Property Type

CHICAGO — The road ahead will be bumpy for the U.S. office sector, but there is light at the end of the tunnel, says Cushman & Wakefield. The Chicago-based commercial real estate brokerage recently published Part III of a series of snapshots entitled “U.S. Office Sector: the Road Ahead in 2021,” which are focused on the economy and office trends. What follows is a synopsis of those predictions in the third segment. The path of the virus is central to the office sector recovery, asserts Cushman & Wakefield. As of early February, roughly 11 percent of the U.S. adult population has received at least one dose of the vaccine. Additionally, the seven-day moving average of vaccines being administered was trending up and the number of vaccinations was outpacing the number of new confirmed daily infections. Most baseline forecasts assume the vaccines will be widely distributed by mid-2021 in most advanced countries and in some emerging markets. In the U.S., it is currently assumed that full herd immunity will be reached by September or October of this year. Undoubtedly, the pandemic directly impacted office leasing fundamentals in 2020. In the U.S., there was 104 million square feet of negative absorption last …