We often read about the amount of office space being added to the total in various cities from year to year, but what are the actual totals for cities? I imagine they only count Class A space.

I've had a near impossible time finding any data at all. Does any one have access to this information? Would someone also clarify as to whether they mean only Class A office space when these figures get tossed about.

I heard that New York has over 150 million square feet. What is the actual number? Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Toronto, Calgary, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid, Sydney, Melbourne, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Shanghai, Seoul, Jakarta, Manila, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, etc.??????

This doesn't exist.

Some people assume brokerage stats are useful for comparisons. But they're not. Even at the same brokerage, one city's count might be totally different in method, what they're counting, etc. One might say a city has 80 msf, another might say the same city has 120 msf, and reality might be closer to 150 msf. (Even the 120 probably doesn't include government offices, owner-occupied buildings, small buildings, etc.)

In one extreme example, CBRE once defined a 6,000,000 sf market as a 500,000 sf market comprising three buildings.

Sorry, being in the commercial real estate industry, I'm constantly disappointed that so many people on SSP/SSC misinterpret this stuff, though it is understandable.

Thank you for the information. So, you're saying that there is no data out there which one could use to develop a general sense of the office capacity of cities? How bizarre! I would have thought that there would be some standardized data bank that the industry uses to gauge this.

How do they come up with an accurate office vacancy rate if no one has accurate and comparable data? Something doesn't add up. Companies will spend $300 million on a new office building and they don't know what the supply is in the city they're building in? Surely, municipalities know how much exists in their jurisdiction? Data doesn't exist????????????

:nuts:

By the way, posting on SSC/SSP doesn't equate to being university educated or literate. It's open to the public, remember!

The center city of Chicago has around 153,000,000 square feet of inventory:

http://www.bradfordallen.com/publications/market/CBD_Report_09Q1.pdf

City of Toronto is at 116 million sq. ft., according to the city's own website (http://www.toronto.ca/invest-in-toronto/real_estate.htm). The GTA has 159 million.

Manhattan alone according to this article from last year has 390.6 million sq. feet of office space. Just Manhattan.

http://www.cushwake.com/cwglobal/jsp/newsDetail.jsp?Language=EN&repId=c13900002p&Country=400028

Dunno how accurate it is? :gossip:

isaidso -- My question is why such a thing WOULD exist.

Developers need reasonable info on local vacancy rates and lease rates, and are influenced by anecdotal evidence and their own personal experiece talking to tenants, brokers, etc. Their financiers want more scientific data, but for both, the region's volume of space doesn't need to be precise.

The stats we read are produced by brokerages who represent landlords and/or tenants. Again, they want reasonable info on local vacancy and lease rates. They care about inventory more than developers, but only because (particularly on the tenant side) their trade is having the best data about available spaces, and an ability to negotiate the best rates and allowances. It's the gathering of that data that allows brokerages to compile inventory counts. It's also why their tallies tend to have little or nothing on government buildings or owner-occupied buildings, despite both being part of the demand side market.

It's even worse if you use brokerage numbers to compare "downtowns." Many SSC/SSPers misunderstand this. The brokerages aren't attempting to define "downtown." Their local guys have simply broken their metro into whatever submarkets make sense locally. Sometimes the whole central city is "downtown." Sometimes it's a core CBD area.

It would be convenient (for counting purposes) if the federal gov had some interest in office inventories, but it doesn't. That's the only way to get a reasonable census-like count of anything.

Grey Towers, I haven't looked at your link, but let me guess...it's third hand information from a brokerage. Unless Canada does things MUCH differently of course. PS, the number sounds awful low...probably analagous to the 80msf in my original post.

isaidso -- My question is why such a thing WOULD exist.


I would have assumed, at the very least, that municipalities would want to know. This is the era of the information age, but it seems we're not quite there yet in all areas.

People these days want everything tallied, documented, and accounted for. It's just the nature of modern society. It's natural that some data, especially those that depend on business interests and agenda, will remain blank the longest.

I imagine if municipalities don't start counting their office inventory, global economic think tanks will start doing it for them.

Municipalities would only need to know if they were taxing it by square footage. Instead, in most places in the US at least, they tax by property value.

Think tanks? Why would they? Where would they get the funding for such a thing, or the staff? Even major groups like Brookings, when doing a national study that gets massive PR, do half-assed jobs with tiny amounts of staff time. What you're talking about would be a gargantuan exercise, not to mention one that would need constant updates.

Unfortunately, there's not much chance anyone will pick up that sort of study in the right way.