The northwest, a hub for high-tech space takers, accounts for 53% of the available space and is carrying a direct and sublease vacancy of 13% based on fourth-quarter closing numbers. Mike Buls, rapidly becoming Austin's accredited source for the bi-weekly numbers, says it's the largest aggregate vacancy since 1996. The citywide vacancy is standing at 10%. The consultant and tenant rep's first-quarter calculations are still a few weeks out.

"The clearest thing," Buls tells GlobeSt.com about the just released stats, "is wherever the dot-coms like to be is the hardest hit." The northwest submarket has been attracting dot-coms in record numbers for the past several years because it's more in keeping with that California lifestyle that many are accustomed to living, he says. And, 50% of the empty space is in blocks of 25,000 sf and up.

But it's not all gloom and doom, Buls says. There is a lot of space rapidly being absorbed. "We're hoping it's going to lease up between 7% and 8% per month," he says in a wave of optimism for the second and third quarters. Those reporting periods will be the most telling. Buls says 40% of the 103,000 sf that had belonged to Globeset already has been filled. "It's a very well situated building and it's not ridiculously expensive in comparison to the downtown," he explains. The defunct Garden.com's 34,871 sf also has been recaptured, according to the report. The office and industrial sublease space is fetching base rates ranging from $8.16 per sf in the southwest tier to $31.27 gross for a class-A building in the northwest sector.

Buls, like others in the Austin market, says the prevailing 10% to 13% vacancy rate isn't bad news. "Last year, people were taking what they could get," he says. Today, there's open space and competitive rates.

Buls says this year will be spent taking back what had been gained in 2000 when 3.4 million sf had been leased. A normal leasing year, he says, totals 1.4 million sf to 1.8 million sf. "With nearly two million sf back, almost everything we gained last year as a hot market is coming back to us as sublease space," he tells GlobeSt.com. And, there's another three million sf in the pipeline, giving the Austin region a 2 1/2-year supply of new and existing space. "The rates will have to come down," he predicts.