Boston Most Active Office Investment Market In 2020
USA – Boston emerged as the most active office investment market in the country for the whole of 2020, with 75 office properties changing hands for a total of nearly US$5.8 billion, reported Commercial Property Executive on Tuesday (2 February).
The news website said the COVID-19 pandemic has ignited a change in the office property investment market that propelled Boston to the number one position due to the robust demand for office buildings with laboratories.
“The race to find a COVID-19 vaccine led to soaring demand for lab space, especially in well-known hubs such as Cambridge and the Seaport District,” it said, citing data from CommercialEdge.
Moreover, Boston is an outlier among nearly all of the other markets in the top ten, as its investment volume of US$5.8 billion in 2020 is not far from the US$5.9 billion recorded for the whole of 2019.
For example, Manhattan took the 2nd spot for 2020’s rankings with 23 office transactions collectively worth US$5.3 billion. But the borough was previously the leader with US$9.7 billion office investment sales in 2019.
San Francisco clinched the 3rd place with 26 office properties trading for a total of US$3.9 billion in 2020, but this is nearly half of 2019’s US$7.1 billion.
Completing the top 5 are Bay Area – South Bay and Washington D.C., which secured the 4th and 5th spot respectively. The former saw US$3.9 billion worth of office sales, while the latter witnessed almost US$3.77 billion, down from US$8.6 billion in the previous year. There’s no 2019 figure for Bay Area – South Bay as it and Bay Area – East were not yet tracked separately that year.
