August 2020

Examining Chicagoland’s Single-Story Office Market

Single-Story Office: A Closer Look

NAI Hiffman is now the single source for Suburban Single-Story Office Quarterly Reporting, a first look focused at the ground-level for the Chicago metropolitan area.

In this evolving office market, NAI Hiffman brokers Jason Wurtz and Steve Chrastka felt Chicago’s single-story buildings deserved a closer look. NAI Hiffman’s Research Department worked with the brokerage team to break out specific statistics related to that data set. These resulting numbers are an in-depth look at a vibrant market potentially becoming even more relevant as companies explore new ways to work.

2020’s volatility perhaps makes it a strange year to begin an in-depth track of a previously untapped portion of the larger market, however, the logic of the Single-Story Office Report is based on the concept that more detail leads to better insight. Anecdotes and speculation are plentiful while hard facts are in shorter supply, so the goal of the quarterly report is to follow trends and separate fact from fiction.

This report isolates the single-story office inventory in the Chicago suburban office market, a data set totaling more than 22.3 MSF of office space. Despite recording negative absorption in nine of the past 12 quarters, the overall subset maintains an 83.17% occupancy rate. These statistics will serve as a baseline for ongoing activity and a barometer for the direction of the overall office market as the downtown and suburbs navigate the months ahead.