Seattle Posts Double-Digit Percentage Gains in Office Rents

CBRE’s Tech-30 report, now in its 10th year, measures the industry’s impact on office demand and rents in the 30 leading tech U.S. and Canadian markets as well as certain tech-heavy submarkets. This year, tech companies’ office leasing activity increased by 122 percent on average in the second and third quarters, compared to the first.

Tech companies claimed a 22 percent share of U.S. office leasing activity in the second and third quarters combined, up from 17 percent for all of 2020. In addition, more than two-thirds of the top 30 North American tech markets registered office rent growth from second quarter 2019.

During this two-year period, four markets posted double-digit percentage gains in office rents: Seattle, Charlotte, Vancouver and Austin. Separately, six markets posted gains in net absorption – the net amount of office space newly occupied or vacated – since mid-2019. Those are Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Nashville, Salt Lake City, Indianapolis and Phoenix.

The gains in tech’s office leasing underscore the industry’s resilience during the pandemic. U.S. tech employment now exceeds its pre-crisis level by 3.3 percent, surpassed only by the life sciences industry (6.9 percent). The tech industry expanded by 219,000 jobs in the U.S. since May 2020. The top Tech-30 markets for tech job growth in 2019 and 2020 are Toronto (a gain of 26 percent), Seattle (22 percent), Vancouver (21 percent), New York (18 percent) and Austin (16 percent).