Citizens Private Bank Expands West Palm Beach Presence As Wealth Firms Continue To Target Downtown

/in , , /by

Citizens Private Bank is deepening its presence in Palm Beach County with a West Palm Beach office, adding another financial services name to a downtown market that has become increasingly attractive to private banking, wealth management and investment firms.

The bank’s West Palm Beach office is located at 190 Lakeview Ave., where Citizens says its local team provides private banking support, customized client service and access to relationship managers, private wealth managers and advisory professionals. The office operates Monday through Friday and is led locally by Regional Market Executive James B. Meany, with Augie Vulaj serving as private bank office manager.

Citizens Private Bank signed a 10-year lease for a 2,700-square-foot private banking office on the ground floor of the newly built office tower, plus 9,300 square feet of office space on the 12th floor. Move-in was earlier this month.

Cushman & Wakefield represented the bank, while Tower Commercial Real Estate represented the landlord.

The move follows Citizens Private Bank’s earlier Palm Beach expansion. In October 2025, Citizens announced the opening of its Palm Beach regional office at 400 Royal Palm Way, calling it part of a broader South Florida growth strategy driven by rising client demand. At the time, Citizens said it had added wealth teams in Palm Beach, Boca Raton and Naples over the prior year.

For West Palm Beach, the expansion is another signal that the city’s office market continues to benefit from the growth of South Florida’s financial sector. New and renovated Class A office space has helped attract firms seeking proximity to Palm Beach’s high-net-worth residents, corporate executives and family offices. One Flagler, one of the city’s most visible new office towers, has been positioned as part of the next wave of high-end downtown office development.

Citizens’ growth also reflects a broader shift in how financial institutions are serving clients in Palm Beach County. Rather than relying only on traditional branch networks, private banks are investing in relationship-driven offices designed around advisory services, wealth planning, lending, deposits and personalized client support.

Citizens Financial Group, based in Providence, Rhode Island, reported $222.7 billion in assets as of Sept. 30, 2025. The company offers retail, small business, commercial banking, lending, treasury management, wealth management, capital markets and related financial services.

For office brokers and landlords, Citizens’ expansion reinforces a key theme in the West Palm Beach market: financial services tenants continue to view the city as a strategic location for client-facing operations. As more wealth, banking and investment firms establish offices in the area, demand for well-located, high-quality office space is likely to remain closely tied to Palm Beach County’s growing role as a financial services hub.

Source:  SFBJ

Fort Lauderdale Leads South Florida’s 2025 Office Investment Growth

/in , , /by

Broward County posted the strongest growth in South Florida office investment in 2025, outpacing both Miami-Dade and Palm Beach on a year-over-year basis. Office sales volume in Broward jumped 93 percent to nearly $651.5 million, according to an analysis of CBRE data, helped in large part by Fort Lauderdale’s $221 million sale of Bank of America Plaza at Las Olas City Centre.

Miami-Dade still led the tri-county region in total office dollar volume, reaching about $1 billion for the year, but that figure was down almost 26 percent from 2024. One of the biggest drivers there was the $274.4 million all-cash purchase of Sabadell Financial Center in Brickell by the family office of Zara founder Amancio Ortega, a deal that lifted Miami’s fourth-quarter total to more than $653 million.

Palm Beach County also turned in a solid year, with office sales rising more than 51 percent to just under $536 million. Taken together, the numbers suggest that while Miami still commands the largest office trades in South Florida, investor momentum in 2025 spread more broadly across the region, with Broward standing out for the sharpest gain.

The broader backdrop remains mixed. Nationally, demand has been strongest for higher-quality office properties, while older buildings continue to face pressure from weaker fundamentals and conversion discussions. In South Florida, office investment peaked in 2021, but 2025’s results show that buyers are still active when well-located assets come to market.

 

Source: The Real Deal

Palm Beach County Suburban Office Market Heats-Up

/in , /by

Downtown West Palm Beach’s office market is thriving—but rising rents are making it harder for some longtime tenants to keep a foothold in the city core.

The surge is largely fueled by billionaire developer Stephen Ross, whose aggressive investment and development strategy has helped transform downtown West Palm into one of South Florida’s most competitive office markets. His projects have drawn a steady stream of high-profile tenants and helped accelerate the city and county’s long-term growth vision.

