Office foot traffic hit a post-pandemic high in July, reaching 72.2% of 2019 levels, according to Placer.ai data. It’s a sizable increase over June, which had itself been a new record and clocked 68.3% of pre-pandemic activity.
Miami and New York were at 90% of their July 2019 levels, and all 11 cities Placer tracks (its metric involves about 1,000 office buildings nationwide) saw year-over year gains. Office owners (and corporate leaders) are surely celebrating that the latest push to get workers back in person is leading to new highs. Financial services firms and banks have been particularly aggressive this year about calling employees back, and the end of pandemic policies by FINRA has helped. UPS, Walmart and the city of Philadelphia have also gotten more physical.
Interestingly, a good percentage of these companies aren’t talking about a hybrid model — they are demanding a full five days a week. How much that will benefit the office market is to be seen. The industry has still been figuring out what the hybrid model means for demand, and a couple-percentage-point increase in foot traffic doesn’t necessarily translate to that much more space needed. However, most of the office REITs and brokerages reported increases in office leasing in Q2. Last week, VTS declared the bottom of the market has passed, based on more than a year of increasing demand. Office vacancy is clearly stabilizing, with the lion’s share of that in newer buildings or properties that have seen recent upgrades to amenities, infrastructure, etc.
If you want to break out a little office party hat today, we won’t judge.
