This is one list that you don’t want to be in the top 10, total office lease expirations through 2028. Office buildings are already suffering from record high vacancies after the pandemic with a tsunami of 742 million sf expiring over the next 4 years according to CRED iQ research. New York leads the pack with 173 million sf. Fortunately, Denver is way down the list at 18th with only 10.5 million sf set to expire through 2028.

Wave of lease expirations, loan maturities to compound office market challenges

By Ashley Fahey – Editor, The National Observer: Real Estate Edition, The Business Journals

A staggering amount of leases will expire in the next five years, threatening to prolong pain within the U.S. office market.

More than 800 million square feet of office space is set to expire between now and 2028, according to a recent analysis by CRED iQ, a commercial real estate data, analytics and valuation platform based in Wayne, Pennsylvania. The analysis examined office buildings financed within the commercial mortgage-backed securities market.

According to the CRED iQ research, about 217 million square feet of office space across CMBS collateral have leases with expiration dates in 2024 or 2025. An additional 92 million square feet and 110 million square feet of office space are predicted to expire in 2026 and 2027, followed by a whopping 415 million square feet projected to expire in 2028.

Those annual totals compare to 21 million square feet that expired in 2023.