In our latest VTS Office Demand Index (VODI) report, we highlighted the nearly 20% year-over-year growth in new office demand nationally, with certain markets such as New York City reaching pre-Covid levels of demand later in the year (November 2024). All told, 2024 proved to be a positive year for office, where demand grew in all major U.S. markets.
This sets the stage for an exciting 2025, and begs the question: what can we expect for the office market this year? Similar to the last two years, we expect certain markets to experience meaningful growth while others continue to find their footing and eke out more modest gains in new demand.
VTS has analyzed our office demand data, the industry’s only real-time and predictive data set, and the earliest leading indicator of office leasing, to come up with a forecast of leasing trends across three of the world’s most influential markets: New York City, San Francisco, and London. These three markets exude an outsized amount of global influence in CRE due to their level of capital and talent, and have come up repeatedly in institutional circles as being ripe for investment over the next 18-24 months.
Below is the VTS Leasing Prediction Outlook for the three markets mentioned above. San Francisco is our growth pick for 2025, with leasing activity forecast to rise 28% in 2025 as the market continues to climb out of a large post-Covid deficit, bringing leasing totals for the year to an anticipated 9M square feet. For New York City, we expect modest leasing growth in 2025. This is a testament to how far the market has rebounded amid its post-Covid recovery, and as of year-end 2024, has the highest office demand of any major U.S. market, and is now at a place where a strong year of leasing, 34M square feet as forecasted, will only deliver single digit growth YoY. We are taking a more muted near-term outlook on London, and is the only market of the three analyzed here where we anticipate a decline in leasing YoY, as a lack of new demand into the leasing pipeline is pulling our 2025 forecast down. That said, we feel London is the market with the highest odds of beating expectations as we expect interest rate cuts will benefit demand later in 2025.
During our inaugural forecast last year, we hit our NYC forecast with almost exact precision as leasing activity expanded an impressive 30% in 2024. We were slightly optimistic on San Francisco, but the market nevertheless delivered excellent growth, coming only slightly short of our prediction. We expected 2024 leasing in London to grow slightly and instead there was a modest decline YoY.
Launched last year, VTS 4 brings all of our predictive market data in-app to our customers. This allows our customers to understand leasing trends 6-12 months before they are recorded, and deal economics trends before leases are signed. Click here to learn more about VTS, schedule a demo, and talk to us about our forecast for other major gateway markets.
Max Saia is the Head of Investor Research at VTS.
