Atlanta Office Market Shows Positive Absorption

ATLANTA-The Atlanta office market showed the first sign of positive absorption in five quarters in first quarter 2010. Although that positive absorption was only 3,784 square feet, at least it is an indication that the office market is going in the right direction, says Jonathan Majors, director of research at Richard Bowers & Co., an Atlanta-based commercial real estate company.

The leading submarket this past quarter was NE Expressway-North in the I-85 north corridor, near the suburb of Duluth, according to Richard Bowers. It had a little over 111,000 square feet of positive absorption in the first quarter, because a major tenant, NCR Corp., which makes ATMs, self-service kiosks and check-out terminals, moved its headquarters from Dayton, Ohio to the Satellite Place 700 building in the Satellite Place Office Park in Duluth. The 10-year-lease was for 120,000 square feet in the six story building.

“We are hoping that NCR moving into the Satellite Place Office Park will be a draw for other tenants,” says Majors. The fact that, in the first quarter, the suburban market outperformed the urban market, in terms of absorption, can be attributed to the NCR move, he says.