Report: Southwest Florida, Tampa among top office markets nationally

Southwest Florida’s office market is amongst the strongest for its size in the nation.

That’s according to a report issued last week by the industry publication Commercial Café, which found the Southwest Florida market No. 8 in third quarter among areas with less than 100 million square feet in office space. Specifically, it had the second lowest vacancy rate for the quarter at 9.3%.

Miami topped the list of markets with less than 100 million square feet of office space, followed by West Palm Beach-Boca Raton.

Orlando was No. 7 with Tampa No. 9 and Fort Lauderdale No. 10.

As for areas with more that 100 million square feet of office space, Boston topped the list.

To come up with the rankings Commercial Café compared the 100 largest office markets in the U.S. by total square footage. It looked at office space, lease rate, vacancy, the local coworking segment, pipeline activity, loan maturities and online search interest for each location on the list.

Each of these metrics was given a maximum point value and a scores was calculated for each based on its metric values.

Southwest Florida earned 57.2 points, compared with Tampa which got 56.6 points. Miami earned 74.3 points.

Florida’s strong showing on the list was not a surprise to the report’s authors.

They write that despite a slowdown in new-to-market tenants and challenges nationally, Florida’s office sector remains one of the strongest in the country.

Miami alone has 4 million square feet of office space being built and newer high-end properties that have just come on board are bringing “unprecedented rents.”

“This city’s magic seems to be in no short supply.”

And the Tampa market had the third-highest increase in average monthly online searches for office space. It also was No. 13 in the coworking segment because of growth. According to the report, a little more than 82,000 square feet of coworking space was added in the market in the third quarter.