Cushman & Wakefield earlier this week released more positive commercial real estate news for the Midwest, reporting that office activity in the Columbus, Ohio, market saw its lowest vacancy rates and highest absorption and rental rates since the end of the recession.
The area’s office construction activity is especially impressive, with Robin Mitchell, research analyst in Cushman & Wakefield’s Columbus office, saying that the market saw 1.1 million square feet of office construction projects in 2015.
That’s the highest this figure has been since 2008, Mitchell said.
The Columbus-area office market ended the year with a vacancy rate of 12.99 percent, again the lowest since 2008. The market’s total absorption of 621,558 square feet doubled what the Columbus area saw in 2014.
Not all office submarkets were equally hot, of course. The Central Business District and the Northwest submarkets were the area’s best performers in office in 2015. They both benefitted from mixed-use projects that converted obsolete buildings into desirable modern office space, Cushman & Wakefield reported.
Asking rental rates jumped a bit from 2014, hitting $20.40. Cushman & Wakefield pointed to the new buildings coming onto the market with higher rental rates.
