Brighter Days Ahead for Denver-Area Office Market

DENVER-Despite negative or flat absorption in most the metropolitan-area submarkets, the local office market is on the rebound. At least that’s the word from Kevin Thomas, SVP of research and marketing at the Frederick Ross Co.

“I believe that the Denver office market has in fact begun to recover,” Thomas writes in a recent report. The office market will recover with the general economy, he says.

“The bad news is that the new job creation and the absorption that comes with it will come in fits and starts and as a result, the recovery is not likely to feel like real progress until 2004,” he says.

The “final purge” of under-utilized and shadow space by corporations may result in rising vacancies, even “while we are in recovery,” according to Thomas.

While he is confident the recovery is under way, at the same time, “the ground to be made up is significant,” he notes.

Office rents, he says, are especially being battered.

“Sunglasses may be premature, but a nascent economy recovery is beginning to show a glimpse of brighter days ahead for Denver’s commercial real estate markets,” Thomas says.