Orlando’s office market is experiencing a notable resurgence, driven by strong sales volume across both owner-user transactions and institutional investment activity. This surge is helping push vacancies lower, tightening the leasing market and reinforcing investor confidence in the metro’s long-term fundamentals. Orlando is moving decisively past its post-pandemic softness and into a new phase of growth.
Lease rates remained largely stable, with the market average sitting at $28.36 per square foot in the second quarter. Trophy space, meanwhile, commands average asking rents of $36.52 per square foot, a $4.20 premium over Class A product. However, several indicators suggest that stability may soon give way to upward movement.
Recent owner-user sales activity, combined with high-profile leasing commitments such as TMRW Sports, the golf-technology venture backed by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, signing for 40,000 square feet in downtown Orlando, points to tightening conditions and growing demand for premium space. Landlords with quality assets in well-located submarkets are increasingly positioned to push rents higher in the coming quarters.
That growth is underpinned by strong population and employment gains, with particularly robust expansion in healthcare, technology and professional services. Health and education services posted a 4.5 percent increase in employment over the previous 12 months, while professional and business services recorded a 2.3 percent change in the same time period. These sectors are sustaining steady office demand even as the national economic backdrop remains cautious.
Adding to this momentum, office development activity has remained muted in Orlando, with no significant square footage currently under construction, a trend playing out in markets across the nation. This pause is paving the way for tightening vacancy. With no new supply adding to inventory, even a few strong quarters of positive net absorption can significantly move the needle on the overall vacancy rate, which currently sits at 18.5 percent.
The clearest signal of market strength, however, is the pace of sales. Office investment volume has totaled $327 million year-to-date in 2026, nearly double the full-year totals recorded in both 2024 ($175 million) and 2025 ($152 million). At this pace, 2026 is on track to be Orlando’s strongest year for office investment sales since 2021. Owner-user transactions in Maitland Center have had an outsized effect on leasing fundamentals, removing significant amounts of supply from the availability pool and applying upward pressure on both occupancy and pricing.
This activity reflects a buyer pool that has evolved over the past five years, with private and owner-user buyers taking a growing share of acquisitions, accounting for 61 percent of volume over that period. These buyers have been drawn largely by discounted pricing that emerged from a relatively muted post-COVID leasing environment. Rather than signaling distress, these discounted deals have functioned as a vote of confidence, with buyers betting on the market’s long-term trajectory while pricing remained soft. That willingness to buy through the cycle is helping to stabilize the market and set the stage for today’s activity.
Looking ahead, population and job growth in Orlando are providing a durable demand base, and a historic surge in investment sales, paired with tightening vacancy from owner-user activity, is setting up conditions for a tightening market and higher rents after several years of stability.
Orlando’s office market in 2026 looks less like a market still recovering and more like one entering its next growth stage.
— By Greg Morrison, principal and Orlando managing director, and Declan Hood, senior market intelligence analyst for Florida, at Avison Young. This article was originally published in the August 2026 issue of Southeast Real Estate Business.