The first quarter of 2014 ended on a positive note for the Dayton, Ohio, market, according to the latest research from Cassidy Turley.
And this happened despite the best efforts of the federal government to slow growth in the Dayton area.
As Cassidy Turley researchers said, the government shutdown hurt Dayton. That’s because the public sector accounts for 10 percent of all local wages here.
“Dayton was able to survive the government shutdown, which stunted its economic recovery toward the end of 2013,” said James Flick, vice president of research and marketing for Cassidy Turley, in a written statement. “Moving forward, the positive momentum being generated in the national economy, as well as the local manufacturing and logistics industries, will hopefully re-energize the local and regional economic recovery.”
Dayton also suffered from stalled job growth and higher unemployment than the national average, with the area’s unemployment rate standing at 7.2 percent at the end of the first quarter of 2014.
Still, there was some good news in the Dayton-area office market. The first quarter ended on a positive note with 11,333 square feet of positive absorption in this sector. This caused the office vacancy rate in Dayton to fall to 25.3 percent. That’s still too high, but it is an improvement.
The East submarket, with 88,771 square feet of net absorption, led the way during the first quarter. The strongest markets in terms of class-A rent growth were the East, where rents rose 1.6 percent, and the South, where they jumped 1.4 percent.
The average gross asking rental rate for the overall Dayton office market stood at $14.38 a square foot at the end of the first quarter. The class-A rental rate, though, grew 1.4 percent when compared to the fourth quarter of 2013, increasing from $18.14 a square foot to $18.40 a square foot.
Cassidy Turley researchers, though, predict continued improvement for this office market. The company pointed to the news that CareSource is leasing the entire 150,000-square-foot former Workflow One building at 200 E. Monument Ave. The company will move 200 employees to the CBD starting in August.
