The Q1 2026 retail reports agreed on several things. First, negative net absorption rates were reported across all five write-ups, with the lone exception being CBRE’s “U.S. Retail Figures.” Still, “multiple bankruptcy filings triggered a wave of closures, which added available space to the market,” the CBRE analysts explained.

Second, those bankruptcy backfills are being snapped up by what Colliers “U.S. Retail Figures” write-up called steady demand, adding that a “clear bifurcation persists, with tight availability for spall spaces and more modest availability among large anchor boxes.

Third, the construction pipeline continues to dwindle. JLL, in its “Retail Market Dynamics” report, said that gross deliveries of 7.8 million square feet were “partially offset by 2.6 million square feet of demolitions, comprising obsolete department stores and underperforming strip centers. As a result, net new supply “equated to roughly 5.2 million square feet for the quarter,” the JLL analysts said.

Additional reasons were given for flat rent growth and negative absorption. Newmark’s “Retail Market Conditions & Trends” said that market uncertainty didn’t help matters as “consumer sentiment continues to be negatively affected by lingering inflation, uncertainty about the job market and the impact of the Iran conflict on fuel costs and potentially other prices.” Still, Newmark analysts and others said that retail sales and consumer spending remain in positive territory.

Meanwhile, Cushman & Wakefield’s “MarketBeat” said that first quarters are generally slower for retail leasing, while “severe winter weather may have curtailed activity more than normal this year.”

As for the outlook, all the reports said that continued supply shortages will continue to exert pressure on rent growth. At the same time, consumer sentiment is worth keeping an eye on. “If elevated oil prices persist, higher costs for gasoline, utilities and consumer products are likely to weigh on household budgets and consumer confidence in Q2 and potentially longer,” said Cushman & Wakefield analysts.

JLL added that the supply situation isn’t likely to change anytime soon, adding that “location will matter more than the national average.” All the reports said that the Sun Belt markets outpaced the rest of the country in retail metrics, driven by population growth. “For the remainder of 2026, performance will be less about the market overall, and more about which markets a portfolio is in,” JLL researchers added.

Colliers forecast that limited supply, combined with robust demand, means a quick backfill, though Newmark analysts noted that backfill activity isn’t showing signs of slowing.

Newmark added that stagnant, older retail space could make the case for additional retail construction. But with construction costs still high and rents unable to justify new development, opportunities could exist in redeveloping underperforming centers “through redesign or mixed-use conversion,” which will remove outdated space from the market and “ultimately reduce the total retail footprint,” Newmark researchers said.

Meanwhile, as retailers are likely to remain cautious about near-term leasing while they monitor consumer conditions, Cushman & Wakefield researchers indicated that a broad pullback is unlikely.

“Assuming easing energy prices and a resilient labor market with only modest unemployment increases, retail demand should remain resilient, supporting vacancy stabilization through year-end,” they added.

The Atlanta office market may have hit its nadir at the end of 2024, with a return of big lease signings giving hope that it may have finally turned a corner.

Vacancy in Atlanta’s office market hit a new high at the end of 2024.

Leasing activity hit 2.4M SF in the fourth quarter, an 18% jump from Q3, according to a CBRE report released Monday, led by AIG’s 179K SF regional hub lease at Perimeter Summit. At almost 10M SF, leasing activity in 2024 was the region’s highest in five years. 

Still, roughly 33% of Atlanta office space is available for lease, according to CBRE, a new record after tenants emptied out more than 2M SF last year. In West Midtown, nearly half of all office space is vacant.

But with more companies pushing employees back to the office and leasing activity on the rise, experts interviewed by Bisnow believe the office market is emerging from the gloom that has been cast over it for the past few years.

“I don’t see this as an all-of-a-sudden, hockey-stick sort of recovery. We’re still going to have to slog ourselves through. But we have finally hit the bottom,” Transwestern Chief Operating Officer Bruce Ford said. “We at least can have a vision and a forecast of increased absorption over the next two to three years as more companies get employees back to the office.”

Tenants signed 50% more deals last year for offices larger than 50K SF than they did in 2023, according to Colliers. Nearly two-thirds of all leases in the fourth quarter were new leases and expansions, according to CBRE, another positive sign for the market.

The second- and third-biggest leases in the fourth quarter were Eversheds Sutherland’s 94K SF lease at Bank of America Plaza and SouthState Corp.’s lease for 87K SF at Prominence Tower in Buckhead, respectively.

Activity appears to be carrying over into 2025, with the number of companies touring office spaces outpacing the national average in Metro Atlanta, according to Avison Young’s office Busyness index.

“We expect to see more larger deals in 2025 driven by new companies entering the market as well as return-to-office mandates being implemented,” Haley Leek, a market intelligence analyst with Avison Young, told Bisnow in an email.

T. Dallas Smith & Co. principal Cedric Matheny said companies are growing more confident about their office needs as they put pressure on employees to come back to their desks five days a week. 

JPMorgan Chase, Amazon, AT&T and UPS, all of which have Atlanta offices, will require employees to report to their workspaces five days a week this year.

“What we’re waiting on right now, and we’ll probably hear more at the end of this month, is the federal government,” Matheny said.

If President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his December announcement that he would require federal employees to report back to the office or fire them, it will give more momentum to the RTO movement in the corporate world, Matheny said.

“That may trigger some other companies and agencies to fall in line, which could affect the activity going forward,” he added.

Record Real Estate Partners Managing Partner Patrick Braswell said smaller companies are starting to take more office space as they require employees back more often and are less afraid that they will lose employees with RTO mandates. He said one of his clients increased its office size from 4K SF to 8K SF late last year in Nashville after implementing an RTO mandate to be able to fit all the workers under one roof. 

And while the availability and vacancy rate continue to climb, the pace has stabilized, sublease listings have fallen and construction activity has sunk to the lowest level since 2011. 

“I think we bottomed out six months ago,” CBRE Senior Vice President Jessica Doyle said. “But we need more big deal activity. There are a few big deals out there, but usually there’s more than a few.”

Doyle said she recently toured a company that was considering 150K SF offices in either Charlotte or Atlanta, a sign that perhaps the region is beginning to again flex its inbound activity mojo that it lost over the past couple of years. Atlanta was named the No. 3 city for headquarters relocations by Site Selection magazine this month.

Cushman & Wakefield Managing Principal Tyler Courtney said his firm is seeing an uptick in companies looking to open offices in Metro Atlanta, which could go a long way in helping tighten the office market, especially with newly delivered spaces.

According to Colliers, developers opened 2M SF of new office space last year, more than 80% of which remained without tenants by year’s end.

“[Corporate in-migration] was such an important part of the absorption story for Atlanta for so long, and it got really quiet. We’re starting to see that uptick a bit,” Courtney said. “If there’s one thing I’m watching this year, it’s that.”