IRVINE, CA—Despite Orange County office deliveries expected to reach close to600,000 square feet in 2016 and 2.2 million square feet in 2017,completions won't all come at once, helping absorption to catch up,JLL's senior managing director JeffIngham tells GlobeSt.com. The firm's Q4 office reportrevealed that despite the market recording a slightly negative netabsorption during the quarter of -114,776 square feet, 2015 was thefifth consecutive year that experienced annual positive netabsorption. Also, total office vacancy has reached 11.8%, thelowest since 2007. We spoke exclusively with Ingham about therelationship between office vacancy, the expected deliveries in thenear future and absorption in the market.

GlobeSt.com: What is the relationship between OrangeCounty having the lowest office vacancy rate since 2007 and theramping up of deliveries between now and the end of next year? Howwill all these deliveries affect vacancy?

Ingham: Obviously, we will have anincrease in vacancy. But right now, we're tracking quite a fewtenants that are looking for more space. There are companies movingfrom existing space they own to new space that's not currentlyvacant. Emulex purchased last year and recentlysold their headquarters, so they have two buildings vacant on theircampus, which added to the vacancy and negative absorption. There'salso lot of vacancy in existing buildings, not only from newbuildings coming out of the ground. For example, theWaMu building, which is 400,000 square feet, hasbeen vacant for seven years, and 2 MacArthur hasalso been vacant for several years. Vacancy is still over and abovethe 11% mark, which is not ideal for building new buildings, butthe new deliveries that are coming on board are in a relativelycontrolled delivery system right now. The IrvineCo. has the financial wherewithal to movetenants from one building to another, so there's good activitythere. The new delivery system will keep the market in check.