Office Space in Northbrook, Illinois

Van Vlissingen and Co. represents office and medical office tenants, buyers, and landlords in Northbrook, Illinois. Gordon Lamphere and our office team focus on tenant representation from 3,000 to 50,000 square feet, with leasing, sales, and property management for buildings up to 1,000,000 square feet.

Van Vlissingen and Co. performs more than 100 commercial real estate transactions annually, and our team has completed over $3 billion in transaction volume. We have operated continuously in Chicagoland commercial real estate since 1879, and we manage 870 acres and more than 6 million square feet across three corporate parks we developed ourselves.

Northbrook Is the Largest Suburban Office Market We Cover

By a substantial margin, and it is also the most expensive.

Roughly twice Skokie’s inventory and nearly six times Elmhurst’s. Between 401,289 and 426,520 square feet is currently available across 98 to 115 listings — roughly 7.5 to 8 percent of inventory — with the largest office property at 187,509 square feet and the largest individual availability at 48,221 square feet.

The average asking rate is $28.31 per square foot, with rents available as low as $12.50 depending on building and specification. That makes Northbrook the most expensive general office market we cover, ahead of Skokie’s $29.63 ceiling market only on breadth of choice. Class A accounts for between 20.87 and 27.14 percent of listings depending on source — the highest Class A share we have measured anywhere.

But it is a low-rise market

Office buildings in Northbrook range in height from one to five floors. There are no towers. Five and a third million square feet of office sits in thirty-five low-rise suburban buildings, which is a genuinely different physical character from a market with the same square footage stacked vertically.

For an occupier that means surface and structured parking rather than deck queues, ground-floor access, and floor plates designed for horizontal circulation. For a landlord it means the competitive set is buildings, not floors.

Figures per PropertyShark and CommercialCafe, referring to office properties of at least 25,000 square feet. Comparative figures from our Skokie, Elmhurst, and Palatine office pages, from the same platforms. These reflect current data and change.

The Median Tells You More Than the Average

This is the most useful analytical point available about the Northbrook office market, and it comes from two numbers most people never compare.

A median well below the average always means the same thing: a long tail of small units with a handful of large ones pulling the average up.

So the typical available space in Northbrook is not four thousand square feet. It is closer to two thousand three hundred, and the 48,221 square foot listing and its peers are doing the work of raising the mean.

What that means in practice

If you need 2,000 to 4,000 square feet, this is a deep market with genuine choice across 98 to 115 listings, and you should be negotiating hard, because the competition among landlords for a tenant your size is real.

If you need 20,000 square feet or more, the picture inverts. The number of buildings that can accommodate you is small, the tail of small suites is irrelevant to your search, and the negotiation runs the other way. The largest availability is 48,221 square feet.

And if you are a landlord, the median is the number that describes your competition. Pricing a 2,500 square foot suite against a market average of $28.31 that is inflated by large-block availability is how buildings sit vacant while the owner blames the market.

We compare like with like, by size band, rather than against a headline average.

The Highest Class A Share We Have Measured, and an Age Figure That Needs Explaining

Quality

Class A accounts for between 20.87 and 27.14 percent of Northbrook office listings, with Class B at 58.26 to 60.28 percent and Class C at 12.58 percent. Set that against Crystal Lake at 10.22 percent Class A and Oak Park’s 41.12 percent Class C.

Northbrook also carries five LEED-certified or LEED-proposed options among current listings, with two buildings having earned certification. That is unusual outside a central business district, and for a tenant with sustainability reporting obligations it narrows a search considerably.

The age figure, handled honestly

Two sources give different post-2000 shares for this market while citing the same absolute square footage: one reports 19.23 percent of the market delivered in or since 2000, the other 8.33 percent of office properties completed in or since 2000 — both citing 287,840 square feet.

Because both cite the same absolute figure, the difference is almost certainly share by square footage against share by property count. In practical terms: roughly one building in twelve is post-2000, but those buildings hold closer to a fifth of the space — which tells you the newer buildings are larger than average.

Separately, 13.89 percent of Northbrook office space sits in buildings renovated at least once since 2000 — between Mount Prospect’s 16.67 percent and Crystal Lake’s 5.88 percent on our renovation ladder.

We would not quote either age figure without the explanation, because alone each one misleads. Checking what a statistic actually counts before using it is the kind of thing that matters when a lease term depends on it.

Class and age figures per CommercialCafe and CommercialSearch. Comparative figures from our Crystal Lake, Oak Park, Mount Prospect, and Palatine office pages.

