Tampa Bay office vacancies remain high
By Chris Erickson
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Oct 17, 2024

The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater MSA added more than 26,000 jobs between the second quarter of 2023 to 2024 and more than 200,000 since 2020. Despite this, office vacancies remain stubbornly high in the region.

The total vacancy rate for office buildings was just under 14.7% in the second quarter of 2024. This is up from 10.1% in Q2 2020, but slightly lower than Q2 2023, according to Colliers. With a total inventory of 69.6 million square feet, this equates to more than 10 million square feet of available office space in the area.

Vacancies vary by region, from a low of 3.4% in South Pinellas to 22.5% along the I-75 corridor. The downtown areas of Tampa and St. Petersburg are outperforming much of the region, with total vacancies of 9.9% and 6.2%, respectively.