For most of our top 10 markets, 2021 was the best year in terms of sales. That said, in Washington, D.C.; Dallas-Fort Worth; and Atlanta, it was 2022 that stood out for the largest yearly sales total in each market since the start of the decade. First up, office sales closed in Boston during the first five years of the decade added up to roughly $29.6 billion, which was the largest overall total among the markets included in our analysis. Of that, sales closed in 2021 accounted for more than 30% of the total — $10.1 billion worth of Boston office space traded in 152 deals during that year.
Next, Manhattan, N.Y., racked up the second-largest five-year office sales total (roughly $27.6 billion) from 2020 through 2024. Here again, nearly 34% of that total was represented by office sales closed in 2021, when about $9.4 billion worth of assets changed hands. Similarly, the Bay Area’s best office sales year since the start of the decade was also in 2021, when transactions added up to nearly $9.4 billion. A significant sales year indeed, as that total represented about 41% of office sales closed here since 2020 — nearly $23 billion, which was the third-largest total among the markets in our ranking.
Not to be outdone, Washington, D.C. office sales since 2020 made for the fourth-largest five-year total (nearly $20.9 billion). In this case, 2022 was the outstanding year in sales since the start of this decade — Washington, D.C. office space sold during that year added up to nearly $5.2 billion, which was about one-quarter of the market’s five-year sales total. Then, Dallas-Fort Worth wrapped up the top five on this list with its office sales closed from 2020 through 2024 totaling close to $19 billion. The Texas metroplex also had its best sales year of the decade in 2022, when about $7 billion worth of office space changed hands, which equated to about 37% of the market’s five-year total.
Out west, Los Angeles office sales since 2020 placed the market sixth: $16.3 billion worth of Los Angeles office space changed hands from 2020 through 2024 with 2021 sales accounting for roughly 24% of that total. Notably, the nearly $4 billion in deals closed during that year was the southern California market’s largest single-year sales volume since the start of the decade. Further north, Seattle office sales since 2020 totaled nearly $15 billion through 2024 for the seventh-largest office sales total among the markets that made our list. San Francisco followed closely in eighth place with about $14.4 billion in office sales recorded during the first five years of the decade.
Atlanta was ninth with about $11.2 billion in office assets changing hands here from 2020 through 2024. The strongest sales year during that timeframe here was 2022, when sales totaled roughly $4 billion and accounted for a little more than 36% of the market’s five-year total. Denver wrapped up the top 10 with nearly $11 billion in office sales recorded from 2020 through 2024. Once again, 2021 was the most prominent year so far: Sales closed during that time totaled about $3.6 billion, which accounted for roughly 33% of the market’s five-year total.
Top Markets by Office Sale Price per Square Foot Since 2020: Manhattan, San Francisco & Seattle Priciest Markets of Decade So Far
Manhattan, N.Y. — the economic heart of the country’s largest office market — was also the priciest in the country with office assets here changing hands for an average of $813.61 per square foot from 2020 to 2024. Interestingly, when looking at each year in that interval, the priciest transaction in the New York market was closed in 2023. That year, Italian fashion house Prada acquired the iconic 724 Fifth Ave. property for upwards of $6,500 per square foot — the most expensive office transaction of that year nationwide.
San Francisco placed second-priciest with office space here changing hands for an average of $694.38 per square foot during the first five years of the decade. Its highest average sale price per square foot per year was in 2020, when San Francisco office space traded for nearly $1,083 per square foot. However, the market’s priciest individual sale was recorded in 2022, when a subsidiary of South Korean conglomerate Hanwha paid $2,227 per square foot ($155 million) for 300 Grant Ave. At the time of sale, it was the first new ground-up office-retail building to be completed in Union Square in decades, and it made for the largest office deal in the market that year.
Further up the West Coast, Seattle placed third among the priciest office markets of the decade so far. Office space here changed hands for an average of nearly $466 per square foot from 2020 through 202. Its highest yearly average was in 2020, when sale prices in the market averaged about $722 per square foot.
