In the first three months of 2003, 324,000 sf of sublease space has been filled in Austin, more than twice as much as that taken for that same time period just one year earlier. "There's a big run on data center space," Michael Buls with Buls Hodge Consulting in Austin, tells GlobeSt.com. "A lot of high-tech firms left their equipment and furniture and those are the first subleases to disappear. As rates continue to decline, major blocks of space with significant infrastructure are getting leased up or taken off the market."

While building owners may find that promising, Buls said 8.7 million sf of direct and sublease office space out of a total market of about 33.8 million sf still remains vacant, making for a whopping 26% vacancy rate in the city.

The over abundance of available office leases is due largely to the high-tech industry's appetite for space, much of which was leased in 10-year blocks with the expectation of further boom times in Austin. But when the boom went bust, Buls said, building owners were left holding onto vacant space, that in some instances, had never even been occupied. But Buls predicts that could all change by 2005 as emerging technologies, such as the bioscience and wireless industries, fill the void left by a declining computer industry.