The gross demand for offices in the country reached 140 thousand square meters at the end of the first quarter of the year, of which about 65% were concentrated in the country's capital, which registered 20% above what was reported in 1Q 2021, closing the quarter with 90 thousand square meters of lease.

Even with the full return of work activities and attendance at educational centers, caution has impacted the rent of offices nationwide, although all markets, with the exception of Guadalajara, registered higher demands than those reported in the same period. of 2021.

The tenants who demanded space in Mexico City continued betting on class A buildings since there is so much vacancy available, the tenant who chose to change buildings will look for the best rental price to obtain the greatest amount of benefits. Insurgentes continues to lead with a third of the demand in the period, followed by Polanco and Santa Fe, while Interlomas was the one with the least activity in the first quarter of the year.

Although the footage of rented spaces has decreased in the capital, the largest amount corresponds to offices with areas of less than one thousand square meters, which suggests that companies are rationalizing the resources allocated to rent.

Check here: The construction of corporate spaces in Querétaro is paused

For their part, markets such as Puebla, Querétaro and Monterrey achieved increases of 88%, 81% and 71% of gross demand if we compare the closing of the first quarter of 2022 with the same period in 2021, although these amounts are still distant in the recorded in periods prior to the pandemic.

In the case of Puebla, the closings for the quarter were concentrated on the Angelópolis submarket and correspond mainly to class A real estate, while in Querétaro the gross absorption, which was more than double that registered in the previous quarter, is concentrated in surfaces of larger than 400 square meters where 75% is located on the Juriquilla submarket.

Emerging markets such as Mérida and León maintain good demand growth projections based on their inventory sizes.

León manages to capture part of the thrust of the industrial activity at the beginning of the year that Guanajuato and Querétaro registered and began to evolve from corporate spaces in industrial buildings to offices properly designed for that purpose, together with the growth of related services such as insurance, legal and administrative services. and technological support that accompanies industrial growth.

Mérida, however, is due part of its growth to the varied offer of mixed-use buildings that manage to attract foreign capital, making this Yucatecan city a new investment pole based on the coordinated growth of the residential, tourist, and industrial sectors.

Of interest: Office market in Mérida consolidates demand in 1Q 2022

The challenges of companies to continue attracting collaborators to their workspaces continue to be a constant in Mexican corporate markets where the employer force has tipped the balance towards hybrid work solutions that allow them to carry out their functions from places other than the corporate headquarters.

Projections for the rest of 2022 still make us anticipate great caution in taking over corporate spaces, mainly from medium and small companies to favor the hybrid work scheme, which affects a slow recovery in gross demand at the national level.