On the opposite Coast, Boston was the fourth-most-expensive office market since the start of the decade. Office sales recorded here from 2020 through 2024 averaged $415 per square foot with the highest yearly average in 2022 (at nearly $566 per square foot). During the same year, the priciest office sale closed in Cambridge, Mass. A partnership between a CBRE Investment Management fund and an REIT paid more than $2,350 per square foot for a stake in Alexandria Center at Kendall Square – 100 Binney St., a trophy life sciences building situated in one of the hottest life sciences clusters in the U.S.
Finally, California’s Bay Area rounded out the top five and was the last market on the list to see office space sell for more than $400 per square foot, on average, between 2020 and 2024. Its hottest year in this respect was 2021, when office space changed hands for roughly $516 per square foot, on average. Even so, the market’s stand-out transaction closed a year prior, when a joint venture (formed of Westbank, Peterson Group, OPTrust and Urban Community) purchased 300 S. First St. in downtown San Jose, along with a collection of several other potential development sites in the area. In 2021, the owners submitted a redevelopment plan that would deliver more than 1 million square feet of San Jose office and retail space across two 10-story towers. But, last year, the group advanced a proposal to construct three housing high-rises, while still maintaining the reserve option of building two 20-story office and retail towers.
Top Markets by Total Office Space Traded Since 2020: DFW; Washington, D.C.; & Chicago See Most Square Footage Change Hands
More than 684.7 million square feet of office space changed hands across the top 10 markets in this category from 2020 through 2024. Notably, office sales that closed in the Dallas-Fort Worth market accounted for nearly 15% of that total as assets traded here during that time period added up to more than 100 million square feet — the largest total among the markets we compared.
The second-largest volume of office space traded during the first half of the decade was in Washington, D.C., where more than 80.7 million square feet of office space changed hands. The largest property to sell here was in 2020 — the former ExxonMobil campus at 3225 Gallows Road in Falls Church, Va. The buyer, Inova Health System, had leased its nearly 1,465,000 square feet of Washington, D.C. office space several years prior with right of first refusal.
Further inland, Chicago saw the third-most office space change hands since the start of the decade (more than 79 million square feet). The largest office property sold here during the first half of the decade changed hands in 2022, when the Howard Hughes Corp. sold its entire equity interest in 110 N. Wacker Drive, a tower that incorporates 1.5 million square feet of trophy-class Chicago office space.
Houston was a close fourth with roughly 72.3 million square feet of office space sold here from 2020 through 2024. About 2.3 million square feet of that was in one property that changed hands in 2022 — the eight-building campus at 11445 Compaq Center West Drive.
Atlanta wrapped up the top five with nearly 64.7 million square feet of office space sold during the first five years of the current decade. Next, Boston and New Jersey were the only other markets in our ranking to each log more than 60 million square feet that changed hands since the start of 2020.
Top Markets by Total Office Sales Activity Since 2020: Most Sales Closed in DFW; Washington, D.C.; & Chicago
Of the markets included in our analysis, the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex recorded the largest number of office transactions: Nearly 690 deals closed here between 2020 and 2024 with 2021 being the year with the most sales activity in the market (201 office assets changed hands in one year).
Not far behind, there were 578 office transactions during the first five years of the decade in Washington, D.C., which was the second-highest investment activity during that time period. Chicago was a close third with 575, followed by Houston with 527 and Atlanta with 521.
In the case of Washington, D.C.; Chicago; Houston; and Atlanta, it was 2022 when each market saw its highest number of office sales per year.
The rest of the markets in this top 10 had fewer than 500 office sales close during the same five-year period.
Below, we delve into a breakdown of top markets for investment for each of the first five years of the decade.
Top U.S. Markets for Investment in 2020: Boston Tops Sales, San Francisco Claims Top Price per Square Foot
Boston had the highest total office sale volume in 2020 — more than $7.1 billion — as well as the most office space traded during that same year (more than 16.2 million square feet). The Bay area was second in terms of total sales at about $1.7 billion behind Boston, and Washington, D.C. followed Boston in second place for office space volume traded, which was about 15.4 million in 2020.
Meanwhile, office space changing hands in San Francisco was the priciest in 2020 at nearly $1,083 per square foot, whereas Manhattan, N.Y., office sales averaged about $820 per square foot that year. Otherwise, when looking at sales activity, Dallas-Fort Worth had the most office transactions that year, followed closely by Washington, D.C.
