Commercial real estate in 2026 is characterized by differentiated performance across markets and asset types. Office recovery trajectories vary meaningfully by metro, retail performance reflects format-specific resilience, and domestic migration patterns continue to influence long-term demand fundamentals.

Return to Office Patterns 

Many higher-income metros continue to trail 2019 benchmarks but drive the strongest Year-over-year gains, signaling a potential inflection in office utilization trends.

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Miami Continued Leading RTO in 2025; San Francisco Led the Year-over-Year Office Recovery

Major Insights:

• Sunbelt markets along with New York, NY are closest to pre-pandemic office visit levels, while many coastal gateway and tech-heavy markets trail 2019 benchmarks. 

• Many of the metros still furthest below pre-pandemic levels are now posting the strongest year-over-year gains.

Key Takeaways for CRE Professionals: 

• Leasing velocity may accelerate in coastal markets – particularly in high-quality assets – even if full recovery remains distant. The expansion of AI-driven firms and innovation-focused employers could support incremental demand in these ecosystems, reinforcing a bifurcation between top-tier buildings and the broader office inventory.

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Median Household Income in Market Correlates With Office Recovery

Major Insights:

• Higher-income metros such as San Francisco show deeper structural gaps vs 2019, perhaps due to their higher concentration of hybrid-eligible workers – yet those same metros are driving the strongest YoY recovery in 2025.

• Accelerating growth in 2025 suggests that shifting employer policies, workplace enhancements, or broader labor dynamics may be beginning to drive increased in-office activity.

Key Takeaway for CRE Professionals: 

• Office performance in higher-income markets will increasingly depend on workplace quality and policy alignment. Assets that support premium amenities, modern design, and tenants implementing clear in-office expectations are likely to influence sustained office visits and leasing velocity in these metros.

Shopping Center Patterns

Retail traffic is broadly improving across states, though performance varies by region and format.

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Shopping Center Visits Increased in 2025

Major Insights:

• Retail traffic growth is broad-based, with the majority of states showing year-over-year gains in shopping center traffic in 2025.

• Still, even as many states are posting gains, pockets of softer performance remain – specifically in parts of the Southeast and Midwest. 

Key Takeaway for CRE Professionals: 

• Broad-based traffic gains indicate consumer demand is more durable than anticipated. In growth states, operators can shift from defensive stabilization to capturing upside – pushing rents, upgrading tenant quality, and accelerating leasing while momentum holds. In softer markets, the focus should remain on protecting traffic through strong anchors and necessity-driven tenancy.

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Convenience-Based Performance Pulling Ahead

Major Insights: 

• Convenience-oriented formats are leading traffic growth, with strip/convenience centers materially outperforming all other shopping center types, and neighborhood and community centers also posting gains. This reinforces the strength of proximity-driven, daily-needs retail.

• Destination retail formats, including regional malls and factory outlets, continue to lag, while super-regional malls were essentially flat. Larger-format, discretionary-driven centers are not capturing the same momentum as convenience-based formats.

Key Takeaway for CRE Professionals: 

• The data suggests that consumer behavior continues to favor convenience, frequency, and necessity over destination-based shopping. Operators should lean into service-oriented and daily-needs tenancy in strip and neighborhood formats, while mall operators may need to further reposition assets toward experiential, mixed-use, or non-retail uses to stabilize traffic. 

Migration Patterns 

Domestic migration continues to reshape state-level demand, with gains clustering in select growth corridors.

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Northern Planes, Southeast Lead State-Level Migration Growth

Major Insights: 

• Domestic migration drove population gains in parts of the Southeast and Northern Plains, while several Western and Northeastern states show flat or negative migration.

• Some previously strong in-migration states in the South and West, including Texas and Utah, are showing softer movement, while other established migration leaders such as Florida and the Carolinas continue to attract net inbound residents.

Key Takeaway for CRE Professionals: 

• Migration flows are shifting relative to prior years. Operators should temper growth assumptions in states where inflows are slowing and prioritize markets where inbound demand remains strong.

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Florida Metros Magnet For Domestic Migration

Major Insights: 

• Florida dominates metro-level migration growth, with eight of the top ten U.S. metros for net domestic migration are in Florida.

