Preliminary figures from the locally based brokerage giant says the county experienced negative net absorption of 44,444 sf in the just-concluded fourth quarter. However, that was a big improvement over the third quarter's 106,268-sf negative absorption.
The fourth-quarter vacancy rate of 11.8% was only slightly higher than then 11.6% vacancy factor in the previous three months, the CB Richard Ellis report says. It was 10.5% in the final quarter of 2000.
"The office market is showing good stability in view of present conditions," says Lewis C. Horne, CBRE's senior managing director of the LA Region. "A business slowdown was already having its effect when the Sept. 11 events occurred."
Horne adds that the local market "continues to work out its problems and, given time, will get back to normal. We expect office space demand to continue soft for the first and second quarters of 2002 and then pick up in the third quarter."
The average asking rent countywide continued to climb in the fourth quarter despite the slight rise in the overall vacancy rate, Horne notes. Landlords are asking for an average of $2.17 psf per month, the report says, up from $2.13 psf in the third quarter and $2.03 in the final quarter of 2000.
CB Richard Ellis breaks LA County into seven submarkets. As always, some of those markets are faring better than others.
The massive Downtown LA market continued to improve in the final three months of 2001. Its vacancy rate was 13.6%, the report says, down from 14.2% in the third quarter and 15.4% a year earlier.
The vacancy factor in the Tri-Cities area rose to 7.5% in the latest quarter from 7.2% in the third and 5.9% a year earlier. The Hollywood/Wilshire Corridor's fourth-quarter rate of 16.2% was up from 15.8% in both the third quarter of last year and the final four months of 2000.
The San Fernando Valley's vacancy rate of 12.9% was down a full percentage point from the third quarter but up from 11.9% in the fourth quarter a year earlier. The fourth-quarter vacancy factor in the San Gabriel Valley was 8.6%, up from 7.8% in the third quarter but down sharply from 12.5% the previous year.
In the South Bay, the vacancy rate rose to 14.3% in the fourth quarter from 13.4% in the third quarter and 10.9% a year ago. The CBRE report says vacancies in the West LA submarket, hit hard by the shrinking base of dot-com tenants, rose to 9.7% from 9.0% in the third quarter and just 5.4% a year earlier.
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