Business & Tech
Elgin Area Chamber Of Commerce: Zombie Office Buildings On The Rise As Pandemic Endures
See the latest announcement from the Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce.
November 01, 2021
More Than 1,200 Large Properties Sit Empty Across the US
Find out what's happening in Elginfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
By Mark Heschmeyer and Rohit Diwadkar
CoStar News
In the good times leading up to the first quarter of 2020, the number of office properties written off as vacant "zombies" had largely dwindled in size across most major U.S. cities.
But since the pandemic was declared in March 2020, the numbers are rising again.
CoStar News tallied the number of office buildings 50,000 square feet or larger at the end of each quarter that were 98% or more empty. The number was growing at an annualized pace of 23% in the second quarter of this year. That growth has tapered off to a 19% annualized increase in the third quarter.
Find out what's happening in Elginfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
The pandemic has added 303 buildings, for a total of 1,267 properties, to the inventory of zombie office buildings with rentable inventory up 37.43 million square feet, bringing the total vacant to 157.5 million square feet.
Zombie buildings don't always represent something scary. In some cases, they reflect newly built structures in fast-growing areas where owners are optimistic about filling them quickly.
Source: CoStar Group, www.costar.com
This press release was produced by the Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce. The views expressed here are the author’s own.
