With a total score of roughly 70 points out of 100, Miami ranked first among office markets smaller than 100 million square feet in the third quarter. Plus, the sunny Florida destination boasted a noteworthy development pipeline: Among this group of markets, Miami added the third-most new office space in Q3 and had the most square footage under construction at the start of Q4.
What’s more, despite an apparent slowdown in new-to-market tenants and headwinds sweeping the national office sector, the Florida gem has remained one of the strongest markets in the U.S. With almost 4 million square feet of Miami office space under construction and recently completed high-end properties commanding unprecedented rents, this city’s magic seems to be in no short supply.
Staying in Florida, West Palm Beach-Boca Raton garnered the second-highest total score among markets with less than 100 million square feet. This was largely due to its performance in two metrics — vacancy and pipeline. The second-best-ranking Florida market in this group, West Palm Beach-Boca Raton also had the third-lowest vacancy in Q3 after claiming the fifth-largest dip in vacancy rate the previous quarter. Development in the south Florida market also stood out for its under-construction pipeline with the fourth-most office space in development at the start of Q4 2024 as a percentage of stock.
Across the country, Inland Empire, Calif., took third place in the smaller markets ranking and was the only mid-sized market west of the Mississippi to rank in this top 10 in Q3 2024. Keep in mind that, last quarter, the California office market boasted the lowest vacancy in this group, despite a roughly one percentage point increase from May to September of this year.
Back on the East Coast, Richmond-Tidewater in Virginia received the fourth-best score among the mid-sized entries in our ranking. In this case, its best-performing metric pertained to the growth of its office segment. More precisely, the nearly 1.4 million square feet of office space added here during Q3 marked the sixth-largest market expansion in this group. Then, Richmond-Tidewater earned its next-best score for vacancy as the market had one of the 10 lowest rates of unoccupied office space in Q3.
Nashville, Tenn., rounded out the top five, primarily due to its performance across pipeline and coworking metrics: Within this group, Nashville added the most office space square footage during Q3 and had the third-most office space under construction at the start of Q4. Notably, the Tennessee market also stood out for having added the most coworking space during this year’s third quarter, which amounted to the fourth-best score for the growth of its share of coworking out of the total office space in the market.
In the Northeast, Portland, Maine, landed sixth-best among mid-sized office markets. The city earned its best score for the growth of its coworking scene: Coworking square footage added in Q3 made for the largest growth of the share of coworking in the local office market among the entries in this ranking. Portland also boasts several attractive advantages for fans of flexibility, some of which placed it among the best cities for remote work, according to a recent ranking by Remote.com. These include high cultural diversity, which makes it a good destination for international workers on the go; housing costs below the national average; and cool coastal weather, just to name a few.
Orlando, Fla., placed seventh, mostly on the shoulders of its performance in the expansion of the local coworking scene and office asking rate growth. To that end, in Q3 2024, the central Florida market added more than 180,000 square feet of coworking space, which marked the fourth-most such expansion among the entries in this group. Data also showed that Orlando office space saw the fourth-largest increase in average asking rent — roughly 13% year-over-year.
Still in Florida, the Southwest Coast market landed eighth in this ranking group after earning its best score for office vacancy. Specifically, the Florida entry had the second-lowest vacancy in Q3 among markets smaller than 100 million square feet. That followed a modest, 0.2-percentage-point dip from the previous quarter.
Slightly north, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater was the ninth-best scoring market in Q3. The Florida metro attracted the third-highest increase in average monthly online searches for office space and scored among the 15 best for expansion of the local coworking scene: With a little more than 82,000 square feet of coworking space added to the market during Q3, Tampa landed in 13th for this metric.
Another Florida metro — Fort Lauderdale — wrapped up the top 10. Its best-scoring metrics included the expansion of the local coworking segment, vacancy, and asking rate. Here, the nearly 145,000 square feet of coworking space added to the office segment in Q3 was the seventh-largest such expansion among the mid-sized markets we surveyed. As such, it made for the seventh-largest increase of the coworking segment out of the city’s total office space among the mid-sized markets we analyzed. Meanwhile, office vacancy saw the biggest decrease from the previous quarter (2.4 percentage points). The average asking rate for office space here in Q3 was nearly 12% higher year-over-year, for which the Florida market scored slightly ahead of Raleigh-Durham in North Carolina.