• The markets with the strongest domestic migration-driven population gains are not major gateway cities but smaller, often retirement- or lifestyle-oriented metros, suggesting that migration-driven demand is increasingly flowing to secondary markets.

Key Takeaway for CRE Professionals: 

• CRE operators should prioritize expansion, leasing, and site selection in high-growth secondary metros where population inflows can directly translate into retail spending, housing absorption, and service demand.

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Key Takeaways

1. Expanded grocery supply is increasing overall category engagement. New locations and deeper food assortments across formats are bringing shoppers into the category more often, rather than fragmenting demand.

2. Grocery visit growth is being driven by low- and middle-income households. Elevated food costs are leading to more frequent, budget-conscious trips, reinforcing grocery’s role as a non-discretionary category.

3. Short, frequent trips are a major driver of brick-and-mortar traffic growth. Fill-in shopping, deal-seeking, and omnichannel behaviors are pushing visit frequency higher, even as trip duration declines.

4. Scale is accelerating consolidation among large grocery chains. Larger retailers are using their size to invest in value, assortment, private label, and execution, allowing them to capture longer and more engaged shopping trips.

5. Both large and small grocers have viable paths to growth. Large chains are winning by competing for the full grocery list, while smaller banners can grow by specializing, owning specific missions, or offering compelling value that earns them a place in shoppers’ routines.

What is Driving Grocery Growth in 2026?

While much of the retail conversation going into 2026 focused on discretionary spending pressure, digital substitution, and higher-income consumers as the primary drivers of growth, grocery foot traffic tells a different story.

More Trips, More Formats, and a Shift Toward Mission-Driven Shopping

Rather than being diluted by new formats or eroded by e-commerce, brick-and-mortar grocery engagement is expanding. Visits are rising even as grocery supply spreads across wholesale clubs, discount and dollar stores, and mass merchants. At the same time, growth is being powered not by affluent trade areas, but by low- and middle-income households navigating higher food costs through more frequent, targeted trips. Shoppers are showing up more often and increasingly splitting their trips across retailers based on value, availability, and mission – pushing grocers to compete for portions of the grocery list instead of the full weekly basket. 

Scale Captures Demand – But Fragmented Trips Leave Room to Grow

The data also suggests that the largest grocery chains are capturing a disproportionate share of rising grocery demand – but the multi-trip nature of grocery shopping in 2026 means that smaller banners can still drive traffic growth. By strengthening their value proposition, specializing in specific products, or owning specific shopping missions, these smaller chains can complement, rather than compete with, larger one-stop destinations.

The Core Drivers of Grocery Growth in 2026

Ultimately, AI-based location analytics point to a clear set of grocery growth drivers in 2026: expanded supply that increases overall engagement, more frequent and mission-driven trips, and continued traffic concentration among large chains alongside new opportunities for smaller banners.

1. Expanded Grocery Supply Is Fueling Growth While Traditional Grocery Stores Hold Their Lead 

Expanded Grocery Access Is Increasing Overall Category Engagement

One driver of grocery growth in recent years is simply the expansion of grocery supply across multiple retail formats. Wholesale clubs are constantly opening new locations and discount and dollar stores are investing more heavily in their food selection, giving consumers a wider choice of where to shop for groceries. And rather than fragmenting demand, this broader availability appears to have increased overall grocery engagement – benefiting both dedicated grocery stores and grocery-adjacent channels.

Traditional Grocery Stores Maintain a Stable Share of Visits Despite Growing Competition

Grocery stores continue to capture nearly half of all visits across grocery stores, wholesale clubs, discount and dollar stores, and mass merchants. That share has remained remarkably stable thanks to consistent year-over-year traffic growth – so even as grocery supply increases across categories, dedicated grocery stores remain the primary destination for food shopping.

Mass Merchants Face Share Pressure as One-Stop Competition Expands

Meanwhile, mass merchants have seen a decline in relative visit share as expanding grocery assortments at discount and dollar stores and the growing store fleets of wholesale clubs give consumers more alternatives for one-stop shopping. 

2. Low and Medium-Income Households Driving Larger Visit Gains 

Grocery Growth Is Shifting Toward Lower- and Middle-Income Trade Areas

While much of the broader retail conversation heading into 2026 centers on higher-income consumers carrying growth, the trend looks different in the grocery space. Recent visit trends show that grocery growth has increasingly shifted toward lower- and middle-income trade areas, underscoring the distinct dynamics of non-discretionary retail. 

