14 offices: New Orleans

Due to the lack of white-collar jobs, the commercial property market in New Orleans is steady and is more than affordable for tenants. For that reason, there are no plans to erase large-scale office premises in the metro area. Yet, the future perspective reaches out to the development of the Duncan Plaza, a green park area located at the foot of the City Hall. Office stock generally amounts to 20 million square feet. Some city center areas’ occupancy rates exceed 90%. The non-demanded office spaces are converted to residential ones, artificially pushing the requests for office spaces for rent in New Orleans up. The growth of the digital media sector in recent years happened to be the major driver of real estate deals. The highest occupancy rates are in East Metairie and North Shore (about 93%), and West Bank (84%). If combined, class-A and non-Class A rental values exceed $21 per sq.ft. At the same time, Class-A office spaces in New Orleans are leased by 87%, while non-Class A buildings are occupied only by 57%. The quoted rental rate for the Class A office premises equals $20, while the rate for non-Class A premises rests at $17.

The city is quite cooperative: in 2018 alone, it passed a regulation to make it easier for the non-conforming residential buildings to be used commercially. These might create more office inventory as the developers and landlords would decide to refurbish some of these spaces. Apart from that, the city is supporting an Opportunity Zones program to provide a federal tax incentive for the investors and encourage them to re-invest capital gains into the designed census tracks. Meanwhile, parking costs might be a challenger for some tenants in New Orleans, who would better consider the small office space in New Orleans located outside the CBD. At the same time, the landlords on the New Orleans Parish show little appetite for the tenants’ improvements and literary incapable of changing the way their space is subdivided. At the same time, the East Metairie office submarket is largely occupied by the energy sector that limits its growth. Yet, the lower parking costs and primer location of the submarket do the job in attracting new tenants. As for the West Metairie, the occupancy and rental rates here remain constant. Due to the lowered occupancy rates, the owners of the office buildings are considering turning it into the mixed-use premises to attract the co-working and other creative or flexible office providers. Other property types: New Orleans coworking spaces , New Orleans business centers , New Orleans meeting spaces , New Orleans virtual offices .