Guadalajara’s Worst Office Slump Does Not Confirm a Market Shift

Guadalajara’s office market recorded its worst net absorption on record during the second quarter of 2026¹, not because companies abandoned their offices en masse, but because virtually no new office leases were signed.

According to SiiLA, just over 600 square meters of office space were leased between April and June, while more than 10,000 square meters were vacated. As a result, net absorption fell to more than negative 9,500 square meters, the lowest level ever recorded.

At first glance, the result appears to point to a declining market. However, net absorption reflects activity during a single quarter and, on its own, does not support the conclusion that the market has entered a sustained downturn. That assessment requires looking at other indicators, such as the vacancy rate and the asking rent, which reflect the market’s accumulated performance over time.

By the end of the quarter, vacancy stood at 10.9%, still close to the lowest level in the historical series, having reached 9.7% in the previous quarter, while asking rent climbed to a record high of US$24.80 per square meter per month.

The contrast between historically negative net absorption and a market that still maintained low vacancy and record rents suggests that a different dynamic may have driven the quarter’s performance. To understand it, it is necessary to examine how leasing and vacancy activity were distributed during the quarter, as the data indicate that roughly 98% of the deterioration resulted from the collapse in leasing activity rather than from an extraordinary increase in vacancies.

On the leasing side, only three companies signed office leases during the quarter. Moreover, a single transaction—Torre Montevideo/Torre Scotiabank—accounted for around 75% of all recorded gross absorption. On the vacancy side, Andares Corporativo Paseo and Corporativo Dos Puntas, both located in Puerta de Hierro, accounted for 83.5% of all space vacated between April and June.

This shows that the quarter’s activity was concentrated in a very small number of transactions. On its own, that pattern is not enough to conclude that the market has undergone a structural shift, but it does help explain how an extreme quarterly result can emerge from only a handful of large transactions.

Moreover, statistical robustness tests² found no evidence of a persistent decline in absorption or of a structural break in the market’s historical behavior. That does not mean, however, that the market remained unchanged.

During the last four quarters, compared with the previous four-quarter period, cumulative gross absorption declined by 66.7%, net absorption fell by 80.4%, and the number of companies leasing office space dropped by 54%. Taken together, the data point to a slowdown in leasing activity, although, from a statistical standpoint, they are still insufficient to conclude that the market’s behavior has changed structurally.

For now, rather than answering whether Guadalajara has changed course, the second quarter of 2026 reframes the question: not how deep the decline was, but whether the coming quarters will confirm a shift in trend or show that it was an isolated event. More broadly, the episode serves as a reminder that, in commercial real estate markets, the most extreme results do not always reflect the deepest changes.

For more analysis and information on Mexico’s office market, visit SiiLA Market Analytics or contact us at contacto@siila.com.mx.

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¹ Net office absorption during the second quarter of 2026 totaled -9,548 sqm. Depending on the standardization method used, the result produced a z-score ranging from -2.07 to -2.33 relative to the historical distribution observed since 2020, meaning it fell between 2.07 and 2.33 standard deviations below the series average.

² The analysis included trend estimates using Newey-West (HAC) standard errors, CUSUM structural stability tests, leave-one-out analysis, and a decomposition of net absorption into gross absorption and vacancies. Taken together, the tests found no statistically significant evidence of a structural break in the absorption series.