Austin's Sublease Space Stands at 2.4 Mil SF

AUSTIN-There’s about 2.4 million sf of office space on sublease market in Austin and about 800,00 sf of flex space, according to Mike Buls, who’s tracked the sublease market since February. He had previously lumped office and flex space together in his mid and end of the month reports, but is now separating them because it presented a skewed picture of the office situation.

Buls reported the citywide vacancy rate was 16% and 22.4% in the northwest submarket, where many of the companies caught in the collapse of the tech sector were located. The 1.6 million sf of sublease space in the northwest submarket is 67% of the city’s total. The north submarket’s 389,000 sf of empty flex space is 48% of the total available sublease flex space.

The latest report showed that a total of 159,000 sf of sublease space was leased in August, the most of in any month since March. “I believe there is a lot more out there that is either currently being negotiated or is yet unreported based talks with other brokers,” Buls said in his commentary accompanying the report. Buls, himself an Austin broker, compiles the report with information supplied by brokers throughout the city.