Here is some of the cheeriest news I’ve heard lately. The Wall Street Journal reports that the office space market in Washington DC is collapsing. Better: it will continue to collapse if Trump wins the election. Look, I was already going to vote for the guy—you didn’t need to give me more reasons.
If Trump returns to the White House, the district’s office market could be hit even harder. He has already pledged to abolish the Education Department, which has more than 2,500 employees in the district. . .
The federal government is likely to shed more space in the years to come partly because of the growing number of employees working remotely.
Six agencies, including the Justice and Treasury departments, have lease expirations between 2024 and 2027 in which they are expected to give up close to 600,000 square feet, according to Cushman & Wakefield. . .
A Government Accountability Office review of 24 federal agencies last year estimated that 17 of them used on average one-quarter or less of the capacity of their headquarters buildings during a three-week sample period.
The district’s office vacancy rate rose to a new high of 22.4% in the second quarter from less than 14% in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to CBRE Group. . .
The amount of occupied space declined by more than 500,000 square feet in the second quarter, “with the federal government accounting for nearly half of the occupancy loss,” CBRE said in a recent report.
There’s more good news like this in the complete story, but here’s the chart:
