There is something odd about the Oslo office market right now. The statistics say vacancy is around 7.8 percent according to UNION, the highest in several years, but not alarmingly high in a historical light. (The figure varies somewhat between the brokerages, depending on how they count, but the level sits just below eight percent regardless.) At the same time, most people out in the market feel it is slower than the number would suggest. Processes drag on, signing volumes are modest, and tenants are renegotiating rather than relocating. The market feels heavier than 7.8 percent.
Part of the explanation is well known: high construction and capital costs, weak employment growth, and a drive toward space efficiency that eats up the growth impulses. But there is another piece here that gets talked about less, and that we at Spacefinder encounter almost weekly. We are contacted by companies sitting on space they do not use, wanting to sublet all or part of their premises. Often it is a floor too many, an open-plan area that became too big once working from home settled in, or space that became surplus after a reorganisation. The premises sit there, the bill keeps running, and the tenant wants someone in.
That raises a question we think is worth digging into. If there is a lot of unused space that is not captured in the vacancy figures, then how large is the real vacancy? And if the answer is "larger than we think", what does that mean for landlords, who suddenly find themselves competing against their own tenants?
What subletting actually is
Let us start with the mechanics. Subletting arises when a tenant is locked into a binding lease but has seen their space needs change along the way. The lease cannot be terminated, but the space can be leased on to a new user, a subtenant, for the remaining period. For the one letting it out, it is about cutting a cost that would otherwise just bleed. For the one taking it on, the maths is often unexpectedly good.
Endre Selmar at DNB Næringsmegling describes the logic well. Sublease agreements are often made on more favourable terms than the head lease, the premises are usually let furnished and "as is", and the lock-in period is shorter because it is limited by when the head lease expires. One example he highlights is Azets, which sublet roughly half of its space in Drammensveien 151 to the technology company Convene.
Seen from a tenant's perspective in 2026, this is almost tailor-made for the times we are in. You get fully furnished premises, you avoid the fit-out investment, you can move in quickly, and you commit for a shorter term than a standard ten-year lease would require. In a market where no one quite knows where interest rates or their own headcount will be in three years, a short lock-in is a value in itself. Subletting therefore answers a need many tenants actually have right now, perhaps better than a landlord with a long standard lease can offer.
This is where it gets interesting for the rest of the industry. A sublease object is in practice a competitor to the landlord's own vacant premises, and often a competitor that undercuts on price and wins on flexibility. When we see more such objects come to market, frequently at a lower effective rent than traditional agreements, that is not a neutral observation. It means landlords are fighting for the same tenants against an offering they do not control themselves.
But how much is it really?
Here we hit a wall, and we think it is most honest to say so outright. There is no public figure for how much office space is being sublet in Oslo. None of the brokerages publish a separate volume for subletting, neither in square metres nor as a share of the market. We have looked, and it simply is not there.
There are several reasons for that. The most important one is almost a little surprising: in Norway, sublease space is as a rule counted within the ordinary vacancy statistics. Eiendomsspar is explicit about this and states that both sublease space and other vacant space are included in their vacancy figures. That differs from the American tradition, where "sublease" is often tracked as a separate category, a kind of shadow vacancy alongside the ordinary numbers.
That means our premise has to be nuanced a little. The "hidden" vacancy in Oslo is probably less dramatic than one might have feared, simply because the sublease space that actually gets listed is already captured in the statistics. A sublease object on Spacefinder, FINN or with a broker is vacant space, and it is counted as vacant space.
But then the interesting question only shifts one notch. Because the genuinely hidden vacancy is not the space that gets advertised. It is the space no one has listed yet. It is the floor a company pays for but barely uses now that half the staff work from home every other day. It is the square metres a business would gladly be rid of, but has not had the time, the energy, or found a tenant for. This space does not show up in any figure until someone decides to do something about it. And it is precisely these enquiries we receive.
We have no definitive answer for how large this volume is, and we will be careful about guessing at a number we cannot document. But we know the phenomenon is real and measurable where the data is actually collected. In central government, where the accounts are public, the Statsbygg report "Statens lokaler 2024" has documented that the real costs of space use have been reduced by around 1.3 billion kroner since 2019, a decline of 6.5 percent, and that space use has been cut by roughly 200,000 square metres. Even so, the state still leases around 30 square metres per office employee, against a space norm of 23, and the report estimates that space use could hypothetically be reduced by over 350,000 square metres, equivalent to 22 percent, if all offices were as efficient as those Statsbygg has advised on. When the state, which has full oversight of its own portfolio, still finds this much to gain, there is little reason to believe the private sector is positioned any differently.
Our assessment is therefore twofold. The real vacancy in Oslo is probably somewhat higher than the official figures, but not vastly higher, because most of the advertised sublease space is already counted. The real uncertainty lies in the paid-for but unused space that never reaches the market. It is a hidden buffer of capacity that can be released quickly if enough companies decide to act at the same time, and it is a risk landlords should be consciously aware of.
Why is everyone sitting still?
To understand why subletting becomes a topic right now, we have to talk about interest rates. And here Norway stands out.
Norges Bank raised the policy rate from 4.0 to 4.25 percent at its meeting in May 2026, and signalled that more could come. Inflation has been higher than expected, the forecast for 2026 was lifted to 3.4 percent, and expectations of rate cuts have all but disappeared. Some even fear further increases. For a market that is already slow, this acts as a brake. Higher financing costs dampen transactions, keep landlords' calculations under pressure, and make tenants hesitant. When you do not know whether your costs are going up or down, you postpone the big decisions. You stay put, and you renegotiate rather than relocate.
