The U.S. office market continued to see improvements in the fourth quarter of 2025, despite continued challenges. And that’s a good sign as the new year begins.
In its fourth quarter 2025 U.S. office market report, Colliers said that the overall national office vacancy rate declined for the second consecutive quarter. At the same time, quarterly net absorption and new supply reached an equilibrium for the first time since the COVID pandemic.
A growing number of office buildings were removed for conversion to another use, too, during the fourth quarter, with Colliers saying that this further lowered the sector’s vacancy rate.
Colliers reported that the U.S. office sector ended 2025 with a vacancy rate of 18.2%. That is a drop of 10 basis points from the third quarter, but is up 20 basis points on a year-over-year basis.
Vacancy rates fluctuate according to market, of course, but they also rise and fall depending on whether you look at CBD or suburban office space. Colliers said that the CBD office vacancy rate for the United States ended 2025 at 19.2%, up 50 basis points from the fourth quarter in 2024. The suburban office vacancy rate ended the year at 17.6%, down 20 basis points from the third quarter. This rate was unchanged from the end of 2024.
U.S. office asking rents did increase, though, rising to $37.69 a square foot, up 1.2% from the third quarter and up 2.3% from the fourth quarter of 2024.
The sector also saw 7.1 million square feet of positive absorption in the fourth quarter. This marks six consecutive quarters of positive absorption in the U.S. office sector. For 2025 in total, the U.S. office sector recorded 18.6 million square feet of positive absorption.
In a reflection, though, on the uncertainty in this sector, Colliers reported that only 25.8 million square feet of new office projects were under construction as of the end of 2025, with 10 markets accounting for 62% of the total development pipeline. Colliers said that only 12 U.S. markets had new office projects added to their pipelines.
New deliveries were low, too, with Colliers reporting 5.6 million square feet of new office space added across the United States in the fourth quarter. For the year in total, developers only added 18.8 million square feet of new office deliveries to the nation’s inventory.
