{"id":406181,"date":"2026-07-21T05:02:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T05:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/406181\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T05:02:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T05:02:16","slug":"creative-industries-keep-las-office-recovery-stalled-while-westside-finance-and-law-power-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/406181\/","title":{"rendered":"Creative Industries Keep LA’s Office Recovery Stalled While Westside Finance And Law Power Ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"

Los Angeles is once again the outlier in the national office recovery. While vacancy tightened in more than half of major U.S. markets<\/a>\u00a0in Q2, LA\u2019s rate climbed to 25.8%, driven by steep emptying in Downtown and Hollywood<\/a>\u00a0even as Century City<\/a>\u00a0pulls in tenants.<\/p>\n

The divide underscores a structural challenge in LA\u2019s office market: The city\u2019s creative-heavy tenant base, including streaming, tech and entertainment firms, has been far slower to return to offices than the financial and legal users fueling absorption on the Westside.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are a market that thrives on creativity,\u201d CBRE<\/a> Vice Chair Jeff Pion<\/a> said. \u201cThe entertainment industry, technology, media \u2014 we have a lot of creative workers in Los Angeles, and that is probably the reason that we have been slower to recover versus places like New York and Dallas and other markets that have a propensity of financial institutions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Office vacancy in the second quarter rose 1.5%,\u00a0according to CBRE<\/a>. Downtown vacancy reached 35.3%, and the Hollywood\/Wilshire Corridor reached 28%.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Century City and the Westside generally continued to be a bright spot in the region, with the vacancy rate standing at 23%, Pion said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe quality of the assets on the Westside, certainly the quality of the assets in Century City, are two of the primary drivers why we have seen an uptick in absorption and occupancy,\u201d Pion said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

West Los Angeles<\/a> accounted for 38.4% of regional leasing activity, motivated in large part by Century City. Three of the top\u00a010 leases in the quarter \u2014 including the second-largest lease of the quarter, PwC\u2019s 138K SF\u00a0deal at 2121 Avenue of the Stars \u2014 were move-ins to Century City.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the course of the pandemic, you have seen financial services and law continue to be really strong users of office space, and those are the primary tenants that comprise Century City,\u201d Pion said. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Citywide, overall demand faces challenges. Negative absorption\u00a0totaled 432K SF in the second quarter and about 3M SF over the last 12 months, according to CBRE.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Absorption was driven largely by negative 165K SF in the South Bay, negative 87K SF in the Hollywood and Wilshire Corridor submarket, and negative 84K SF in Downtown.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Total leasing activity in LA hit 4.5M SF in the second quarter, a 12.4% decline from 5.1M SF in\u00a0Q1 but up from 3.8M SF in Q2 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Financial services firms have been among the most aggressive in pushing employees back to the office, a dynamic that has helped stabilize occupancy in markets with heavy concentrations of banking and legal tenants.<\/p>\n

In New York, where Wall Street\u2019s in\u2011person culture has reasserted itself, office usage has climbed steadily and helped offset weakness from tech and media. Major banks have largely mandated three to five days a week on-site, creating a more predictable demand base than LA\u2019s creative industries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles is once again the outlier in the national office recovery. While vacancy tightened in more than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[162854,5263,30954,48,52,51,47,50,49,3716,3718],"class_list":["post-406181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-cbre-jeff-pion","tag-century-city","tag-jeff-pion","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-office","tag-los-angeles-office-market"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}