With office leasing and development, we’re always looking forward to the next big thing. Nashville’s office market is no exception to that. Sometimes no news is good news, though.
That may be the case with the metro’s office development, where only four projects totaling 279,320 square feet were underway at the close of 2025 — 44.1 percent of which was preleased. At the beginning of 2020, Nashville’s construction pipeline was nearly 10 percent of its inventory size — the second-highest share out of any U.S. metro.
Since then, 8.5 million square feet of office product has been delivered, and despite overlapping with a global pandemic, nearly 80 percent of it has been leased — underscoring the market’s appetite for quality office space. While that office space has not been absorbed as quickly as some had hoped, market trends and activity suggest that nearly 90 percent of it will be absorbed by the end of 2026, proving the Nashville office market’s resilience.
As we approach the end of the first quarter, Nashville’s office market is off to a good start, despite some uncooperative icy weather. Although local tenants continue to lead occupancy growth, sizable multi-market requirements have continued to increase, pushing the total active tenants in the market to 3.2 million square feet.
In 2025, 2.2 million square feet of new leases were signed, which was in line with 2024 totals, and overall asking rents reached an all-time high. Vacancy steadily declined over the course of the year, landing at 16.1 percent by year-end. Occupancy gains outpaced the prior year as 705,536 square feet of space was absorbed (595,567 square feet was absorbed in 2024).
Although Nashville ranked No. 36 in total office inventory size among the 92 U.S. markets tracked by Cushman & Wakefield, the region secured 12th place nationally for overall net absorption due to its outsized occupancy gains in 2025. Nashville’s office pipeline is set to taper further, as 1.1 million square feet was delivered in 2025 and only three of the four projects underway (231,320 square feet) are projected to complete through 2026 — 53.2 percent of which is already preleased.
So, even though the metro has not returned to pre-pandemic health, its pronounced resiliency and continued appeal have created optimism and momentum for the remainder of 2026 and beyond.
Macro/Micro
Nashville’s enviable economic development success, which attracted AllianceBernstein, Oracle and some household names in the tech industry, naturally spawned new office development, as well as new construction in most every property type. In 2018 and 2019, 500,000-square-foot corporate relocations and build-to-suits weren’t uncommon.
We all know what happened next with COVID and its impact on most every office tenant sector, but because of its business-friendly environment, favorable tax structure, appeal to both residents and businesses and tourism-supported economic base, Nashville’s economy was able to remain strong.
Elevated vacancies, of course, were one result of both COVID’s impact on office tenant sectors and the metro’s influx of supply. Overall vacancy steadily declined over the course of 2025, landing at 16.1 percent by year-end, compared with 9.2 percent at the end of 2019. The CBD housed 37.6 percent of the metro’s vacant space as 3.1 million square feet of product was unoccupied at the close of 2025 (submarket vacancy of 27.1 percent).
In the suburbs, Brentwood had very few large blocks of unoccupied space with a vacancy of 10.1 percent. While vacancy totals are higher in the Cool Springs submarket at 17.2 percent, the submarket’s 348,286 square feet of annual occupancy gains caused the submarket to record the most substantial decrease in vacancy year over year, falling 288 basis points to 17.2 percent.
Within a few of Nashville’s submarkets, there are micro markets that are thriving and attracting substantial office leasing and achieving strong rental rates. These neighborhood, boutique-office micro markets reflect Nashville’s changes over the past decade, especially with their mixed-use components that bring people together and provide a host of amenities, whether that’s retail, restaurant, residential or event space.
Developments such as Nashville Yards, a 17-acre mixed-use project led by Southwest Value Partners; the Midtown Music Row micro market, which has recorded 750,000 square feet of new office development over the past six years but hovering at a vacancy rate of 5 percent; New City Properties’ 14-acre Neuhoff District, the transformational redevelopment of a Prohibition-era meatpacking plant overlooking the Cumberland River; and Wedgewood Houston, where AJ Capital currently has the only new under-construction office developments in Nashville and has attracted two significant preleases, are all redefining the city’s cultural and business fabric.
The success of these micro markets — and new construction’s continued absorption in 2026 with little new development — creates opportunities for office properties developed in the past 30 years. Many of these are below Class A status and will require repositioning, shifting to a hospitality focus and creating an environment with new, in-building amenities and outdoor spaces that directly connect with Nashville’s vibes and energy. Continued tenant migration from the CBD to these renovated and newly delivered urban assets may further accelerate the conversion of aging downtown buildings to alternative uses, effectively reducing office inventory and placing additional downward pressure on vacancy.
As the market stabilizes, Nashville is starting to reattract more institutional investor interest. In February, news broke of Portman Holdings and Goldman Sachs putting the Moore Building on 19th Avenue on the market, with pricing expectations above $600 per square foot. This follows the sale of 1222 Demonbreun to Shorenstein Investment Advisors last year for approximately $660 per square foot.
Over the past decade, Nashville’s office market has been a bit of a roller coaster ride, from heights that made the city the focal point of our industry, to the valleys that we collectively endured together. Those valleys are behind us now, and the metro has shown that not only can it compete with any market in the United States for in-bound economic development, but it also has the resilience to match. That resilience and momentum will be the hallmarks of 2026 and well into the future.
— By Sarah Pettigrew, executive director, office agency leasing, Cushman & Wakefield. This article was originally published in the February 2026 issue of Southeast Real Estate Business.