The Value of Vacant Offices Across America

Office space vacancy is at its highest since 1979, and analysts predict that nearly one-quarter of U.S. offices will be vacant by early 2026. For this project, we partnered with Switch On Business to calculate that value of empty offices across America.

Key findings:

• New York City has the highest value of vacant office space in the U.S., equating to $7,610,663,156 ($7.61 billion) in lost rent per year.
• The second highest value of vacant office space is in Los Angeles — $2.10 billion per year.
• New York City also has the most vacant square footage: 105.8 million sq. ft.
• Chicago is the city with the second most vacant space: 58.1 million sq. ft.

To produce this project, we analyzed data from Cushman & Wakefield MarkBeat U.S. National Quarterly Q1 2024 Reports and calculated the total square footage of empty office space and the associated lost value in each market, according to the asking rates (annual price in USD per square foot).