SAN JOSE—Vacancies in Silicon Valley ran slightly higher than national figures at 10.2% during the fourth quarter 2017. This is 150 basis points higher than the year before and 80 points higher than office vacancies throughout the US, according to Transwestern.

Rents for class-A office space throughout the Silicon Valley market outpaced national figures at $46.92 (office gross rent direct), which is 63.3% higher than the rest of the US. This was up by 5% from 2016 and 41% over the past 10 years, says Adrianna Boursalian, research coordinator, Transwestern.

“Silicon Valley reported approximately 13.8 million square feet of office leasing activity/gross absorption in 2017,” Boursalian tells GlobeSt.com. “This is double from the previous year of 7.2 million square feet of gross absorption. Last year saw the highest leasing activity in over a decade: up more than 5 million square feet from 2007.”

Moreover, the amount of office construction has doubled in the last five years, with approximately 5.6 million square feet underway at the end of 2017, compared to 2.5 million square feet in 2012. Among the projects under construction, almost half is preleased. About 4.8 million square feet is expected to deliver throughout 2018, GlobeSt.com learns.

Of the many impressive leases last year, Synopsys snagged the largest lease at the tail end of 2017, inking class-A space totaling 360,000 square feet in Sunnyvale. Amazon also signed a lease at Moffett Towers in Sunnyvale–a 350,000-square-foot space that is slated to deliver in the first quarter of 2018, and Palo Alto Networks occupied 310,000 square feet of space in Santa Clara in the third quarter of 2017.

As for sales, there were some whoppers. Phase III of Campus @ 3333 on Scott Boulevard in Santa Clara sold to Menlo Equities for $610 million. As part of Google's massive expansion in Silicon Valley, the tech giant purchased Net App Inc.'s office portfolio totaling 374,705 square feet at East Java Drive and Geneva Drive in Sunnyvale for $306 million or $816 per square foot. The third largest sale of 2017 included Rockwood Capital's space at North Mary Avenue in Sunnyvale to TriStar Capital for $831 per square foot–one of Apple's alternative campuses in Silicon Valley.

Confidence in the market's performance through 2018 looks to remain high, especially in light of recent tax cuts, to which the business community is responding favorably thus far.