How is US Office Vacancy constructed?

Procedure and scope

Vacancy is the share of office space available and unoccupied across the markets Moody’s tracks (79 US markets as of the Q1 2026 reading). Vacancy is NOT the same as availability, which also counts space being marketed but still occupied, and is not the same as utilisation, which measures whether leased space is actually being used. Utilisation is materially worse than vacancy in the post-2020 market — a leased but empty floor counts as occupied here. The x-axis mixes an annual figure (2020) with quarterly readings, so the spacing is not uniform. Each point’s label states its period. The 20.1% print in Q2 2024 was the first time the series crossed 20% in roughly fifty years of Moody’s data. CAVEAT: the forecast-vs-actual chart compares a projection with an outcome and should not be read as a time series. Moody’s projected a ~24% peak in early 2026; the Q1 2026 actual was 21% and still rising slowly rather than peaking. Distress forecasts in this sector have run ahead of realised numbers, which matters because those forecasts feed lender provisioning and valuation marks. Read alongside datacenter-real-estate: same broad asset class, same quarter, one at a record high and the other at a record low. Re-verified 2026-08-11.