A Note on Northbrook Vacancy Data

We are going to be direct about something most market commentary glosses over.

Published data for the Northbrook office market in 2023 states an overall vacancy rate of 11.01 percent, alongside submarket vacancy running from a “lowest” of 21.45 percent in North Shore – South to a highest of 25.81 percent in North Shore – North.

Those figures cannot all be correct. An overall rate of 11.01 percent is arithmetically impossible if the lowest submarket rate is 21.45 percent.

So we are not going to quote you a Northbrook vacancy rate on this page. We would rather tell you the data is inconsistent than repeat a number that may be wrong and let you make a ten-year decision on it.

What we do instead, for any specific assignment, is build the picture from the ground: current availability in the buildings that actually compete with your requirement, how long each space has been marketed, what has let recently and at what terms, and what is coming available on lease expiry. That takes longer than quoting a published figure, and it is the only version worth relying on.

Vacancy figures as published by CommercialCafe market trends for 2023. The internal inconsistency is in the source, not in our reading of it.

Where Is Office Space in Northbrook?

Northbrook sits within the North Shore submarket, which published data splits into North and South sections — the North Shore – North submarket averages $24.86 per square foot, with some asking rents averaging $30.61.

• The Skokie Boulevard and Lake Cook Road corridors — the principal office concentration, with the largest buildings and the strongest highway access.
• The Edens Expressway (I-94) frontage — the highest-visibility corporate positions.
• The Willow Road and Waukegan Road corridors — professional, medical, and service office.
• Downtown Northbrook and the Metra station area — smaller professional office on the Milwaukee District North line.
• The Shermer Road and Dundee Road areas — flex, service, and smaller professional space.

Northbrook Executive Suites is cited as the largest new office development in the city at 31,500 square feet, per pipeline data from April 2024.

With 35 buildings of consequence, a proper search covers all of them rather than sampling by corridor. We do that as standard.

Office Tenant Representation in Northbrook — 3,000 to 50,000 SF

Our office tenant representation practice covers the 3,000 to 50,000 square foot range across corporate, professional, medical, and back office requirements. Northbrook’s availability spans that entire band, from small suites up to a 48,221 square foot single listing.

For occupiers entering or expanding in Northbrook, we run the full process: requirement definition, market survey across listed and off-market availability, building inspection, and comparative analysis of total occupancy cost rather than headline rent.

Four things drive a Northbrook decision.

Your size band, not the market average. With a median of 2,332 square feet against an average of 3,883 to 4,349, the headline $28.31 describes a blend rather than your market. Below about 5,000 square feet you are in a deep, competitive market with real leverage. Above 20,000 you are in a narrow one. We price against your band.

Class, honestly assessed. Northbrook has the highest Class A share we have measured, plus five LEED-certified or proposed options. Whether you need Class A is a separate question from whether it is available, and paying Class A rates for Class B use is an avoidable and common error.

Building age, understood properly. Roughly one building in twelve is post-2000, and those buildings hold closer to a fifth of the space. The specific building matters far more than the market average, and we inspect rather than assume.

The Cook County tax line. As on every Cook County page we write, real estate tax is the largest variable in occupancy cost and it differs materially by property. Our Oak Lawn office page carries a published worked example: one 50,068 square foot Cook County building paid $693,878 in property tax, or $13.86 per square foot. We model on a gross effective basis and examine assessment history before a letter of intent.

We negotiate the LOI and the lease — free rent, tenant improvement allowances, expansion and contraction rights, renewal and termination options, and parking. We work both sides of the table in Northbrook, and we tell you which side we are on before an assignment begins.

Office Leasing, Sales & Property Management in Northbrook — Buildings Up to 1,000,000 SF

For owners and investors we handle office leasing, investment sales, and property management, from single-tenant buildings to multi-building campuses up to 1,000,000 square feet.

Landlord Representation

We build and execute the leasing plan: positioning against comparables from transactions we negotiated ourselves, marketing to the regional and national occupier base, prospect qualification, and negotiation through lease execution. In a market with 98 to 115 competing listings and 47 active brokers from 26 firms, differentiation is not optional — a building that markets itself on the same terms as everything else lets last and lets cheapest. We report activity honestly, including when the market is telling you something you did not want to hear.

Pricing Against the Median, Not the Average

This is where Northbrook owners most often lose money quietly. The $28.31 market average is pulled upward by large-block availability. If your building offers 2,000 to 3,000 square foot suites — where the median sits at 2,332 — your competitive set is the long tail, not the headline.

