ORANGE COUNTY, CA-The Orange County office market postedpositive absorption for the first time in 11 quarters and showedother signs of what might be the beginning of a recovery, accordingto two newly released second-quarter market reports by CB RichardEllis and Voit Real Estate Services. Voit's report still showednegative absorption during the second quarter, but both CBRE andVoit tell GlobeSt.com that the second-quarter results have themhopeful that the market may have reached bottom and started slowlyturning for the better.

"It's only one quarter, so we can't say for sure that it's thebeginning of a trend, but it's encouraging," CBRE managing directorJeff Osborn said of the company's second-quarter OC office report,which showed positive absorption of 198,697 square feet. Thatcompared with negative net absorption of 597,440 square feet in thesecond quarter of last year, according to CBRE.

Voit's second-quarter report showed 143,257 of negative netabsorption in the quarter, but Voit VP of market research JerryHoldner pointed out that the figure was down substantially from thenegative 608,703 square feet in the second quarter of last year.Both Holdner and Osborn said that despite the differences in theirabsorption figures for the second quarter, both companies' marketsurveys are showing the same general trends, and differences inspecific statistics are easily explained by differences in the sizeof inventory the different firms track and other aspects of howvarious real estate firms assemble their reports, such as when thecutoff dates are for data that goes into the reports. Voit, forexample, tracks approximately 110 million square feet in thecounty, compared with CBRE's approximately 100 million squarefeet.