Study: Atlanta national leader in return-to-office growth. Really?

Does it seem like your neighbors and their neighbors and the cousins of all those neighbors now work from home at least part of the week? In Atlanta’s case, looks might be deceiving, according to a new analysis of top U.S. office markets.  

Office foot traffic has remained near post-pandemic highs in major markets during the final weeks of summer, and Atlanta is leading the charge in terms of year-over-year office visit growth among the largest cities in the country, according to location analytics company Placer.ai.

Since August 2023, visits to offices in Atlanta (with some suburban job centers included) have grown by 7.3 percent. If that number seems unimpressive, consider that nationwide the growth was just 1.8 percent over the same time period, according to the Placer.ai Office Index: August 2024 Recap.

Why so? Analysts noted that major Atlanta employers including UPS and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have helped the city’s ranking by enforcing stricter in-office policies in 2024, four years after pandemic lockdowns and the WFH zeitgeist took hold.

Another factor, as analysts noted, is several large deals that led to a surge in office leasing activity in the early months of 2024; those leases totaled 2.4 million square feet in metro Atlanta—or 71 percent more than the first quarter of 2023.

Overall, Atlanta’s office visits in August were nearly 76 percent of what they were in August 2019—good for third place among 11 cities studied.

Only Miami and New York, respectively, have seen stronger return-to-office numbers.

Of course, the outlook isn’t entirely rosy.

Office visits nationwide remain down more than 31 percent over what they were five years ago, per Placer.ai data. According to Colliers, many office occupiers in Atlanta continue to give back space, leading to six consecutive quarters of negative net absorption in the market, with the overall vacancy rate ending the second quarter of 2024 at a new high of 20 percent.

Placer.ai analyzed major markets spread across the country—Miami, New York City, Atlanta, Dallas, Washington D.C., Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Houston, and San Francisco—and included foot traffic data at roughly 1,000 office buildings. (Mixed-use buildings with both commercial and residential uses were excluded, for obvious reasons.)

In terms of who is heading back to offices, the data point to a dip in the number of households with children with RTO schedules, as flexibility remains at a premium for those groups.

Conversely, the share of one-person households and young professionals returning to offices has spiked. “Whether driven by a desire to embrace in-office career growth and mentorship opportunities,” notes the Placer.ai recap, “or by a craving for more social interaction, these employees are returning to the office in ever greater numbers.” 

...

Follow us on social media: 

Twitter / Facebook/and now: Instagram  

• Atlanta declared No. 2 most livable city in U.S. for 2024 (Urbanize Atlanta)