We benchmark by size band and by class, and we will tell you when a rate is above what your actual competition is asking. A suite priced against the wrong comparable set sits vacant while the owner concludes the market is soft.

Investment Sales

Office assets trade on tenant credit, remaining lease term, building quality, and the durability of the employment base. Northbrook’s scale is itself a factor: 5,346,073 square feet across 35 buildings, the highest Class A share we have measured, five LEED-certified or proposed listings, and a North Shore location. We work with 1031 exchange buyers on identification and closing deadlines — and we underwrite occupancy from building-level evidence rather than from published vacancy data for this market, for the reasons set out above.

Who Manages Office Property in Northbrook?

Van Vlissingen and Co. provides comprehensive property management for office and medical office assets in Northbrook:

• Lease administration, rent collection, and enforcement of lease terms
• CAM and tax reconciliation, prepared to withstand tenant audit
• Building systems, HVAC, elevator, and life safety maintenance programs
• Janitorial, landscaping, snow removal, and parking management
• Vendor selection, contract negotiation, and performance oversight
• Monthly financial reporting, annual budgeting, and capital planning
• Tenant relations, renewal coordination, and suite turnover

Small-suite administration is the defining operational reality here. A median available size of 2,332 square feet in a five-million-square-foot market means an enormous number of individual tenancies, lease events, and relationships per square foot. Low-rise buildings carrying dozens of small tenants generate far more management activity than a single large occupier in the same footprint.

Where a building carries LEED certification, ongoing compliance and reporting obligations belong in the management scope from the start rather than being discovered at recertification. And Cook County tax reconciliation is large enough here that an error becomes a material dispute rather than a rounding one.

What Is Van Vlissingen’s Office Experience?

Van Vlissingen and Co. performs more than 100 commercial real estate transactions annually, and our team has completed over $3 billion in transaction volume.

The relevant credential for Northbrook is scale in low-rise multi-tenant office. We developed and still manage 870 acres and more than 6 million square feet across three corporate parks: Corporate Woods in Vernon Hills at 340 acres and more than 60 buildings, roughly 25 percent office; Corporate Grove in Buffalo Grove at 200 acres with over 3 million square feet of office, research, high-tech, light industrial, and distribution space; and Lincolnshire Corporate Center at 330 acres.

Sixty-plus low-rise buildings let largely in small and mid-sized suites is the same operating problem Northbrook presents at a comparable scale: constant lease events, pricing by size band rather than by headline, and the administrative load of many tenancies. We have run it on our own balance sheet since the mid-1980s.

See our full transaction history.

Why Work With Our Northbrook Office Brokers?

• More than 100 commercial real estate transactions annually, and over $3 billion in team transaction volume
• A defined focus: 3,000 to 50,000 SF tenant representation and buildings up to 1,000,000 SF for leasing, sales, and management
• Pricing by size band, because a $28.31 average describes a blend rather than your market
• The median-versus-average distinction applied, since the typical available suite is 2,332 SF rather than 4,000
• Published vacancy data checked rather than repeated, because the figures for this market do not reconcile
• Age statistics explained rather than quoted, because two sources count them differently
• Direct experience operating more than 60 low-rise multi-tenant buildings on our own account
• A fourth-generation firm, continuously in Chicagoland commercial real estate since 1879

Nearby Markets We Serve

Northbrook sits in northern Cook County within the North Shore submarket, adjoining Glenview to the south, Deerfield to the north, Wilmette and Winnetka to the east, and Wheeling and Prospect Heights to the west, with Edens Expressway access. Office requirements frequently span those lines. We also broker office space in

• Glenview
• Skokie
• Evanston
• Lake Forest

We also handle retail, industrial, and property management requirements across Chicagoland, and general commercial brokerage.

Northbrook Office Real Estate FAQs

How large is the Northbrook office market?

It is the largest suburban office market we cover, at 5,346,073 square feet across 35 buildings of at least 25,000 square feet — roughly twice Skokie’s 2,685,136 and nearly six times Elmhurst’s 937,004. Between 401,289 and 426,520 square feet is currently available across 98 to 115 listings, roughly 7.5 to 8 percent of inventory. The largest office property is 187,509 square feet and the largest individual availability is 48,221 square feet. Notably, buildings range in height from one to five floors, so this is five and a third million square feet in low-rise suburban form rather than towers.