It is this standstill that drives subletting. A tenant locked into a lease but with too much space cannot simply leave. Subletting becomes the release valve. It is the way to adjust the cost when you cannot adjust the lease.
Sweden is doing the opposite
This becomes especially clear when you look across the border. In Sweden, the Riksbank has gone the other way. After sharp cuts through 2024 and 2025, the policy rate has stayed unchanged at 1.75 percent through the spring of 2026, and Handelsbanken expects it to remain there for the rest of the year. Inflation is below target, and the next move is expected to be upward, not before 2027. Where Norwegian businesses are bracing for a storm, the Swedish ones have already watched the bad weather pass.
The effect on behaviour is what you would expect. Stockholm has a far higher official office vacancy than Oslo. JLL measured 15.8 percent at the end of 2025, up 1.4 percentage points in a year, while other analysts work with lower figures depending on how the market is defined. Either way, the level is well above our just-under-eight percent. And yet the market is described with cautious optimism. Tenants are relocating more, they are actively adjusting their space, and the big deals are getting signed.
The clearest example came in 2026, when Ericsson decided to move its entire Stockholm operation, including its headquarters, from Kista to the Hagastaden district near the centre. In May the company signed leases for around 71,000 square metres across five buildings from Atrium Ljungberg and Castellum, in addition to a 24,000 square metre lease in the Infinity building signed earlier in the year. The Atrium Ljungberg portion alone, three buildings totalling 58,000 square metres on a fifteen-year term, is described by the landlord as the largest office lease in Swedish history and the largest known office deal in Europe so far this year. It is exactly the kind of long-term decision Norwegian tenants are reluctant to make right now. The reasoning Ericsson itself gives is about attracting talent and getting closer to an innovation environment, not about cutting costs at any price.
The paradox is worth dwelling on. Stockholm has far higher vacancy than Oslo, yet is experienced as a more optimistic market. Oslo has low vacancy on paper, but a mood marked by everyone staying put and waiting out the storm. That tells us something important: the vacancy figure alone does not capture how a market actually feels or functions. The direction of interest rates, and with it of expectations, matters just as much. The Swedes dare to relocate because they believe things are heading up. The Norwegians stay put because they do not know.
And when you stay put but have too much space, subletting is what you end up with. It is tempting to say that the Norwegian rate path does not just slow relocation down, it produces subletting.
What does this mean for landlords?
Here lies the uncomfortable insight for the landlord side. A slow market does not only hurt through fewer tenants. It also hurts because the tenants who do exist increasingly have an alternative to leasing directly from a landlord. They can lease from each other.
Sublease space competes on precisely the dimensions tenants prioritise in an uncertain market: lower rent, ready-made fit-out, fast move-in and a short lock-in. A landlord offering a shell on a ten-year lease is competing against furnished premises with a three-year commitment at a lower square-metre price. In many cases the sublease wins that contest, not because it is better at everything, but because it fits the need of the moment.
This reinforces a division we already see in the market. The best buildings in the centre, with high standards and an attractive location, are still doing well and achieving solid rents. It is in the secondary segment, in the fringe zones and the older buildings, that the pressure is felt. And it is precisely here that subletting bites hardest, because a good sublease object in a decent area can outcompete a mediocre directly-let premises on price and flexibility. Subletting is in effect a supply shock concentrated in the part of the market that is already struggling most.
What we are left with
We started with a question: what is the real vacancy? The honest answer is that we do not know exactly, and neither does anyone else, because sublease volume is not quantified publicly. That in itself is a point worth taking with us. A market that does not measure how much space is being sublet has a blind spot precisely where the competition is changing character.
What we believe is this. The official vacancy probably understates the market somewhat, but not dramatically, since advertised subletting is already counted. The real uncertainty lies in the paid-for but unused space that has not yet reached the market, a hidden capacity that can be released quickly if the mood tips. And the driving force behind all of it is interest rates. As long as Norges Bank keeps its foot on the brake while the Riksbank has let off, Norwegian tenants will keep sitting still and subletting what they do not need, while the Swedes relocate.
A couple of things are worth following going forward. If Norges Bank begins to cut, the renegotiation trend could turn toward more relocation and real absorption, and some of the hidden space will either be let for good or disappear from the accounts. If Oslo vacancy passes eight percent at the same time as more sublease objects come to market, the pressure on effective rents in the secondary segment becomes noticeable. And should anyone in the industry actually start quantifying sublease volume, we would all get a more accurate picture of the market we operate in.
Until then, the hidden vacancy remains exactly that. Hidden. But for a tenant who is searching, and for a landlord who wants to understand who they are really competing against, it is worth knowing that it exists, and that it grows every time a company stays put and weathers the storm with a floor too many.
Sources: UNION (Office Market Spring 2026, Transaction Spring 2026), DNB Næringsmegling, Eiendomsspar (OsloStudiet 2026), Malling & Co, Norges Bank, Sveriges Riksbank, Handelsbanken, JLL (Stockholm/Nordics Office), Statsbygg (Statens lokaler 2024), Ericsson and Castellum, as well as Spacefinder's own observations from the market.
