New Tenants Are Back. What the Data Says They’re Actually Coming For.
Piedmont REIT announced on June 1 that it had signed 240,000 square feet of new leases in the second quarter through that date. More than 60 percent of those leases came from tenants the company had never had before. Year-to-date, Piedmont is at 670,000 square feet, with roughly 90 percent of new tenant leasing going into spaces that were previously vacant.
CEO Brent Smith said tours and proposals are running above historical averages.
This isn't a renewal story. These are new tenants picking buildings, signing leases, committing to a physical presence. That's a different signal than the trophy market data from earlier this year.
The question worth asking is what those tenants are actually coming for when they show up.
We can see it in the booking data.
What's Happening
Across our portfolio over the past month compared to the same period 60 days prior, outdoor space bookings have grown by more than four times. Roof deck reservations are up nearly 20 percent. Small conference rooms — the spaces where teams of five or six actually work together — are up more than 25 percent.
The other column: recreation game rooms down roughly 35 percent. Quiet spaces down about 10 percent. Sleep pods flat.
The seasonal shift is real and visible in the data. Summer changes the competition between "go to the office" and "stay home" in ways that February doesn't. A home office with a backyard competes differently than the same home office in winter. The buildings winning new tenant demand right now are the ones with outdoor activation, roof deck programming, and social infrastructure that can hold up against the summer alternative.
Piedmont operates primarily in Sun Belt and mid-tier urban markets — Atlanta, Dallas, Washington DC, Minneapolis. Not Manhattan trophy towers. The new-tenant signal from Piedmont suggests the demand recovery is spreading beyond Manhattan, into markets where the summer competition between home and office is real, not theoretical.
Why It Matters
Leesman's research on commute satisfaction adds useful context. Sixty-two percent of employees say they're satisfied with their commute. But that figure has a seasonal dimension. When the outdoor environment at home is more attractive, showing up needs to pay off more clearly. The framework Leesman uses is direct: the office must earn the commute.
In summer, that test gets harder. The buildings that are passing it are the ones where a tenant can book an outdoor space for a team lunch, hold a client meeting on a roof deck, run into a colleague in a lounge instead of on a Zoom call. The behavioral data confirms this. Outdoor and social spaces are absorbing demand at a rate the individual amenities can't match.
The Leesman benchmark adds context from the employee side. The average office scores 69.5 on the Leesman Index. Home scores 79.5. That 10-point gap doesn't close because attendance mandates say it should. It closes because someone built the right infrastructure. And in June, that infrastructure increasingly needs to be outside.
Leesman+ certified buildings, those scoring 70.0 or above, narrow the activities where home beats office from 10 down to just 4. The common thread across those buildings: they invested in social and gathering infrastructure that justifies showing up. That investment compounds in summer.
What to Do
New tenants don't sign leases for quiet rooms and sleep pods. They sign leases for buildings where they can bring a client, run an event, hold a team meeting outside on a Tuesday in June.
If your outdoor activation isn't running by now — programming, booking infrastructure, visibility in your tenant app — you're leaving new tenant demand on the table. Piedmont put 240,000 square feet of new leases on the board in roughly seven weeks. The buildings that won those deals weren't winning on location alone. They were winning on what happens when you show up.
Look at the composition of your booking data, not just the total. Outdoor and social space growing while individual amenities decline tells you summer is working. The inverse tells you you're competing with the home office on its strongest terms.
The recovery isn't waiting for fall. New tenants are picking buildings this quarter.
The behavioral data tells you whether yours is ready.
Anyways. New tenants are back. The buildings earning them are the ones where something actually happens when you get there.