Offices in Mexico: Less Construction, But Big Thinking Remains

Office construction in Mexico isn’t what it used to be, but development continues—now in a context of more cautious companies and more selective developers.

Between 2015 and 2019, an average of 46 buildings were delivered each year in the country’s main markets, including Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey. The pace shifted during the pandemic. From 2020 to 2022, the average fell to 25, and in 2023 and 2024, to just 13 per year. For 2025, with the market still in recovery, up to 18 new buildings are projected—though the final number may be lower, according to SiiLA.

The drop in volume reflects not only a post-pandemic adjustment but also a structural shift in the market: since 2021, development of Class B buildings—once one in every seven new deliveries—has nearly vanished in the country’s major markets, now focused on premium Class A and A+ properties.

Still, the slowdown in volume hasn’t curbed scale. Over the past decade, the average size per property has held steady at around 14,500 square meters. The contraction, then, signals not a shift in product type but in willingness to build it: fewer buildings, but just as large.

This points to a more inertial than transformative reaction. Why? Because even with softer appetite—the vacancy rate nearly doubled between 2015 and 2022, peaking at 22%, and today hovers around 17%, still above levels from a decade ago—the market continues to deliver large-scale spaces. All this, even as lease terms and occupancy schemes become increasingly flexible.

What does this gap between form and substance reveal? That although fewer buildings are being delivered, they’re still being designed as if the pre-pandemic expansion phase had never ended.

Some may interpret this as a sign of confidence, and to some extent, it is: the product design still hasn’t fully adjusted to new occupancy patterns or the more uncertain duration of real estate cycles. In this sense, construction continues with the expectation that demand will pick up again.

But it also signals something more structural: in Mexico, development responds more to the logic of capital than to direct market demand—driven by financing, committed investment, or available land, rather than explicit need. And while that brings risk, it also opens the door for those able to read the moment and adapt occupancy to an infrastructure that still thinks big.