What does office space cost in Northbrook?

The average asking rate is $28.31 per square foot, with rents available as low as $12.50 depending on building and specification. That makes Northbrook the most expensive general office market we cover. The North Shore – North submarket, which includes Northbrook, averages $24.86 per square foot with some asking rents averaging $30.61.

Why does the median available size matter more than the average?

Because they differ substantially. The average available office size in Northbrook is 3,883 to 4,349 square feet, but the median is 2,332. A median well below the average always means a long tail of small units with a handful of large ones pulling the average up. So the typical available space here is closer to 2,300 square feet than 4,000. If you need 2,000 to 4,000 square feet this is a deep market with real negotiating leverage. If you need 20,000 or more, the number of buildings that can accommodate you is small and the negotiation runs the other way.

What is the quality of Northbrook’s office stock?

Class A accounts for between 20.87 and 27.14 percent of listings depending on source — the highest Class A share we have measured anywhere — with Class B at 58.26 to 60.28 percent and Class C at 12.58 percent. For comparison, Crystal Lake runs at 10.22 percent Class A and Oak Park at 41.12 percent Class C. Northbrook also carries five LEED-certified or LEED-proposed options among current listings, with two buildings having earned certification, which is unusual outside a central business district.

How old is Northbrook’s office stock?

The published figures need explaining rather than quoting. One source gives 19.23 percent of the market as delivered in or since 2000, totaling 287,840 square feet; another gives 8.33 percent of office properties as completed in or since 2000, citing the same 287,840 square feet. Because both cite the same absolute figure, the difference is almost certainly share measured by square footage against share measured by property count. In practical terms: roughly one building in twelve is post-2000, but those buildings hold closer to a fifth of the space, which means the newer buildings are larger than average. Separately, 13.89 percent of Northbrook office space is in buildings renovated at least once since 2000.

What is the office vacancy rate in Northbrook?

We are not going to quote you one, and the reason is worth knowing. Published 2023 data for this market states an overall vacancy rate of 11.01 percent alongside submarket rates running from a “lowest” of 21.45 percent to a highest of 25.81 percent. Those figures cannot all be correct — an overall rate of 11.01 percent is arithmetically impossible if the lowest submarket rate is 21.45 percent. We would rather tell you the data is inconsistent than repeat a number that may be wrong and let you make a ten-year decision on it. For any specific assignment we build the picture from current availability in the buildings that actually compete with your requirement.

Where is office space located in Northbrook?

The Skokie Boulevard and Lake Cook Road corridors hold the principal concentration with the largest buildings and strongest highway access. The Edens Expressway frontage carries the highest-visibility corporate positions. Willow Road and Waukegan Road carry professional, medical, and service office. Downtown Northbrook around the Metra station on the Milwaukee District North line carries smaller professional office, and the Shermer Road and Dundee Road areas carry flex, service, and smaller professional space. Northbrook Executive Suites is cited as the largest new office development in the city at 31,500 square feet, per April 2024 pipeline data.

What size office space does Van Vlissingen and Co. handle in Northbrook?

Our office tenant representation practice covers 3,000 to 50,000 square feet in Northbrook and across Cook County, spanning corporate, professional, medical, and back office requirements. On the leasing, sales, and property management side we handle buildings up to 1,000,000 square feet. Northbrook’s availability spans that entire band, from small suites up to a 48,221 square foot single listing.

Who is the best commercial office broker in Northbrook?

In a market with 98 to 115 competing listings and 47 active brokers from 26 firms, choose one that prices by size band rather than against a headline average, and that checks published data rather than repeating it. Van Vlissingen and Co. owns and operates more than 60 low-rise multi-tenant buildings at Corporate Woods in Vernon Hills, part of 870 acres and more than 6 million square feet under management — the same operating problem Northbrook presents at a comparable scale. We perform more than 100 transactions annually with over $3 billion in team volume, and the firm has operated in Chicagoland commercial real estate since 1879. Gordon Lamphere leads the office practice.

Do you manage office property in Northbrook?

Yes. We provide comprehensive property management for Northbrook office and medical office assets, covering lease administration, CAM and tax reconciliation, building systems and life safety programs, janitorial and parking management, vendor oversight, and monthly financial reporting. Small-suite administration is the defining operational reality: a median available size of 2,332 square feet in a five-million-square-foot market means an enormous number of individual tenancies and lease events per square foot. Where a building carries LEED certification, ongoing compliance and reporting obligations belong in the management scope from the start.