FORESTVILLE, MD-A recent spate of leasing and investment sale deals in the Maryland suburbs is raising hopes that activity in secondary markets in the DC area may be on the upswing. Certainly that is the impression local and regional brokers are receiving. “I would describe it this way,” Dean Zang, senior director with Marcus & Millichap’s National Retail Group, tells GlobeSt.com. “The primary market, DC, has been on fire, perhaps all along. The secondary markets are now catching on fire. And the tertiary markets, well, the fire engine is on the way to the scene.”

Zang offers another, more quantifiable way, to chart the improving markets in the areas beyond the District: a retail center recently traded here at a six-and-a-half cap rate. A year ago, Zang says, that deal would have been in the 7s.

The center is a 19,620-square-foot, two tenant building fully leased by Walgreens and Sherwin-Williams. It traded for $10.8 million or $555 per square foot. Zang and colleagues Mark Taylor, Derrick Dougherty and Christopher Munley represented the seller. It traded to an out-of-market 1031 exchange buyer.

For Prince George’s county, a mid six cap rate is very good, Zang says. If this same property had been located in, for example, Bethesda, it could have gone for 100 basis points less.

Two leases, both announced by Scheer Partners in the past week, add weight to the argument that the suburbs are becoming more active. JDA Software has inked a 10-year lease for 38,000 square feet at the DANAC Stiles corporate campus in Rockville, MD. The building, located at 9713 Key West Ave., is part of a three-building, 282,000-square-foot complex.

In Gaithersburg, Novavax inked one of this year’s largest life sciences leases in the region, taking 74,209 square feet of laboratory, manufacturing and office space. The company will occupy the entire 53,000-square-foot lab and manufacturing facility at 20 Firstfield Rd. and 21,209 square feet at 22 Firstfield Rd. Both buildings are owned by Alexandria Real Estate Equities.