The city’s experienced the highest rent growth than any other major office market, at 30 percent, to almost $67 per sq. ft., and this increase, mostly driven by the South Financial District and South of Market (SoMa), has been pushing tenants into the smaller markets across the bay such as Oakland, Emeryville, Berkeley and Alameda, Calif.. Technology firms dominate activity, accounting for almost 90 percent of leasing, according to JLL. The city has absorbed more than 1.5 million sq. ft. of office space this year already. There are about five million sq. ft. of new space in the pipeline, but more than half of it is pre-leased to firms including Dropbox, Linkedin and Apple.

Havsy says he forecasts rising vacancy for San Francisco, with rents peaking later this year and then starting to fall in 2016 as more supply comes on-line. “The fact that there’s going to be a pause is a healthy thing, as the pace just isn’t sustainable, it’s just getting overheated,” he says. “A little bit of supply is good. We expect vacancy to get closer to 9.0 percent as new supply delivers.”

Salt Lake City, while a smaller market at about 46 million sq. ft., has been an employment juggernaut, with job growth of almost 3.0 percent over 2014 and a third-quarter unemployment rate of 3.7 percent. The market has about 1.3 million sq. ft. in office projects under construction, and about 62 percent of this space is pre-leased. The demand has pushed speculative building to about 50 percent of the pipeline, according to JLL. 

Austin has been the top city to move to for millennials, and unemployment here is down to only 3.3 percent. Office investors have increased their spending in Austin by 77 percent, spending $3.5 billion in the first half of 2015, according to a recent report from real estate services firm Avison Young. The market, with only 48 million sq. ft. of space, posted absorption of 1.5 million sq. ft. this year, the highest amount of leasing in the city in nine years, according to JLL. New space won’t be a problem for the city for some time, as of the 2.9 million sq. ft. in the pipeline, less than 700,000 sq. ft. will deliver in 2016. 

Nashville has emerged as a dynamic business center, with a strong creative scene, growing population and talented labor pool fed by the region’s concentration of colleges and universities. As a result, the Nashville economy is among the healthiest in the U.S., with unemployment at just 2.2 percent. This, along with a relatively low cost of living and vibrant lifestyle amenities, has made it a popular target for migrating millennials. The region’s strong industrial sector is the result of a rapidly growing population that has increased demand for e-commerce distribution space and a strong automobile-manufacturing base.

The Big Apple’s unemployment rate has fallen from double digits during the recession to 5.4 percent in the third quarter. It has the largest office market of any city on this list by far, at about 447 million sq. ft., but demand has been high. Rental rates have increased by 5.0 percent since third quarter 2014, and are now at an average of more than $70 per sq. ft. The city accounted for 27 percent of the country’s office investment sales volume in the first half of 2015, totaling $13.2 billion, according to Avison Young. There are about 15 million sq. ft. of new developments in the pipeline, with major openings expected starting in 2017. “Even with supply coming, vacancy in New York should continue to trend down for at least the next two years,” Havsy says. 

Portland’s rental rates increased by almost 10.0 percent over third quarter 2014, to $24.08, and are at the highest level in the city’s history, according to JLL. Investors have increased their spending here by 50 percent in that time frame, with more than $958 million in office sales transactions this year, including the $372.5 million sale of US Bancorp Tower to TPF Equity REIT at a price of $338 per sq. ft. Almost 50 percent of the 1.5 million sq. ft. under construction is pre-leased, and tenants looking for large blocks of space are being forced to wait until next year.