Columbus Office Recovery Is Led by Class A Leasing

Columbus office demand improved through mid-2026, with Class A properties capturing most recent leasing activity. The recovery is real but uneven: overall vacancy remains above 21%, older buildings and individual submarkets face different conditions, and reports using different periods should not be combined carelessly.

What the latest quarter shows

CBRE’s second-quarter 2026 report recorded 93,000 square feet of positive net absorption, the sixth consecutive quarter of occupancy gains in its series. Vacancy fell to 21.4%, down 1.4 percentage points from one year earlier, while year-to-date absorption reached 207,000 square feet.

CBRE also reported 435,000 square feet of quarterly leasing activity and said Class A space accounted for nearly 80% of that activity. Asking rents reached $23.15 per square foot, while the construction pipeline declined to about 64,000 square feet.

Those figures indicate improving occupancy and leasing, not a fully tight market. More than one-fifth of tracked space remained vacant under CBRE’s measure, and a marketwide rate can mask large differences by building and location.

The class split was visible before 2026

Cushman & Wakefield’s fourth-quarter 2025 MarketBeat reported 300,125 square feet of positive year-to-date absorption for Class A space and negative 356,218 square feet for Class B. Its Columbus total finished the year at negative 56,093 square feet of absorption and 23.5% vacancy.

The same report showed sharply different submarkets. The Arena District carried 16.2% vacancy, while the central business district total was 24.5% and the suburban total was 22.9%. Those snapshots help explain why one tenant’s experience may not resemble the metro headline.

Why two reports should not be spliced into one number

CBRE and Cushman & Wakefield publish their own building inventories, class definitions and survey periods. The CBRE figures describe the second quarter of 2026; the Cushman figures describe the end of 2025. They can show direction and context, but subtracting one firm’s vacancy rate from another’s does not produce a valid market change.

The previous article used a 395,000-square-foot Class A absorption claim without showing its source or period. This revision replaces that unsupported figure with dated metrics readers can inspect directly.

What is driving the recent improvement

CBRE identified Downtown, Easton and Dublin as leading areas for second-quarter activity and listed several notable tenant commitments. It also pointed to limited new construction as a factor reducing supply pressure.

That evidence supports a flight toward newer or better-located space, but it does not prove that every Class B or Class C property is losing occupancy. Building upgrades, conversion plans, lease structure and submarket access can produce different results within the same class.

What to watch next

The next useful indicators are consistent quarterly vacancy, absorption, sublease availability, leasing volume and conversion activity from the same research series. A longer run of positive absorption paired with falling vacancy would strengthen the recovery case.

For now, Columbus office conditions are improving, and Class A leasing is leading the movement. Elevated vacancy and uneven submarket results remain material constraints on any broader claim that the office market has recovered.