SAN FRANCISCO—Rising levels of employment, surging and robustrates of new leasing activity, and a near-record number ofinvestment sales recorded at the end of the third quarter in theSan Francisco office market have resulted inpositive conditions not seen since before The Great Recession. Thisis according to the recent third quarter survey report fromColliers International.

Overall vacancy levels continued to plummet andstood at 7.5% at the end of the third quarter,compared with the 8.3% recorded during the second quarter and wellbelow what Colliers calls the “10% tipping point,” which signals abalanced market, a threshold broken one year ago.

“San Francisco and the Bay Area have become the literal centerof the world's knowledge-based economy,” said Colliers'Alan Collenette, regional executive managingdirector for the firm's brokerage operations in San Francisco. “The24-hour heartbeat is right here, downtown. Having graduated, inhalf a generation, from everyone's favorite tourist destination toa global economic powerhouse, San Francisco has no competitionamongst other US cities, with the exception of New York.”