No blog activity for over a year means one thing: the "brokerage iron" was hot. 2023 was by far the most active and exciting year for Union Street Corporate Real Estate since its founding 9 years ago. When it's a "tenant market", every client is evaluating its lease.
The market was in a state of decline before the pandemic. The pandemic then helped push companies with their remote capabilities. Uncertainty about office space needs lead many companies to do short-term lease deals. Now, here we are, basically 4 years later, and we have companies able to define their "new world" space needs and in a position to commit to lease terms. All the tenants that kicked-the-can for the past few years still have active near-term lease expirations, along with the tenants that have natural lease expirations, and there are tenants within a couple years of their expirations and want to take advantage of the tenant friendly market. This lead to an avalanche of activity.
2023 pushed Union Street's total leasing volume since its inception to over 1,000,000 square feet transacted on behalf of tenants. What was incredible was to watch the recovery over the year 2020, which was the year that office leasing came to a standstill. Since 2020, total leasing volume (by square feet) for the firm increased 156%, which is an average of 37.6% growth year over year. In terms of the number of transactions, growth increased an average of 17% per year over the past 3 years.
Looking ahead, there is still a significant volume of client leases that need to be addressed in 2024 and 2025, but after that, expected activity should drop back to normal as things begin to stabilize.
To all the tenants out there: strike while the iron is hot. Take advantage of today's office market and leasing concessions. I've been doing this nearly 25 years and have never seen anything like it.