Boston Hits In-Office High Point in July

It’s not 2019 — not even close — but Boston’s in-office attendance bounced that way in July.

Last month proved to be the busiest in terms of office visits since the onset of the pandemic in 2020, Axios reported. The data comes courtesy of Placer.ai, which tracks foot traffic via cell phones across roughly 1,000 office buildings around the country, particularly those with ground-floor retail offerings.

July office visits in Beantown were approximately 69.5 percent of what they were in July 2019, before the pandemic decimated the commercial market.

The peak reported in Boston isn’t far off the national average. In July, office visits across the country rose slightly to 72.2 percent of July 2019 levels, according to Placer.ai. Boston also ranks above cities such as Chicago and well above San Francisco, which trails the pack of the 11 cities tracked by the data.

Boston office landlords may be green with envy when looking at some of their colleagues, though. Miami led the way with 90.6 percent of office visits last month compared to July 2019, while New York City followed closely with 89.6 percent.

Improving occupancy may be cold comfort to Boston office owners, as it only tells a shred of the story. Vacancy rates have been high and commercial property’s outsized importance in city tax revenue has sparked fears of an “urban doom loop.”

Office building values have also been plummeting in recent years. Not long ago, an office building in the city’s financial district sold for $3.9 million, 72 percent below what the property traded for only five years earlier.

— Holden Walter-Warner