"With the economy slowly recovering, businesses are finally starting to make decisions," says Ariel Guerrero, research services manager in Houston for Grubb & Ellis Co. Those decisions translated into 211,744 sf of positive absorption in the Uptown/Galleria submarket and 139,131 of black ink in the CBD.

Overall vacancy dipped to 19.9%, down 0.10% in three months in an inventory of 154 million sf. In the CBD, the quarter ended with a 21% vacancy or 7.5 million sf of empty space versus a first-quarter close of almost 21.5%. The suburbs' overall vacancy was 19.5%, a 0.2% drop.

Guerrero tells GlobeSt.com that depressed rental rates were a contributing factor to the surge in absorption in Q2, a striking contrast to the first-quarter backslide of more than 1.7 million sf. The average class A, full-service rent slipped 21 cents per sf to $20.96 per sf in the second quarter while the class B rate dropped 18 cents per sf to $16.34 per sf. The CBD took a hard hit as the average class A rent fell 27 cents per sf to $21.83 per sf and class B plummeted 49 cents per sf to $16.99 per sf.

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