NYC workers continue to return to office as building ‘visitations’ move closer to pre-pandemic levels

The return-to-office trend continues apace. Manhattan office “visitations” in May were 74% of 2019 levels, compared with 70% in May of 2023, according to the Real Estate Board of New York.

The figures are based on a REBNY analysis of Placer.ai location data. It tallies visits to 350 office buildings based on cellphone records and includes retail traffic in those buildings as well.

The May figure was slightly lower than 75% in April due to travel over Memorial Day weekend, and would have been higher than the previous month’s excluding the weekend.

Keith DeCoster, REBNY’s director of market data and policy, said, “We will watch closely to see if visitation rates increase, hold steady or decline during the summer in line with historic behavior.”