Which Midwest office market ranks as the second-most occupied in the country? According to the latest research from JLL, it’s Nashville.
In its second-quarter office report, JLL said that Nashville is tied with San Francisco as the most occupied office market in the country.
What’s most interesting about this, though, is that the office market’s vacancy rate of 8.6 percent in the Nashville area in the second quarter is actually the highest this figure has been in two years, according to JLL. It is also 100 basis points below the city’s near-term historical average. This shows just how strong the Nashville office market has been for so long.
Back in 2016, the Nashville office market saw its vacancy rate dip to 6.2 percent.
But even with this slight increase in vacancy rates, the office market here remains a hot one. Developers are scheduled to bring 2.7 million square feet of new office project to the market by the fourth quarter of 2017. An impressive 73 percent of this new office space is already pre-leased.
At the same time, asking rents remain strong. JLL reported that the average asking rent for office space in the Nashville market stood at $25.46 a square foot during the second quarter.
Not all Nashville submarkets are as hot as others. Urban Class-A office space continues to decline, landing at 5.1 percent during the second quarter, while class-A suburban office space had a vacancy rate of just 7.8 percent.
