Retail overwhelmed every other sector for tenant demand across all 27 markets — from Houston's 44.6% to Jacksonville's 72.6%. Office split cleanly between tight secondary markets (Savannah 3.1–3.8%, NW Arkansas <5%, Augusta 7%) and oversupplied primaries (Oklahoma City 28.8%, Atlanta 26.3%, Houston 24–26.5%). Industrial pipelines are collapsing: Jacksonville down 83.1%, Fort Worth approaching its smallest delivery volume since 1990, Nashville industrial sublease availability at a 4-year low of 0.2%.

The West is normalizing after a multi-year supply wave. Seattle hit a 15-year industrial vacancy high at 11.5%; Portland hit its own 15-year high at 6.5%; the Inland Empire held 8.5–8.7%. While those markets digest, San Francisco led the region's clearest turnaround — consecutive quarters of positive office absorption, rents rising to $69.16/SF, driven explicitly by AI-sector expansion. Reno posted the largest multifamily vacancy compression of any major U.S. market, falling to 3.7%.

The Midwest is the region with the most consistent story: retail leads in all 13 markets (51.5% Kansas City to 73.2% Milwaukee), industrial is structurally tight almost everywhere, and multifamily is quietly outperforming. Chicago posted 3.8% YoY multifamily rent growth — trailing only NYC among gateway metros — with apartment completions at a 14-year low. Columbus is bifurcating dramatically: office CMBS delinquency at a cycle-high 11.71% even as Meta, Google, AWS, Microsoft, and Amazon all actively expand, positioning it to become the second-largest data center hub in the Great Lakes region.

Retail led in every Northeast market — from 58.9% in New Jersey to 79.6% in Albany. New York City was the only market in the entire 75-market dataset where office out-searched retail (42.4% vs. 41.6%) — top-tower rents reached $200–300/SF. Pittsburgh posted a 75.9% QoQ industrial absorption surge alongside zero new office construction. Philadelphia turned positive on office net absorption (+200K SF) for the first time in years. Long Island reached a record office asking rent of $28.66/SF with negative net absorption — pricing power completely decoupled from occupancy fundamentals.

Washington DC posted the lowest office demand share of any market in the combined South and Mid-Atlantic dataset — just 4.1% of TenantBase search activity — reflecting federal footprint contraction and private-sector caution. The contrast with its neighbors is sharp: Richmond's office vacancy improved 90 bps YoY, retail vacancy held at 3.4% (one of the tightest readings nationally), backed by $220M Solstice Advanced Materials and $50M Eaton capital investments. Virginia Beach's defense and maritime anchor delivered a rare combination: positive office net absorption (+14,721 SF) alongside 2.3% YoY rent growth simultaneously.

No traditional brokerage report tells you what percentage of active tenant search volume is retail vs. office vs. industrial in a given market this week. TenantBase tracked retail demand share ranging from 41% in NYC to 79% in Albany across 75 markets in Q2 — a proxy for small-business and franchise formation activity that predates any lease signing by weeks or months. This is the demand signal traditional brokerage data simply doesn't have access to.

When "less than one year" is the largest single office lease-term bucket in a market, tenants are signaling risk aversion before it shows up in vacancy data. This was true in 9 of 13 Midwest markets, effectively all 20 West markets, and across every major Southern metro tracked in Q2. Milwaukee: 66.7% sub-1yr. Cleveland: 60%. Louisville: 56.5%. Traditional reports show vacancy numbers. TenantBase shows the intent underneath them — typically one to two quarters before it becomes a vacancy event.

Shorter lease commitments consistently correlate with smaller footprints across nearly every market tracked. In Phoenix, sub-1yr office tenants searched for 900–2,200 SF while 5+ year tenants searched for 5,000–10,000 SF. In Boston, 5-year office tenants actually sought smaller footprints than 3–5yr tenants — a counterintuitive signal pointing to long-term commitments concentrating in lean, high-conviction space rather than growth plays. This "term-for-space" curve tells you how confidently tenants are planning growth. No landlord-side report tracks it.

TenantBase's deal-count location data shows where tenants are actively looking — demand-side geography that shows up in traditional absorption reports only after leases sign. In Denver, retail searches concentrated in the urban core at 49 deals vs. Aurora at 19 — a 2.6x gap invisible to anyone tracking only closed transactions. In Columbus, the city proper captured 57 retail searches — nearly triple any other submarket. This kind of submarket intent data helps landlords and tenants anticipate where the market is moving, not just where it's been.

Office markets remained bifurcated nationally. Class A posted positive net absorption in nearly every major metro while Class B shed occupancy in the same quarter. TenantBase data shows that in the majority of tracked markets, leases under one year were the single largest office lease-term category — a flight-to-flexibility signal that precedes vacancy movement by one to two quarters. Milwaukee: 66.7% sub-1yr. Cleveland: 60%. Louisville: 56.5%.

Retail and storefront space dominated tenant search activity in 74 of 75 U.S. markets tracked by TenantBase — ranging from 41% in NYC (the sole exception where office marginally led) to 79% in Albany. This reflects strong small-business, franchise, and necessity-based retail formation across every region, supported by near-zero new speculative retail construction nationally.

Midwest markets led: Omaha at 1.7–2.8%, Louisville 3.7–3.8%, Cleveland 3.9%, Nashville 4.4% with sublease availability at a 4-year low. In the South, Albuquerque posted a two-year industrial low at 3.38–3.4%. West Coast markets were significantly looser — Seattle 11.5% (15-year high), Inland Empire 8.5–8.7% — though collapsing construction pipelines are setting up a tightening cycle through 2027.

Recovery is market-specific. Chicago posted 3.8% YoY rent growth at 96.3% occupancy — trailing only NYC among gateway metros. Reno compressed to 3.7% vacancy, the largest compression among major U.S. rental markets. Sun Belt metros including Austin (−4.7%) and San Antonio (−3.1%) are still absorbing historic supply waves. The universal setup: construction starts are contracting sharply everywhere, pointing toward landlord-favorable conditions in 2027.

AI-sector expansion is the explicit driver. San Francisco posted consecutive quarters of positive office net absorption with average asking rents rising to $69.16/SF annually — among the highest in the country. Multifamily rent growth reached 2.8% annually, the fastest pace since 2022. After years of post-pandemic distress, this marks a genuine market-level turnaround rather than a single large lease skewing the data.

TenantBase captures live, unfulfilled tenant search behavior — sector demand share by market in real time, lease-term preference distributions before any lease is signed, size-requirement curves by lease term, and submarket-level deal-count concentration. Traditional CRE brokerage reports do not publish this because they are built on closed transactions, not active search intent. TenantBase's data shows what tenants are planning to do before they do it.

The dominant setup is a supply-driven compression cycle. Construction pipelines collapsed across every asset class and region in Q2 2026 — Jacksonville industrial −83.1%, Boston industrial −73%, Philadelphia at a 5-year low, Pittsburgh at zero new office construction, multifamily starts down 30–45% from Austin to Sacramento to Portland. Markets soft on occupancy today are setting up for tightening in 2027 — the new supply needed to offset current vacancy simply isn't being built.