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The CBRE Econometric Advisors (EA) Taking Rent series leverages proprietary CBRE transaction data to model the spread between asking and taking rents across markets over time. By joining this pool of transaction data with suite-level asking rents at the time of transactions (with, on average, a match rate over 70%), we’re able to track this spread with unprecedented precision. Some key takeaways from the data include:

• While asking rents fell just 0.5% from Q1 2020 to Q2 2022 on the Sum of Markets level, taking rents declined 4.2% during that time. This indicates that the rise in vacancy during the pandemic did, in fact, hit market fundamentals despite the impact not being fully apparent in asking rents.
• The divergence between asking and taking rents was most pronounced in markets that saw greater changes to vacancy, indicating that taking rents are valuable in times of market volatility.
• Only 11 of 62 major U.S. office markets saw asking rent declines from Q1 2020 to Q2 2022. This would generally be an indication of market resilience, but our EA Taking Rent series dives deeper, showing that 34 markets saw taking rents decline during that time—far more in line with the macro backdrop impacting real-time investment decisions.

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