ANN ARBOR – After a year of employees working from home, what the office market will look like longer-term — if remote working becomes permanent — is still taking shape. So far, office lease rates are not falling and vacancies are not rising as quickly as feared, while employers weigh the value of spending time in an office.
The consequences are significant for the state, where the three largest markets total over 100 million square feet in office space and smaller cities add millions of additional square footage to the overall total. The effects of an increasingly remote workforce range from lower municipal tax collections to diminished confidence in a region’s business climate.
So far, despite fears, vacancy rates are only rising slowly, experts said, as are the number of spaces vacated by a tenant and made available for sublease.
No one knows whether that will change.