That momentum, however, has driven rents sharply higher across downtown, including in buildings Ross does not own. As a result, some established tenants are being priced out and are relocating to suburban areas of Palm Beach County, where new office development is beginning to follow demand.

One notable example is law firm Lytal, Reiter, Smith, Ivey & Fronrath, which last year moved most of its operations from the Northbridge Centre in downtown West Palm—where it had leased space for roughly 40 years—to Palm Beach Gardens. The firm cited renewal proposals that were several times higher than its previous rent, reflecting what some tenants describe as unsustainable downtown pricing.

According to local brokers, asking rents in excess of $100 per square foot are prompting more companies to explore suburban alternatives. That shift is helping spark new office construction outside the urban core.

In Palm Beach Gardens, Gatsby Florida—an affiliate of Gatsby Enterprises—is planning The Modern, an eight-story, 220,000-square-foot office building with a six-story parking garage at 11200 RCA Center Drive. The project, expected to deliver in 2027, is being positioned in part to attract out-of-state firms and executives relocating to South Florida. Gatsby acquired the site for $17.5 million in 2022.

Meanwhile, in Boca Raton, construction is underway on The Aletto, a two-building office campus totaling 140,000 square feet that is already approximately 60 percent pre-leased.

Developers and brokers say these projects reflect growing demand for high-quality suburban office space that offers modern amenities without downtown pricing.

Ross, who launched Related Ross after stepping back from New York-based Related Companies in 2024, has made downtown West Palm the centerpiece of his development focus. His portfolio includes roughly a dozen office buildings in various stages, along with residential, hotel, and mixed-use projects.

By leveraging longstanding relationships—particularly within the financial services sector—Ross quickly filled many of his office properties with out-of-state tenants. More recently, his firm has also pushed to position Palm Beach County as an emerging technology hub.

While downtown West Palm continues to gain national attention, the ripple effects of its success are reshaping the broader county office market—creating new opportunities, but also new challenges, for tenants navigating the region’s rapid growth.

Broward Office Rents Continue To Climb As Palm Beach Market Holds Steady

/in , /by

The office market in South Florida is showing varied momentum across its regional hubs. In Broward County, rents are moving upward, while in Palm Beach County performance is more modest but steady.

Broward County

Office asking rents in Broward rose about 2.8 % year-over-year, reaching an average of approximately $41.96 per square foot at the end of Q2 2025.

Vacancy in the county’s office market stood at roughly 16.0 %, up slightly from the prior year.

Leasing activity has softened—with the year-to-date net absorption showing a loss of about 138,355 square feet—yet investor interest remains strong, particularly in high-quality or downtown assets.

Sub-markets like the downtown Fort Lauderdale CBD saw average asking rents climb to nearly $54.96 per square foot, underscoring the premium for better-located, newer office product.

On the development side, the pipeline is limited—there is currently one notable office project under construction – T3 Fat Village East – (±174,790 square feet) which is scheduled for delivery in 2026.

Palm Beach County

In Palm Beach, the office market is more stable. Vacancy is notably lower—hovering around 9 %—and growth is being driven by demand for newer, amenity-rich Class A buildings in well-located sub-markets.

Asking rents for Class A office space in Palm Beach are reported around $40-43 per square foot gross, reflecting moderate but consistent expansion.

Given the limited new supply, the outlook is cautiously optimistic: demand is expected to support moderate rent growth while occupancies hold steady.

Time For Trophy Office Development

/in , /by

If investors and developers are going to get into or stay in office, the best move is probably prime or Class A, according to CBRE.

They examined the top 2% to 4% of office properties — their definition of prime or Class A — across different metro markets in the U.S. That was in the context of the flight-to-quality many in the industry think is happening.

One of the difficulties in understanding the office marketplace is what one might call the tyranny of the average and advertised. First, there are distributions in all data; not everything experiences the same conditions. Second, when some story lines get broadly publicized, they can take on lives of their own.

“The growth in vacant space from Q1 2020 to Q2 2022 was entirely driven by the 10% of hardest hit buildings,” they wrote. “In fact, excluding the bottom 10% of properties that experienced the most vacant square footage increase, net absorption has been positive since 2020.”

About 70% of the hardest-hit buildings were actually Class A-, particularly the lowest tier, built in the 1980s and 1990s.

If Class A- might extend into B and lower, these observations, while not exactly the same, are similar in concept to those from other experts. Back in February, Brookfield argued that 90% of all office vacancies are in the bottom 30% of buildings, “largely characterized by older offices with limited amenities and reduced functionality.” The top 25% of buildings, in comparison, see stable vacancy rates and record-high rents.

