Atlanta Office Occupiers Increasingly Buying Their Own Buildings As Values Plummet
As Atlanta’s office struggles continue to deter investors from buying them, one group is swooping in: office tenants.

An increasing number of office renters have turned into office owners, often by outbidding bread-and-butter office investors but still grabbing facilities at a discount.
Occupiers purchased 28 office buildings last year in Metro Atlanta, up from 14 the year before, according to Colliers, citing CoStar data. Tenants were 34% of all office buyers in the metro area in 2024, up from 24% the year before.
And while corporate tenants have always been part of a pool of potential office investors, they have as of late been buying higher-profile office buildings than in the past.
“We’re just in that time of the cycle that it just makes sense to buy an office building if you’re a user,” Bull Realty namesake Michael Bull told Bisnow. “When we look back upon today, we’re going to see it made the most financial sense to buy an office building.”
The largest corporate sale in 2024 was Eastern Glass and Aluminum buying the six-story, 157K SF Overlook at Sugarloaf office building for nearly $24M from Crossgate Partners in October, according to Colliers.
The top three deals also included healthcare provider PruittHealth picking up Ashford Perimeter, a 300K SF suburban office building in Central Perimeter, for $22.8M. Ashford Perimeter last sold to CP Group in 2005 for $46.3M, according to DeKalb County records.
And cybersecurity firm Fortinet bought 1300 Parkwood Circle, a 217K SF office building a mile from Truist Park, in October for $15.75M, a 20% discount from the price paid by the previous buyer, an affiliate of RealOp Investments, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Fortinet used the same playbook in New York City, buying 548 West 22nd St., a 45K SF building in the West Chelsea neighborhood, for $50M at the tail end of the year with plans to use it as its local offices, The Real Deal reported.
Will Yowell, vice chairman of CBRE, said dislocation in the office market — with values plummeting as a wave of loans made when interest rates were at rock bottom now face maturity — is giving office tenants a chance to pivot to ownership.

Office properties traded at an average of $179 per SF nationally last year as of December, according to CommercialEdge, down 24% from 2022. But at the same time, office demand has rebounded, with a third of office users surveyed by CBRE in 2024 projecting a need to increase their office footprint.
“With the lack of competition out there, I think you’re seeing these users buying assets at very favorable pricing, well below replacement costs,” Yowell said.
Companies also reap benefits from ownership. They control their properties, avoid entering into leases that have cost escalations over time and reap tax benefits, Bull said. Some companies could also realize an upside benefit when the office market turns by selling the facility and leasing back the space.
“In two to three years, the value of these buildings can be completely different. It’s more of a windfall than we thought,” Bull said.
Bull said banks are more willing to lend to a company’s effort to invest in an office building since it will occupy it.
Tenant buyers are often willing to pay more than traditional investors, Bull said, because they are often still getting a discount to the last purchase price and it is less costly than entering into long-term leases or building a facility from the ground up at today’s construction prices, which can range anywhere from $200 to more than $500 per SF.
He is marketing 1700 Water Place, a 38K SF office building in the Cumberland/Galleria office market in Atlanta. The sellers have already fielded several offers from investors ranging from $60 to $70 per SF.
But the most likely buyer will be an unidentified user willing to pay in excess of $100 per SF for the property, Bull said.
“This is just going to happen more and more right now until the market turns and the office market stabilizes,” he said.