Consider this: The first economic shocks rumbled through thescores of Austin dot-com companies holed up in the city's northwestsubmarket. As they cut back or shut down, hundreds of thousands ofsquare feet of sublease space opened up in the northwest submarket.For a while, the northwest accounted for more than 60% of thecity's sublease space.

Now, the amount of northwest sublease space has leveled off andreceded to 49.3% of the city's sublease total, according to theBuls-Hodge report. The economic reverberations, however, arebouncing through the city's other submarkets, where the dot-comconcentration wasn't as high as in the northwest. Those sectors areadding open sublease at a faster rate than they have been and theirtotal has surpassed the northwest's total. "These aren't dot-comsthat are causing this increase," says Mike Buls of Buls-HodgeConsulting, who compiles the report. "These are different types oftechnology, software firms other high-tech firms."

The sublease total stands at 3.242 million sf, the highest sinceBuls began the report in February. The citywide vacancy rate,including direct and sublease space, is 21.4%, according to Buls."I'm kind of stunned that it keeps going up," he says. Marketstabilization will be reflected when trend lines for othersubmarkets flatten out as the northwest submarket has, he says.