Some of the biggest owners of U.S. office space are seeing their share prices spiral, the latest sign of weaker demand nationally.
Office real estate investment trusts had a negative total return of nearly 18.5% this year through Tuesday while some stocks hit record lows, according to a report from Nareit, a Washington, D.C.-based REIT association. By comparison, the S&P 500 stock index total return in that time was positive, at about 4.7%.
Publicly traded REITs often are seen as bellwethers for a U.S. office market that continues to suffer from a general weakening in demand for space. The pandemic that forced employees across the country to work from home led some businesses to reassess how much physical office space they require and companies have also been laying off workers in recent months.
The national office market's vacancy rate has risen 7% year over year and is expected to climb higher as leases expire, according to CoStar data.
The amount of space up for sublease, a sign of the market's future health, also remains high. Roughly 211 million square feet, or more than 2% of the nation's office space, is available for sublease, according to CoStar data. The nation's overall sublease supply has increased 24% year over year and has more than doubled since 2019, the year before the pandemic began.
Office real estate investment trusts' year-to-date returns were the worst among all major REIT categories, according to Nareit. Industrial, single-family residential, timber and data center REITs have had positive returns in that time. Self-storage REITs led the pack, with nearly 9.9% growth this year through Tuesday.
The drop in return comes as more companies are requiring their workers to spend more time in the office. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook parent Meta, said this month that he misjudged the value of having employees work remotely and is looking for more staff to be in the office more.
Historic Lows
Even with these indications of more office demand, some office REITs are still trading at historic lows. Brookfield DTLA, which owns multiple high-rise office buildings in downtown Los Angeles, saw its share price drop to a record low of $1.34 Wednesday after reporting earlier this year it had defaulted on loans related to two skyscrapers.
Los Angeles-based Hudson Pacific Properties also is feeling pain, having seen its share price fall to a record low of $6.03 on Wednesday. The REIT's share price has dropped more than 83% since February 2020.
Boston Properties has seen its share price fall to under $50, a level it hasn't seen since the Great Recession.
Office REIT share prices are down in recent days because of concerns about tighter lending standards on commercial real estate in general and for office space specifically, according to a report by Ronald Kamden, head of U.S. REITs for Morgan Stanley.
"Moody’s revised their outlook on the US Banking system to 'Negative' and placed six banks on review for downgrade," Kamden said in the report. "Our Banks team notes this should drive more banks to tighten their lending standards meaningfully."
In total, the U.S. office market could have 330 million square feet of obsolete space by the end of the decade that would need to be repositioned unless occupancy rates rise, according to a report by brokerage firm Cushman & Wakefield.