It'd be a joke if it weren't true. For example, talk on the street here is about the huge amount of sublease space that has flooded the market because so many dot.com companies have dried up and blown away.

Colliers International's local research pegs the amount at 1.7 million sf, up from 1.3 million sf at the end of last year. Grubb & Ellis says 1.1 million sf, or about double the 621,622 sf it reported at the end of 2000. On the vacancy side, CB Richard Ellis reported a Seattle rate of 6.02%, (up from 4.38%) while Colliers checks in with 7.8% (up from 3.5%).

With the recent bounce in vacancy rates, pushed along by the bulging sublease numbers in all areas, there is renewed interest in putting together a common list of rates so that references could be consistent.Then again, if it did happen there wouldn't be the options there are today when a client calls from out of town and asks about the market?

"People have different motivations for using the numbers the way that they do," says Joe Cannon, a veteran Downtown Seattle commercial broker who leads Cannon Real Estate Services. "Some firms have specific clients they are trying to work with. There are reasons behind what they are trying to present."

The bottom line is the figures can be as skewed as the number of companies attempting to corral them. In reality, most of the major companies are very happy with their research departments and see no benefit in upsetting what has clearly been working.

"The question comes up all the time," says Peter Truex, vice-president of the Staubach Co. in the Seattle region. "And most of the time it comes from reporters. You want comparisons and there is no real place to look for absolute comparisons.

One of the more challenging situations is arriving at an actual definition for "vacancy." Is space actually vacant if somebody is paying rent? If somebody is paying rent, yet agrees to sublease the space to another party, does that reduce the overall vacancy rate of the building?

"A lot of it has to do with the way information is obtained," Cannon says. "My way is better than yours . . . I don't consider the buildings you do for a variety of reasons. People tend to believe they way they do things is the better way. Getting all of that together would be a matter of coordination--and it would be a huge job."