Chicago office vacancy rates worsen, card swipe numbers offer hope

By Jim Talamonti | The Center Square
The Center Square

(The Center Square) – As Chicago’s downtown office vacancy rate hits another record high, homeowners in the city can expect to pay more.

Citing data from real estate firm CBRE, Crain’s Chicago Business reported that the downtown office vacancy rate rose for the 15th consecutive quarter, from 28.2% at the end of 2025 to 28.6% in the first quarter of this year.

Wirepoints founder Mark Glennon said 28.6% is a terrible rate.

“If you go back to 2019, which wasn’t great then, actually, before COVID, it was 12%. So obviously, this has worsened substantially, continues to worsen,” Glennon told The Center Square.

Glennon said modern buildings with amenities are holding up well, but older, Class B buildings are selling space for 10 or 20 cents on the dollar.

“The tax assessments, of course, plummet after that because the value of the building is based on how much rental income they get. If they’re sitting empty, their valuations are going to plummet and those tax bills have to be passed off to somebody, and that means residential owners largely,” Glennon said.

Glennon said work-from-home trends have made office vacancy a national problem, but card swipe data from Kastle Systems showed Chicago’s actual occupancy rate rising from 55% of what it was before the pandemic to around 57%.

“The one ray of hope, perhaps in the long term, is that that number will creep up, that the work-from-home trend will fade. Interestingly, that has been the case in most other cities in the world,” Glennon said.

Glennon said more popular cities like Austin have actual occupancy rates around 80%.

When asked what people in the private sector could do about high office vacancy rates, Glennon said so-called civic leaders have been far too complacent and understated in their criticisms of government.

“They’ve got to really take the bull by the horns and force some reforms on the city. It would start with crime. That’s clearly a solvable problem if the city would get on it, and that’s one of the factors that contributes to people not wanting to go downtown and makes work from home more popular,” Glennon said.