Well, as with many things about Austin, that has changed. Sublease space has broken the 2.5 million-sf mark, according to the latest numbers from Buls/Hodge Consulting. "It's been trending upward every two weeks," Mike Buls tells GlobeSt.com.
The bad actor remains the high-tech haven of the northwest sector, which accounts for 68% of the vacant sublease space. That's up from 62% two weeks ago.
"If you look at the rest of the markets as a comparison, they have fairly much stabilized," he says. "No big jumps, not a lot of new things added and some have even started to go down."
The northwest corridor is where the technology start-ups wanted to be, Buls says. As the dot-coms have croaked, their space has opened up.
The beneficiaries are the tech companies still growing. One is Isochron Data Systems Inc., which graduated from the Austin Technology Incubator in May. It has moved into sublease space at 6801 N. Capital of Texas Highway.
"I think the market was much more open to being flexible," Aruni Gunasegaram, the company's co-founder and chief strategy officer, tells GlobeSt.com. "The space we moved into was great. We had all of our furniture already here as part of the deal. The phones were set up as well."
Building owners, even those with buildings under construction, have not lowered rates, Huls says. Sublease rates, however, have gone down at least $3 per sf.
One thing to watch for, Huls says, are the renters on the sidelines. He says there is a growing consensus that there are clients waiting for rates to hit bottom and the economy to stabilize before they jump into the market. "Nobody knows how much that is," he says. "But everybody pretty much agrees they have clients that are on hold.
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