...In her time covering the Southern California commercial real estate sector, Delores Conway, director of the Casden Real Estate Economics Forecast, says she is seeing some new and unwelcome signs in the market. "I've never seen negative office absorption in all of Southern California's submarkets," Conway said. Layoffs and consolidation at financial services firms have hit the Los Angeles County office market hard, and the market is going through the pain that Orange County went through last year. Some rock solid submarkets are seeing a great deal more sublease space entering the market. Conway notes, for example, that about one-third of available office space in West Los Angeles is sublease space. However, the report did find something of a silver lining, as limited office construction in recent years has tempered the rise in vacancy in Los Angeles. In the industrial sector, vacancy rates moved higher, but are still very low, and the report predicted that rents should stabilize in the near term...
December 12, 2008