Middle Market Digest: This Week in the South and Mountain Regions

Employment counts remained steady with the DFW economy ranking second in the US with a 2.7% job growth rate. As such, DFW continues to show a strong demand for new office product coming to market, according to CBRE’s Q1 DFW Office MarketView. There are 20 projects in the construction pipeline with a pre-lease rate of 57.7%, highlighting the demand for new office product. The market ended the first quarter with negative (470,212) square feet of absorption, mainly due to a sizeable corporation moving into its own building. Asking rates were dampened slightly for a DFW-wide average of $24.25, a decrease of 73 basis points from last quarter. A combination of corporate consolidations into smaller spaces and newly delivered construction kicked up vacancy rates by 90 basis points to 20.5%.—Lisa Brown

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