RESEARCH
US Office Vacancy Rate for Q3 2025 Splits 18.3% to 22.5% Across Major CRE Brokerages
CBRE, JLL, Colliers, and Cushman & Wakefield each published a headline national office vacancy rate for Q3 2025, and the figures span a 4.2-percentage-point range: Colliers reports 18.3%, CBRE 18.8%, Cushman & Wakefield 20.5%, and JLL 22.5%. All four track the same quarter of the same national market and each treats the figure as the top-line metric of its report, yet none publish a reconciled, cross-brokerage number. The spread traces to differing building-set coverage and vacancy definitions (direct vs. total, which buildings count as 'office') rather than any real disagreement about market direction -- all four independently reported the first sustained vacancy decline since before the pandemic.
Findings
- CBRE, JLL, Colliers, and Cushman & Wakefield each published a national US office vacancy rate for Q3 2025, ranging from 18.3% (Colliers) to 22.5% (JLL) -- a 4.2 percentage-point spread for the same market and quarter.
- Colliers (18.3%) and CBRE (18.8%) cluster near the bottom of the range, while Cushman & Wakefield (20.5%) and JLL (22.5%) sit meaningfully higher -- the two pairs differ by roughly 2-4 points.
- All four firms independently reported the same directional signal -- vacancy declining for the first time in several years -- despite disagreeing sharply on the absolute level, suggesting the divergence is a measurement-methodology artifact (differing building-set coverage, direct-vs-total vacancy definitions) rather than a real disagreement about market trajectory.
- None of the four public reports published a side-by-side reconciliation against competitors' figures, so a reader cannot tell from any single report how far its number sits from the market consensus.
Delta Engine result
↔ Divergence Detected — Δ 0.1754 (threshold 0.05)
- CBRE T0 93
- JLL T0 91
- Colliers T0 87
- Cushman & Wakefield T0 78
Evidence quality
avg 25 · min 25 · max 25 · spread 0