CBRE modeled the attractiveness of “new best-in-class” office buildings across 16 different markets. “The fraction of a market made up of prime space is an important variable in determining attractiveness of development,” they wrote.

“Markets with a low fraction of prime space, such as Boston or Miami, may be good candidates for new development due to relatively fewer competitors for top tenants,” they said. “Markets such as Seattle, with a high fraction of prime space already, may be over served.”

But a “high fraction” is relative. Seattle’s percentage of price was a hair over 18%. On the low end, Washington, D.C. barely cracked 4%.

Also, prime properties don’t outperform in every market. Take Austin, with about 11% prime. The city faces the high amounts of new delivered properties, and some of them aren’t in the hottest submarkets, so they remain relatively vacant. Or there can be imbalances of supply and demand.

There’s a natural question coming out of the above. If companies are moving upscale, can they all? Is there enough prime or A+ — or even plain old A — to satisfy everyone? At the beginning of the year, Cushman & Wakefield answered yes, but not for long.

The most attractive and desirable office space is only between 10% and 15% of total inventory, the firm said at the time. Demand for the buildings is high. Top-tier space in gateway markets enjoys vacancy rates that are 700 basis points lower than the remaining market. “Direct vacancy in the best buildings is sub-11%,” an impressive number in relative comparison.

Investors and developers then have to look for the right balance, availability of prime properties, yes, but ones where conditions keep them wanted.

 

Source:  GlobeSt.

Palm Beach County Businesses Holding On CRE Footprints: Survey

/in , /by

More than a quarter of executives of businesses in Palm Beach County expect to expand their commercial real estate footprints this year, according to a survey released Thursday.

Now for the 700,000-square-foot question: Will that demand, combined with a continued inflow of out-of-state companies and workers, be enough to fill all the new office space going up in Downtown West Palm Beach?

The Business Development Board of Palm Beach County, a public-private economic development organization, and financial services firm Kaufman Rossin polled 544 CEOs, business owners and executives.

Fully 65 percent of respondents said they’ll keep their current commercial real estate footprints in 2024, while 29 percent said they will lease or buy additional space. Just 6 percent expect to pull back on their real estate occupancy.

The trends around employee counts look even more optimistic. Some 55 percent of respondents said they plan to expand their payrolls in 2024, while 40 percent say they’ll maintain their current staffing counts. Just 5 percent anticipated reductions in headcounts.

South Florida’s job growth has helped keep the region’s office market from following the rest of the nation into distress territory. Office vacancy in Palm Beach County was 11.6 percent at the end of 2023, and rents are rising, according to Cushman & Wakefield. (By contrast, Manhattan’s overall office vacancy rate was 22.8 percent at year’s end, the brokerage reported.)

Palm Beach County’s overall asking rents rose to $46.21 per square foot, up 5.9 percent from a year earlier, Cushman & Wakefield reported. Class A rents rose 4.2 percent to $52.43. Class B product recorded a 5 percent annual increase, closing out the year at an average asking rent of $41.12 per foot.

Downtown rents jumped 11.5 percent in 2023, to $64.90 per square foot. Class A space in the submarket recorded a 14 percent increase during the same period, up to $77.27.

Amid the burgeoning demand, Related Companies has embarked on an office building spree. The completions of 300 Banyan and One Flagler will bring 215,000 square feet of new office space to Downtown West Palm Beach, and an additional 585,000 square feet are under construction in the submarket, Cushman & Wakefield said.

However, despite the job growth, Palm Beach County employers also don’t expect a mass return to offices. According to the survey, 68.2 percent of respondents work fully on site now, and 67.4 percent expect that situation to hold in two years. Meanwhile, 13.5 percent of Palm Beach County employers say they’re now fully remote, and 14.2 percent expect to be working entirely outside their offices in two years.

Since the pandemic, the in-migration of jobs and employers to South Florida has offset the trend toward working from home.

“There has been a transformation over the past five years with the buildup of industry and influx of business and population,” Rick Slater, Kaufman Rossin’s managing principal for Palm Beach and Broward counties, said in a statement.

Growth comes with some downsides, too, including traffic congestion and soaring housing costs, both cited as challenges by respondents to the survey.

 

Source:  Commercial Observer