Higher Food Costs Likely Driving More Frequent, Budget-Conscious Trips

For lower- and middle-income shoppers, elevated food costs appear to be translating into more frequent grocery trips as consumers manage budgets through smaller baskets, deal-seeking, and shopping across retailers. In contrast, higher-income households – often cited as a key growth engine for discretionary retail – are contributing less to grocery visit growth, likely reflecting more stable shopping patterns or a greater ability to consolidate trips or shift spend online.

Necessity-Driven Shopping Is Powering Grocery Visit Growth

This means that, in 2026, grocery growth is not being propped up by high-income consumers. Instead, it is being fueled by necessity-driven shopping behavior in lower- and middle-income communities – reinforcing grocery’s role as an essential category and suggesting that similar dynamics may be at play across other non-discretionary retail segments.

3. Rise in Short Grocery Trips Driving Offline Grocery Gains

More Frequent, Shorter Grocery Trips

Another factor driving grocery growth is the rise in short grocery visits in recent years. Between 2022 and 2025, the biggest year-over-year visit gains in the grocery space went to visits under 30 minutes, with sub-15 minute visits seeing particularly big boosts. As of 2025, visits under 15 minutes made up over 40% of grocery visits nationwide – up from 37.9% of visits in 2022. 

Omnichannel Grocery Shopping Fueling Short Trips to Physical Stores 

This shift toward shorter visits – especially those under 15 minutes – is driven in part by the continued expansion of omnichannel grocery shopping, as many consumers complete larger stock-up orders online and rely on in-store trips for order collection or quick, fill-in needs. At the same time, the rise in short visits paired with consistent YoY growth in grocery traffic points to additional, behavior-driven forces at play – consumers' growing willingness to shop around at different grocery stores in search of the best deal or just-right product. 

Grocery Shoppers Are Splitting Trips Across Multiple Retailers

Value-conscious shoppers – particularly consumers from low- and middle-income households, which have driven much of recent grocery growth – seem to be increasingly shopping across multiple retailers to secure the best prices. This behavior often involves making targeted trips to different stores in search of the strongest deals, a pattern that is contributing to the rise in shorter, more frequent grocery visits. At the same time, other grocery shoppers are making quick trips to pick up a single ingredient or specialty item – perhaps reflecting the increasingly sophisticated home cooks and social media-driven ingredient crazes. In both these cases, speed is secondary to getting the best value or the right product.

Different Trip Types, One Outcome: Continued Store Traffic Growth

So while some shorter visits reflect a growing emphasis on efficiency – as shoppers use in-store trips to complement primarily online grocery shopping – others appear driven by a preference for value or product selection over speed. Despite their differences, all of these behaviors have one thing in common – they're all contributing to continued growth in brick-and-mortar grocery visits. Grocers who invest in providing efficient in-store experiences are particularly well-positioned to benefit from these trends. 

4. Consolidation as a Growth Driver 

Large Chains Continue to Pull Ahead in Visit Share

As early as 2022, the top 15 most-visited grocery chains already accounted for roughly half of all grocery visits nationwide. And by outpacing the industry average in terms of visit growth, these chains have continued to capture a growing share of grocery foot traffic.

Scale Enables Broader Assortment, Stronger Value, and Better Execution

This widening gap suggests that scale is increasingly enabling grocers to reinvest in the factors that attract and retain shoppers. Larger chains are better positioned to invest in broader and more differentiated product selection, stronger private-label programs that deliver quality at accessible price points, competitive pricing, and operational excellence across stores and omnichannel touchpoints. These capabilities allow top chains to serve a wide range of shopping missions – from quick, convenience-driven trips to more intentional visits in search of the right product or ingredient.

Consolidation at the top of the grocery category is reinforcing a virtuous cycle: scale enables better value, selection, and experience, which in turn draws more shoppers into stores and supports continued grocery traffic growth.

