Companies looking for inexpensive office space will find it in Louisville. The Kentucky city’s office market boasts the second-lowest asking rents of major metropolitan markets in the United States, according to the latest research from CBRE.
CBRE found that in the first quarter of this year, the average asking office rent in Louisville stood at $17.58 a square foot. That is behind only Albuquerque, New Mexico, which had an average office asking rent of $15.59 a square foot.
The list of affordable office rents is actually dominated by Midwest markets. Cleveland ranked as the third most affordable office market with average asking rents of $18.29 a square foot, while St. Louis came in fourth with $18.49 a square foot.
Milwaukee rounded out the top five, with average asking rents of $18.50 a square foot. Detroit came in sixth with an average asking rent of $18.82 a square foot.
Two other Midwest cities ranked in the top 10, according to CBRE: Kansas City ($19.46 a square foot) in ninth place and Cincinnati ($19.48) in 10th.
These low asking rents are helping to attract companies to these markets.
“Louisville has remained a very stable market and boasts a low cost of doing business,” said David Hardy, managing director of CBRE’s Louisville office. “We have not seen significant fluctuations in the market in the last several years.”
Hardy said that office rents have increased at a gradual rate of 9.3 percent over the past three years in the suburban Louisville market. He said that office rents in the Central Business District have been with .50 cents a square foot of the current average for the last 10 years.
