BOSTON—If there were one word to describe the greater Boston commercial real estate market in the first quarter it would be flat. For the most part, absorption and vacancy rates were basically unchanged in the region as compared to the fourth quarter of 2013.

Cassidy Turley released its first quarter MarketWatch research report on Wednesday for the greater Boston market, which includes Cambridge and surrounding suburbs. The commercial real estate services firm reports the overall availability rate for Boston in the first quarter is 18.2%, down slightly from the 18.3% posted at year's end 2013.

In its report Cassidy Turley did note a number of trends that have emerged of late. For example, a number of shared workplace firms have entered the Boston market, such as WeWork, which leased 100,000 square feet at 745 Atlantic Ave. and Cambridge Innovation Center, which took 69,000 square feet of space at 50 Milk St. in Boston. There are reports in the market that another shared space firm is considering leasing space at the Hancock Tower, Cassidy Turley states in its report.

Earlier this year Izotope decided to lease 35,000 square feet of space at 60 Hampshire St. in Cambridge and convert the lab space there to office use. Akami made the same decision last fall, leasing 51,000 square feet at One Kendall Square and converting lab space there to office as well. Cassidy Turley notes that with an almost five percentage point spread between East Cambridge office (8%) and lab (12.9%) availabilities, this could be the start of a trend where more large tenants look to convert lab to office space.

A trend taking place in the northern suburban markets is the redevelopment of older commercial properties, such as 3 Boott Mills in Lowell, 14 Audubon Road in Wakefield and 109 Powdermill Road in Maynard, to residential developments.

A growing sector of the Greater Boston regional market has been the plethora of build-to-suit projects. Cassidy Turley reports that TripAdvisor, Keurig, The Broad Institute, Pfizer, Novartis, Goodwin Procter, PricewaterhouseCoopers and State Street are all pursuing build-to-suits in the region.