In Volume 1 of The Bright Side: Finding Opportunity in the Office Market, we focus on the flight to quality in Atlanta.
As companies reevaluate their footprints, demand for offices within the metro’s top-tier building set outpaces leasing in the remainder of the inventory. While many tenants are rightsizing, they are specifically seeking space within the highest quality buildings with ample access to amenities even if it comes at a premium.
Despite most U.S. office markets registering net occupancy losses since 2020, Atlanta’s top-tier building segment bucked this trend, recording 4.3 msf of positive net absorption. More than ¼ of the top-tier inventory was leased in that time; meanwhile, tenants leased 16.2% of other Class A product and only 12.9% of the B/C segment.
Unsurprisingly, availability is tightest in Atlanta’s highest quality buildings, which have a vacancy rate of only 16.3%—more than 10 percentage points lower than all other Class A buildings.
