Class A Asking Rents Unchanged from 4Q 2000

The report does not address net effective rents--the final negotiated rents as opposed to asking rents--which have dropped as well as owners dole out heavy concessions to keep existing tenants and lure what new ones can be found. Patricia Raicht, Grubb & Ellis' senior research director for the West Coast tells GlobeSt.com that net effective rents in the Portland area are off between 10% and 15%. Figures for the other West Coast markets were not immediately available.

Portland's asking rents have remained stable because it did not have the rent spikes that occurred in Seattle and the Bay Area following the so-called dot-com boom, which caused a sustained period of high demand and low vacancy as fast-growing, venture-capital funded start-ups began securing extra space for projected growth. When the market crashed and the venture capital dried up, the fast-growing companies stalled, pushed their space back onto the market, creating high vacancy and low demand in less than nine months.

"The Portland market remains fundamentally very sound because we never reached that fever pitch and so never had to make the adjustment" when the market came back to its senses, says Raicht. Indeed, Portland remains one of the least expensive major office markets on the West Coast. The report ranked Portland 47th of 61 worldwide markets in terms of cost, up from 49th a year ago.

San Francisco fell from 4th last year to 16th this year with an average class A asking rates of $37.71 per sf per year, full service, down from $77.50 a year ago. San Jose, with its asking rates down to $45.31 from $83.64, fell from 3rd to 12th, while Oakland (down to $33.76 from $43.18) fell from 16th to 22nd and Seattle (down to $31.32 from $36.45) from 19th to 27th.

New York, the highest ranking city in the United States, gained one spot to 7th with an average class A asking rate of $59.16, which is off 8.3% from the start of last year. London and Tokyo remain 1st and 2nd, respectively, with asking rates of $149.04 (down 1.7%) and $107.20 (down 4.3%). Paris jumped from 6th to 3rd with an asking rate of $69.31, off just 0.3% from a year ago.