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What did Microsoft renew in Redmond?
On Jan. 9, 2026, GeekWire reported that Microsoft confirmed renewing space at Redmond Town Center, just north of its main Redmond campus. GeekWire, citing Broderick Group reporting and Microsoft’s confirmation, put the renewal at 396,228 square feet. Cushman & Wakefield’s Q4 2025 market report lists a 375,290-square-foot Microsoft renewal covering Redmond Town Center buildings 3 through 6. The reviewed sources do not explain the difference, so neither figure should be treated as a definitive reconciliation of the other.
GeekWire also reported Microsoft confirmed returning about 480,000 square feet at Millennium Corporate Park to use after the space had been offered for sublease. That is a separate occupancy development, not part of the Redmond Town Center lease figure.
How does the renewal fit Microsoft’s wider footprint?
The Redmond commitment came alongside a substantial reduction elsewhere. GeekWire reported Microsoft cut 750,000 square feet at Bellevue’s Bravern. Cushman & Wakefield’s Q4 report likewise recorded Microsoft vacating 750,000 square feet at The Bravern I & II. In the same quarter, Bellevue CBD vacancy was 26.0%, with the fully vacant 479,000-square-foot Four106 building also contributing to the market’s supply.
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Microsoft had announced a three-day in-office requirement for the Seattle region starting in February 2026, according to GeekWire’s Jan. 9 report; the report said the policy would later expand to other U.S. locations and eventually globally. That timing is the announced schedule reported at the time, not confirmation of current enforcement details. The policy may be relevant context for office use, but the available sources do not establish it as the cause of this renewal or of any market-wide change.
What do the latest Eastside office figures show?
The latest market snapshot in the reviewed reports is Colliers’ Q2 2026 Eastside report, published July 9, 2026. It showed vacancy easing from 22.4% in Q1 to 21.4% in Q2, a 100-basis-point decline that Colliers attributed to strong occupancy gains in Bellevue CBD. The report also recorded 22.1% availability, 411,242 square feet of net absorption, and a direct average asking rent of $51.84 per square foot.
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For comparison, Cushman & Wakefield’s Q4 2025 report put overall Eastside vacancy at 22.3%, up 240 basis points year over year, with 8.1 million square feet of direct vacancy and 855,000 square feet of sublease vacancy. Its Redmond submarket table listed 11.4% vacancy and an overall asking rent of $41.97 per square foot. These figures come from different quarters and reports, and their rent measures are not the same: Colliers’ figure is direct average asking rent, while C&W’s Redmond figure is overall asking rent.
| Measure | Reported figure | Source and period |
|---|---|---|
| Eastside overall vacancy | 21.4% | Colliers, Q2 2026 |
| Eastside availability | 22.1% | Colliers, Q2 2026 |
| Eastside net absorption | 411,242 square feet | Colliers, Q2 2026 |
| Eastside direct average asking rent | $51.84 per square foot | Colliers, Q2 2026 |
| Eastside overall vacancy | 22.3% | Cushman & Wakefield, Q4 2025 |
| Eastside direct vacancy | 8.1 million square feet | Cushman & Wakefield, Q4 2025 |
| Eastside sublease vacancy | 855,000 square feet | Cushman & Wakefield, Q4 2025 |
| Redmond vacancy | 11.4% | Cushman & Wakefield, Q4 2025 |
| Redmond overall asking rent | $41.97 per square foot | Cushman & Wakefield, Q4 2025 |
Why a renewal is not the same as new demand
A renewal can keep occupied space from becoming vacant, which supports a building’s occupancy. But it does not necessarily represent a new tenant entering the market or additional space being taken. Cushman & Wakefield explicitly excludes renewals from its leasing statistics. Net absorption, vacancy, availability, sublease space and asking rents describe different aspects of the market, so one renewal should not be used as a substitute for those broader measures.
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Geography matters, too. Bellevue CBD’s occupancy gains drove the Q2 Eastside vacancy decline reported by Colliers; that does not establish that Redmond Town Center’s renewal caused the change. Eastside-wide totals also conceal meaningful differences between submarkets such as Bellevue and Redmond.
How is the lease different from Microsoft’s campus refresh?
Redmond Town Center is leased office space; Microsoft’s East Campus Refresh is a separate campus project. The City of Redmond describes the refresh as replacing 12 older office buildings with 17 new buildings and approximately 3 million square feet, organized into five campus villages with pedestrian and bicycle amenities. The city page gives mid-2025 as the target completion date, but it describes a project plan rather than independently confirming that the work was completed on that schedule.
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What the renewal means for the Eastside market
The renewal is a meaningful retention of a large office footprint, especially alongside Microsoft’s reported return to use of Millennium Corporate Park space. Yet the company’s Bravern exit and the Eastside’s still-elevated vacancy show why the deal should be read as one positive occupancy signal amid a mixed market—not proof that the region’s office recovery is complete. Colliers’ Q2 improvement was tied to Bellevue CBD occupancy gains, while Microsoft’s Redmond lease is a separate transaction.
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- Work at the speed of your ideas – Built with the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite (12 Core) processors, Surface Laptop delivers fast, AI‑accelerated performance—making it the most powerful Surface laptop for everything from multitasking to demanding workloads.
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