Robert Bach, senior vice president and chief economist at Grubb & Ellis, tells GlobeSt.com that the rate at which sublease office space is climbing is "a really telling statistic," especially when today's rate of increase is compared with that of the downturn that began in the year 2000. Before anyone gets too excited and jumps to the conclusion that the slowly climbing sublease numbers are a sign that today's office market is much better off than the office market of the previous downturn, Bach has some words of caution.

"A lot of people are saying that the office market is in a better position now than it was in 2000 to 2001, but I don't buy that," Bach says. "The sublease statistics suggest to me that the market is really in a much different position than it was in the last downturn, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's in a better position."

Bach explains the amount of sublease space is rising very gradually today whereas it was "skyrocketing" in the previous downturn--rising about 1% per quarter for awhile. However, the last downturn started out from a much lower overall vacancy standpoint. When the downturn began in 2000, the overall US vacancy rate stood at 8.5%. In contrast, the vacancy rate stood at 13.5% when the latest downturn began about three quarters ago for this cycle. In other words, the US already had a lot more empty space at the start of this downturn than it had at the start of the last one.