"It is still a landlord-oriented market," Bob Cleary, vice president at Meredith & Grew, tells GlobeSt.com. "We only have a 3% vacancy here. Until we get to a 10% or 12% vacancy, then you'll see tenants have some bargaining power. But we're years away from that."

According to Cleary, this city now has about a 1.5 million sf of sublease space, with most of that coming from high-tech companies that went under in the recent downturn. The flood of sublease space to market started with Beakaway Solutions, which sublet its 100,000 sf at the Seaport Center East Office Building in South Boston. Viant Corp. has put 90,000 sf that it leased at 100 Summer St. on the market and 100,000 sf of space at 343 Congress St. in Fort Point channel here is also being sublet. The recent news that Verizon Communications is thinking of subletting up to 350,000-sf of space in its High St. location here ups the ante even further.

Cleary says much of that space is no longer sublease space. The Breakaway Solutions space was taken back by Seaport Center and is now a direct lease and most of the space at 343 Congress is committed. The Verizon space is in two buildings and the space in one of the buildings won't be available till the first quarter of next year. "That's a future space that only impacts the larger firms," he says. "These are the ebbs and flows in the marketplace."