Renewals Grab a Larger Piece of the 2020 Office Leasing Pie

Office renewals claimed a significantly bigger portion of the largest 100 U.S. leases in 2020 than a year earlier. This underscores the fact that many companies opted to postpone relocations, contractions and other office changes until there is more clarity on how the economic recovery and pandemic response will play out, according to a new report from CBRE.

In the Houston market, the four largest office leases in 2020 included one lease renewal. The leases amounted to a total of 1.8 million square feet. The transactions encompassed a wide range of industries including energy, healthcare and financial services.

In many ways, the largest 100 U.S. office leases of 2020 reflect trends in the broader office market as well as the findings of CBRE’s latest survey of office-using companies. Renewals accounted for 43% of the combined square footage of those 100 leases, up from 33% in 2019. The cumulative square footage of those big leases (29 million square feet) marked a 32% decline from a year earlier, mirroring the 36% decline in all U.S. office leasing last year.

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