Chicago Office Space

BuildingSearch.com offers numerous Chicago office space listings. Thousands of office spaces ranging from mixed use, office/R&D, office/retail, and bio-tech/medical buildings can be found on our website. 

Chicago, apart from being the third largest city in the United States, is the largest city in the Midwest with a population of nearly 3 million. Because of its influence on the worldwide economy, Chicago is classified as an alpha world city. With approximately $442 billion dollars in gross metropolitan product, the Chicago has the third largest economy in the nation due to its high diversity. This enables Chicago to have a large array of office space. 

Chicago’s office space vacancy remains in the low teens, 13.5%, in the first quarter of 2008, which is a slight increase from 13.3% in the last quarter of 2007. This is lack of relocation to new office space is mainly due to the uncertainty of the economy and fear of recession. However, even with such a clear future, there are still notable transactions of office space in Chicago. Northern Trust Corporation renewed its 420,000 square foot Chicago office space lease. Investment sales for Chicago office spacehave also slowed down due to the credit crunch, and slower job growth. The most noteworthy deal ofChicago office space is the selling of UBS tower by Deutsche Bank Group for $540 million. 

Also due to the high expectations of a recession, the sublease market for office space has risen and is expected to increase even more. Despite the slowing economy, short-term leases of Chicago office space have stayed predominately the same. There is also a bright future for the leasing of office space because many of the city’s largest economic contributors are about to be in the market for new office space. These companies include KPMG, Baker and Mckenzie, and Integrys Energy Group. 

Outside of the metropolitan downtown area, not much looks different in terms of leasing and selling of new Chicago office space in comparison. All the surrounding areas show an increased vacancy rate of office space in Chicago, while showing dramatic drops in the absorption of new office space. 

Construction of new office space in Chicago has come to a close in the first quarter of 2008. There was no new construction, however there is more than 7 million square feet of proposed new office space in Chicago which are planned to be completed by between late 2008 and 2012.