Comercial vacancies on way down

KentXie

Senior Member
Joined
May 25, 2006
Messages
4,185
Reaction score
744
Hopefully this will initiate a huge high-rise boom.

Commercial vacancies on way down
By Scott Van Voorhis
Boston Herald Business Reporter
Tuesday, July 11, 2006


Boston?s corporate sky-rises, half empty just a few years ago, are filling up fast, a new report shows.

The vacancy rate for downtown Class A space has dipped below 10 percent for the first time in four years, commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield reports.

The Financial District vacancy rate has fallen to 9.6 percent, down from 12.4 percent a year ago.

The improvement represents a dramatic shift, with brokers not long ago wondering who would rent empty corporate suites across downtown. Local mainstays, like FleetBoston, have been faced with downsizing after acquisitions by out-of-state firms.

But steady expansion by small and midsized companies has helped fill that space, executives have said.

?The market is definitely looking better,? said Gil Dailey, a Cushman senior director. ?We are starting to see more companies grow.?

And the Financial District has led the way, outperforming all other office submarkets, including the Back Bay and South Boston, Cushman finds. Firms have absorbed 448,000 square feet of empty space in Boston?s business district over the past year, or roughly half the Prudential tower, Cushman reports.

?The commercial real estate market in Boston is improving at an impressive pace,? said Tom Collins, executive managing director and vice president of Cushman?s New England operations.
 
So is the theory that high housing prices are keeping companies away from here wrong, or are housing prices so high because of all the new high-paid corporate workers here? Either way, this is good news, and will help motivate developers to ramp up construction downtown.
 
Vacancies fall, rents rise in downton Boston
Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Vacancies were down and rents largely rose in the Boston area's commercial real estate market in the second quarter, according to the latest report from real estate brokerage CB Richard Ellis.

Vacancies, the percentage of unoccupied office, laboratory or industrial space on the market dropped in Boston, Cambridge and the surrounding suburbs last month. And rents climbed in every segment except in the market for suburban industrial space.

In Boston, where demand for office space pushed vacancies down to 9.4 percent in the quarter, a rising demand is also pushing up the cost of monthly rents and could soon lead to a "landlords' market," the report said. Space in the most premium offices are going for as much as $60 per square foot.

(By Keith Reed, Globe staff)
 

Back
Top