Southeast Suburban Office Market Improving

First, the projected 12-month leasing activity is more than 1.5 million sf in all but two of the months so far this year. In addition, the available sublease space has dropped by more than 250,000 sf since the beginning of the year. And the blocks of available space of more than 25,000 sf continues to decline, which means larger deals are being consummated.

For example, in December tenants seeking blocks of more than 100,00 sf of contiguous office space had 13, while now they have nine. Blocks of 75,000 sf have dropped slightly to 16 from 17, and blocks of 50,00 sf have fallen to 24 from 26, while blocks of 25,00 sf have fallen to 57 choices from 61.

However, there are now 110 choices for blocks of 10,000 sf, while there were 104 choices in December.

But it clearly remains a tenant market. "Regardless of the positive signs, we still have 25% availability and tenants will continue to aggressively shop the market to get the best deal," according to the report.

So far this year, the CB Richard Ellis team has completed 60 transactions for a total of 545,640 sf. In May, the team completed 16 transactions, ranging from 109,240 sf for Aurora Loan Services at 327 Inverness in the Inverness Business Park in Arapahoe County to 582 sf for SMS Engineering Inc. at Meridian One in the Meridian International Business Park in Douglas County.