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Despite a sharp two-year drop in construction starts, builders haven’t hit the brakes on office development entirely.
Nearly a half a percent of the nation’s office stock is under construction, according to real estate data platform Yardi Matrix’s September report, which excluded properties set to be occupied by their owners. That’s more than 40.2 million square feet of space.
Austin is the major market that has the greatest share of its office stock under construction, with 2.5 percent, or 2.4 million square feet. Miami and Boston follow, with 2.2 percent of their space in the midst of being built.
Boston has about 5.6 million square feet of office space underway, which is the largest amount among the top cities Yardi analyzed. Manhattan followed, with 3.4 million square feet of space or 0.7 percent of its office stock, under construction. Manhattan, after seeing little office construction during the prior two years, has seen the most starts so far in 2025 — more than 2 million square feet.
Boston and Austin’s office stocks are expected to grow by 6 percent once the projects underway in those cities are finished; that is the greatest increase among the country’s top markets.
Detroit was the major metro that had the smallest percentage of its office stock — just 0.1 percent, or 115,000 square feet of space — being built. Once that work is finished, the city’s stock will grow just 0.5 percent, the smallest increase nationwide.
So far this year, the U.S. has seen 17.3 million square feet of newly built office space come online, according to Yardi Matrix.
Office construction starts have plunged to Great Financial Crisis levels; many owners are also trying to figure out how to repurpose their large, and in some cases largely vacant, office buildings. Last year, developers began work on 11.7 million square feet of space, excluding owner-occupied properties; year to date through August, that figure is at 10.7 million square feet.
The slowdown in office construction across the country comes as the sector continues to recover from the pandemic while battling new headwinds, like dismal employment prospects for office-using workers.