To be sure, tech-heavy West Los Angeles and a few submarkets in Orange County will be hit the hardest by the ongoing shakeout in the Internet business. On the Westside alone, researchers at Julien J. Studley say downsizing dot-coms have recently put more than 500,000 sf of prime office space up for sublet, more than doubling the submarket's record-low 3.4% vacancy factor reached earlier in the year.

Still, Westside brokers aren't hitting the panic button. "For every dot-com that drops out of the market, there's a law firm or financial-services provider or other tenant waiting to take its place," Susan Goodman Byron, a vice president and broker in tenant-rep specialist CRESA's West LA office, recently told GlobeSt.com. Even more non-tech tenants may be willing to expand or relocate on the pricey Westside if slackening demand from dot-com tenants ends the long string of double-digit rent increases the area has seen over the past several years.

Brokers are split about the 2001 prospects for Downtown LA, the county's largest office market. Optimists say the CBD should see an influx of new tenants over the next several months, in part because its 24% vacancy factor has resulted in rents that are between 20% and 40% lower than most other LA-area markets. But other brokers say Downtown could go from bad to worse next year: "If rents in surrounding areas soften, it would make it a lot harder to justify renting Downtown," says one prominent broker who makes deals all over LA county. "You can make a case for renting in Downtown if it will knock 40% off your rent payments. But if the savings would be only 10% or 20%, you'll probably pick the Westside instead."