5. Competition for "Share of List" Growing Grocery Visit Pie 

Both Long and Short Trips Are Driving Grocery Traffic Growth

In 2025, the top 15 most-visited grocery chains accounted for a disproportionate share of visits lasting 15 minutes or more, while smaller grocers captured a larger share of the shortest trips. As shown above, larger grocery chains, which tend to attract longer visits, grew faster than the industry overall – but short visits, which skew more heavily toward smaller chains, accounted for a greater share of total traffic growth. Together, these patterns show that both long, destination trips and short, targeted visits are driving grocery traffic growth and creating viable paths forward for retailers of all sizes.

Large and Small Chains Win by Competing for Different Shopping Missions

Larger chains are more likely to serve as destinations for fuller shopping missions, competing for the entire grocery list – or a significant share of it. But smaller banners can grow too by competing for more short visits. By specializing in a specific product category, owning a clearly defined shopping mission, or delivering a compelling value proposition, smaller grocers can earn a place in shoppers’ routines and become a deliberate stop within a broader grocery journey. 

What These Trends Mean for Grocery Growth in 2026

As grocery moves deeper into 2026, growth is being driven by the cumulative effect of how consumers are navigating food shopping today. Expanded supply has increased overall engagement, higher food costs are driving more frequent and targeted trips, and shoppers are increasingly willing to split their grocery list across retailers based on value, availability, and mission.

Looking ahead, this suggests that grocery growth will remain resilient, but unevenly distributed. Retailers that clearly understand which trips they are best positioned to win – and invest accordingly – will be best placed to capture that growth. Large chains are likely to continue benefiting from scale, consolidation, and their ability to serve full shopping missions, while smaller banners can grow by earning a defined role within shoppers’ broader grocery journeys. In 2026, success in grocery will be less about winning every trip and more about consistently winning the right ones.

Key Takeaways:

To optimize office utilization and surrounding activity in 2026, stakeholders should: 

1. Plan for continued, but slower, office recovery. Attendance continues to rise and has reached a post-pandemic high, but moderating growth suggests the return-to-office may progress at a more gradual and incremental pace than in prior years.

2. Account for growing seasonality in office staffing, local retail operations, and municipal services. As office visitation becomes increasingly concentrated in late spring and summer, offices, downtown retailers, and cities may need to plan for more predictable peaks and troughs by adjusting hours, staffing levels, and local services accordingly, rather than relying on annual averages.

3. Align leasing strategies with seasonal demand. Stronger attendance in Q2 and Q3 suggests these quarters are best suited for leasing activity, while softer Q1 and Q4 periods may be better used for renovations, repositioning, and targeted activation efforts designed to draw workers in.

4. Design hybrid policies around midweek anchor days. With Tuesdays and Wednesdays consistently driving the highest office attendance, employers can maximize collaboration and space utilization by concentrating meetings, programming, and in-office expectations midweek.

5. Reduce early-week commute friction to support attendance. Monday office attendance appears closely correlated with commute ease, suggesting that reliable and efficient transportation may be an important factor in early-week office recovery.

6. Prioritize proximity in leasing and development decisions. Visits from employees traveling less than five miles to work have increased steadily since 2019, reinforcing the value of centrally located offices and housing near employment hubs.

When Policy Isn’t Enough

2025 was the year of the return-to-office (RTO) mandate. Employers across industries – from Amazon to JPMorgan Chase –  instituted full-time on-site requirements and sought to rein in remote work. But the year also underscored the limits of policy. As employee pushback and enforcement challenges mounted, many organizations turned to quieter tactics such as “hybrid creep” to gradually expand in-office expectations without triggering outright resistance.

For employers seeking to boost attendance, as well as office owners, retailers, and cities looking to maximize today’s visitation patterns, understanding what actually drives employee behavior has become more critical than ever. This reports dives into the data to examine office visitation patterns in 2025 – and explore how structural factors such as weather, commute convenience, and workplace proximity have emerged as key differentiators shaping how and when, and how often workers come into the office. 

Office Attendance Reaches a New High, But Momentum Slows

National office visits rose 5.6% year over year in 2025, bringing attendance to just 31.7% below pre-pandemic levels and marking the highest point since COVID disrupted workplace routines. At the same time, the pace of growth slowed compared to 2024, signaling a possible transition into a steadier phase of recovery.

With new return-to-office mandates expected in 2026, and the balance of power quietly shifting towards employers, additional gains remain likely. But the trajectory suggested by the data points toward gradual progress rather than a return to the more rapid rebounds seen in 2023 or 2024. 