Top U.S. Markets for Investment in 2021: Manhattan Claims Highest Price per Square Foot, DFW Sees Most Square Footage Changing Hands
Boston remained the #1 U.S. office market by total sales in 2021, when the annual total for office transactions here went up to more than $10.1 billion. Manhattan, N.Y., followed with nearly $9.4 billion in sales. Notably, office sales in the Bay Area were right behind Manhattan that year.
That said, Dallas-Fort Worth knocked it out of the park in terms of office space sold as more than 30 million square feet of office space changed hands here that year. And, although Boston outdid itself compared to 2020, the market came in second with roughly 19.5 million square feet traded in 2021.
Unsurprisingly, Manhattan, N.Y., relegated San Francisco to second place for priciest U.S. office market in 2021. At the same time, the Dallas-Fort Worth market took the top spot for yearly transaction activity as it was the market with the largest number of office sales closed during that same year.
Top U.S. Markets for Investment in 2022: Boston & San Francisco Top Sales & Price Tags, DFW Sees Highest Sales Activity
For the third consecutive year, Boston was the U.S. office market with the highest yearly sales volume in 2022 (about $7.6 billion). Dallas-Fort Worth was second, while Manhattan, N.Y., wrapped up the year with the third-highest sales total, roughly $1 billion less than Boston’s tally.
Once again, San Francisco and Manhattan, N.Y., switched places for priciest office market, but neither surpassed the $1,000-per-square-foot mark in 2022: San Francisco office space sold for an average of around $909 per square foot, while Manhattan assets changed hands for about $842 per square foot, on average. Seattle office space was the third-priciest, trading at nearly $575 per square foot in 2022.
However, Dallas-Fort Worth came up on top both for total square footage traded (nearly 28.1 million square feet of office space) and for sales activity (186 transactions in 2022).
Top U.S. Markets for Investment in 2023: Manhattan Tops Sales, Chicago Sees Highest Investment Activity
A slower sales year overall, Manhattan, N.Y., climbed to the top both for sales total and for most expensive office market in 2023. Specifically, office transactions that closed here in that year totaled about $3.2 billion, while office space changed hands for an average of $871 per square foot.
Across the country, office space in Los Angeles attracted the second-most investment in 2023 as sales here totaled nearly $3 billion that year. Further south, the second-priciest office market of the year was San Diego, where assets changed hands for nearly $405 per square foot, on average.
Back in the Midwest, Chicago took the top spot both for total square footage traded (nearly 15.4 million square feet of office space) and for sales activity (107 transactions in 2023).
Top U.S. Markets for Investment in 2024: Washington, D.C. Office Space Claims Spotlight
Last year, Washington, D.C. was the office market of the year in terms of office investment: The capital had the largest sales total in 2024 (more than $4.7 billion), the highest number of transactions closed (132 sales) and the most office space change hands (about 21.1 million square feet).
Chicago was a very close second for office space sold with nearly 20.8 million square feet traded here in 2024. Next, Dallas-Fort Worth followed Washington, D.C. in terms of investment activity with 120 office transactions in 2024. At the same time, Manhattan, N.Y., racked up the second-largest sales total of the year with $3.5 billion in assets changing hands that year.
Notably, while the most expensive office market in 2024 was from New York, it wasn’t Manhattan: Office space in Brooklyn traded for an average of $437 per square foot, which was the highest in 2024 among the markets we compared for this ranking. Austin, Texas, office space was the third-priciest ($425 per square foot), just behind San Francisco ($433 per square foot).
Methodology
For the purposes of this market analysis, we focused on office sales that are at least 25,000 square feet in size and that closed from 2020 through 2024 in markets where more than 10 transactions closed each year.
We took into consideration only the transactions for which the individual property sale price was available. As such, some markets with non-disclosure policies may not have been included in this analysis. Properties that were sold as part of a portfolio transaction were only considered if there was individual property sale price data available for each.
The analysis is based on Yardi Research data that was pulled in September 2025. Market boundaries coincide with markets defined in the CommercialCafe Markets Map and may differ from regional boundaries defined by other sources.
Feature Image Courtesy of: CommercialCafe
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