry.
Franklin, TN
Franklin, Tennessee, is a small town about the size of Rockville, but is more of an entity of its own. There is a major biotechnology push in Franklin, with the university putting up state-of-the-art facilities to push development in that sector. More than half of the people living in Franklin have at least a four-year college education, and the technology industry here is on the rise.
Bellevue, WA
Close to the home of such giants as Microsoft, Bellevue, situated in Washington, is one of the hottest spots of activity in the technology sector in the country. Bellevue’s residents hold more patents than any other city in the country, and there are a lot of tax incentives for small startups, especially in the technology sector. Being so close to many of the larger, older technology firms gives startups the ability to utilize a wealth of industry information that is more readily found in this area than in other areas.
Cambridge, MA
Cambridge will be recognizable to most people as the home to both MIT and Harvard, two of the most prestigious universities in the world. As a town of roughly 100,000 people, Cambridge maintains a very low-key persona that carries an air of growth. The town has a reputation to uphold as one of the hotbeds of advancement in the country, and the incentives for small business development here are ample.
Irvine, CA
Irvine, California, has a number of things going for it that make it very attractive for startups. It is right outside of Los Angeles, so it is mostly populated by technology and entertainment-based startups, but there are many different businesses here. One of the most attractive aspects of the city is that it gives entertainment and technology startups access to Los Angeles without actually having to be located in the city itself.
Bend, OR
Bend, Oregon, has experienced a growth rate of 50 percent over the past decade, and it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. The town itself used to be centered around logging, but has since become very involved with the technology, aviation, and biotech industries.
Santa Monica, CA
Santa Monica, California, has become very popular for film startups over the past decade. The proximity to Los Angeles is the big draw here, with business owners getting all the benefits of Los Angeles without the stifling taxes that come with living in the city. Digital media production companies find that they are able to compete with larger film companies while operating out of Santa Monica.
Boca Raton, FL
Looking to shirk its reputation as nothing but a paved old folks home, Boca Raton, Florida, is very welcoming of startups, especially in the technology industry. There are a lot of smaller companies that work here that have been started by employees of IBM, which has operated out of Boca Raton since the 1970s.
Boulder, CO
Boulder, Colorado, has become something of an icon of the technology startup community. As the university has advanced its technology base over the past ten years, more and more businesses have been developing here from the resulting boom in startup grant funding. There are a number of national research labs maintained in Boulder, and these labs bring in a swathe of talent from around the globe– making Boulder a hotbed of activity in the technology industry.
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