Friday, May 3, 2013, 11:40am
The vacancy rate for the Greater Boston office and RD market decreased from 17 percent to 16.9 percent during the quarter and select properties are beginning to recognize rent increases, according to a report from Colliers International focusing on the first quarter of this year.
“The red-hot” Cambridge market saw the vacancy rate decline from 10.5 to 8.9 percent, according to the report, adding that the first quarter results were nearly evenly split between the office and lab sectors.
In Boston, the vacancy rate dropped to 12.7 percent. “The strength of the recovery in the Financial District that began in 2012 carried into the quarter, as an additional 282,000 square feet was absorbed,” the report stated.
According to the report, in 2013 and 2014, an additional 2.4 million square feet will be added to the office inventory with Liberty Mutual’s 590,000-square-foot headquarters building in the Back Bay, two Vertex buildings totaling 1.1 million square feet at Seaport’s Fan Pier, a 500,000-square-foot office building for State Street Bank at Channel Center, and 200,000 square feet of office space at Millennium’s Burnham Building, part of a 1.2-million-square foot mixed-use development at Downtown Crossing.
The report also noted that the biggest uptick in investment activity occurred in the suburban office market, where approximately $470 million in sales closed or were put under contract in the first quarter.