The Dallas area continues to outperform the nationwide baseline for return-to-office numbers, according to data from Placer.ai.
Placer.ai puts the nationwide average for visits to office buildings at 29.4% below pre-pandemic levels when compared with June 2019. Dallas’ figure comes in at 24.1% below using data from June 2024.
Placer.ai, which specializes in analyzing location and foot traffic data, honed in on about 1,000 commercial office buildings for its Nationwide Office Building Index.
Return-to-office mandates tied to Wall Street’s financial juggernauts continue to boost numbers in New York, while the Miami area leads the post-pandemic office recovery market.
Year-over-year, Dallas saw modest growth in return-to-office numbers for the month of June, with 1.8%.
The number is a fraction of the nationwide average gains of 5.3%, and markedly less than the highs of Boston and Atlanta at 10.3% and 10% respectively.
Placer.ai noted that Boston and Atlanta’s June numbers accounted for each cities’ busiest in-office months since the pandemic.
An office market report from commercial real estate services firm Avison Young said that available office space in Dallas-Fort Worth remained unchanged at the end of the second quarter at 29.4% after topping out last quarter.
While the figure is elevated, good economic times typically see available office space average of about 23%, the report said.
Avison Young noted demand for office space tends to follow office job growth.
“[The Bureau of Labor Statistics’] recent revisions has resulted in office-related job growth that look disconnected from commercial real estate fundamentals,” the report said. “Presently, office job growth exceeds the longer-term average by 30%, yet the region has seen 6.3 [million square feet] of negative absorption since 2020.”
The finding may indicate that the hybrid work environment will make predicting the office space environment difficult into the foreseeable future.