Weather, Workations, and a New Kind of Seasonality 

Before COVID, “I couldn’t come in, it was raining” would have sounded like a flimsy excuse to most bosses. But today, weather, travel, and individual scheduling are widely accepted reasons to stay home, reflecting a broader assumption that face time should flex around convenience.

This shift is visible in the growing seasonality of office visitation, which has intensified even as overall attendance continues to rise. In 2019, office life followed a relatively steady year-round cadence, with only modest quarterly variation after adjusting for the number of working days. In recent years, however, greater seasonality has emerged. Since 2024, Q1 and Q4 have consistently underperformed while Q2 and Q3 have posted meaningfully stronger attendance – a pattern that became even more pronounced in 2025. Winter weather disruptions, extended holiday travel, and the growing normalization of “workations” appear to be pulling some visits out of the colder, holiday-heavy months and concentrating them into late spring and summer.

For employers, office owners, downtown retailers, and city planners, this emerging seasonality matters. Staffing, operating budgets, and programming decisions increasingly need to account for predictable soft quarters and peak periods, making quarterly planning a more useful lens than annual averages. Leasing activity may also convert best in Q2 and Q3, when districts feel most active. Slower quarters, meanwhile, may be better suited for renovations, construction, or employer- and city-led programming designed to give workers a reason to show up.

The Quest for Convenience and the TGIF Workweek

The growing premium placed on convenience is also evident in the persistence of the TGIF workweek – and in the factors shaping its regional variability.

Before COVID, Mondays were typically the busiest day of the week, followed by relatively steady attendance through Thursday and a modest drop-off on Fridays. Today, Tuesdays and Wednesdays have firmly established themselves as the primary anchor days, while Mondays and Fridays see consistently lower activity. And notably, this pattern has remained essentially stable over the past three years – despite minor fluctuations – as workers continue to cluster their in-office time around the days that offer the most perceived value while preserving flexibility at the edges of the week.

Commute Friction Shaping the Start of the Week

At the same time, while the hybrid workweek remains firmly entrenched nationwide, its contours vary significantly across regions – and the data suggests that convenience is once again a key differentiator.

Across major markets, a clear pattern emerges: Cities with higher reliance on public transportation tend to see weaker Monday office attendance, while markets where more workers drive alone show stronger early-week presence. While industry mix and local office culture still matter, the data points to commute hassle as another factor potentially shaping Monday attendance. 

New York City, excluded from the chart below as a clear outlier, stands as the exception that proves the rule. Despite nearly half of local employees relying on public transportation (48.7% according to the Census 2024 (ACS)), the city’s extensive and deeply embedded transit system appears to reduce perceived friction. In 2025, Mondays accounted for 18.4% of weekly office visits in the city, even with heavy transit usage.

The contrast highlights an important nuance: Where transit is fast, frequent, and integrated into daily routines, it can support office recovery, offering a potential roadmap for other dense urban markets seeking to rebuild early-week momentum. 

Proximity as a Key Attendance Driver

Another powerful signal of today’s convenience-first mindset shows up in commute distances. Since 2019, the share of office visits generated by employees traveling less than five miles has steadily increased, largely at the expense of mid-distance commuters traveling 10 to 25 miles.

To be sure, this metric reflects total visits rather than unique visitors, so the shift may be driven by increased visit frequency among workers with shorter, simpler commutes rather than a change in where employees live overall. Still, the pattern is telling: Workers with shorter commutes appear more likely to generate repeat in-person visits, while longer and more complex commutes correspond with fewer trips. Over time, this dynamic could shape office leasing decisions, residential demand near employment centers – whether in urban cores or in nearby suburbs – and the geography of the workforce.

Friction in Focus 

Taken together, the data paints a clear picture of the modern return-to-office landscape. Attendance is rising, but behavior is no longer driven by mandates alone. Instead, workers are making rational, convenience-based decisions about when coming in is worth the effort.

For cities, the implication is straightforward: Ease of access matters. Investments in transit reliability, last-mile connectivity, and housing near employment centers can all play a meaningful role in shaping how consistently people show up. For employers, too, the lesson is that the path back to the office runs through convenience, not just compulsion, as attendance gains are increasingly driven by how effectively organizations reduce friction and increase the perceived value of being on-site.