While much of the national office market has struggled to recover from the pandemic era, Greenville tells a different story. Downtown office space here remains in high demand, vacancy rates are low by national standards, and the pipeline for new Class A product is finally starting to move again. Here is what is driving it and what it means for investors and tenants.
The market in numbers
Greenville’s total office market encompasses over 9.1 million square feet across the metro area, with the central business district alone accounting for nearly 3.9 million square feet. Average asking rents are running around $24.30 per square foot across the market, with premium downtown Class A space pushing toward the high end of the range. Supply remains tight enough that brokers are actively telling clients they need more office space.
Unlike major metros where downtown offices emptied out after the pandemic, Greenville’s downtown has remained healthy and active, according to Keith Jones, an office broker at NAI Earle Furman.
Why downtown Greenville office is holding up
Several structural factors are keeping Greenville’s office market resilient. The city’s economic base is diversified across advanced manufacturing, healthcare, technology, and financial services. Greenville continues to attract relocating businesses and remote workers drawn by quality of life, lower costs relative to Charlotte or Atlanta, and direct access to I-85. The downtown core itself, walkable, restaurant-dense, and tied to the Swamp Rabbit Trail, gives employers a genuine recruitment tool when competing for talent.
The supply crunch: why new construction stalled
The last multitenant office building constructed in Greenville’s central business district was Falls Tower at Camperdown in 2020. Since then, according to Bailey Tollison, a vice president at Colliers’ Greenville office, banks have largely refused to finance speculative office development without precommitted tenants. The result has been a wave of renovations and repositioning of existing buildings rather than new ground-up projects.
One example is the revamp of the office building at 300 E. McBee Ave. in downtown Greenville, completed recently. Adaptive reuse and renovation have kept supply from falling off a cliff, but they have not added meaningful new inventory.
What is coming next
Two projects are set to change the supply picture meaningfully. County Square, the $1.1 billion redevelopment of the former county government site along University Ridge, will deliver the first significant new Class A office space in Greenville’s CBD in years. In Spartanburg, The Johnson Group’s Project Core development will add two new office buildings totaling 240,000 square feet as part of a $500 million mixed-use project.
What tenants are looking for
The preference shift toward Class A space is clear across the Upstate. Tenants who are signing new leases want modern, amenity-rich environments that help with in-person attendance and talent retention. Older Class B and C product is being passed over or heavily discounted.
Bottom line
Greenville’s office market is one of the healthiest in the Southeast, but it is supply-constrained rather than demand-constrained. The arrival of County Square office product will be the most watched leasing story in the Upstate over the next two years.
Upstate Commercial Real Estate News 
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